Irrelevant But Awesome

Joel:  You know, this was shaping up to be a good old fashion episode of The West Wing. All the right signs were there. We were learning about some new White House jargon (in this case taking out the trash) and Donna was there to not understand so that Josh could explain it to her and to the audience. We had two different meeting set up where we were going to get to see our heroes, the various staff members of The White House, lay down verbal justice on people who just couldn’t quite keep up with the ideals or their Sorkin written snappy comebacks. All the signs were there for a good old fashion West Wing episode. But I had forgotten the last part of a good old fashion West Wing episode, the part where a gut punch comes out of nowhere in the last act, and this time we got more than one. Alexa: The characters on The West Wing tend to alternate as the show’s moral compass, and perhaps more often than not, it’s C.J. C.J.-as-moral-compass is front and center in this episod...

Joel:  This is the first episode where we learn that the President has Multiple Sclerosis, but what’s worth point out is how small of a deal it really is in this episode. Not that Multiple Sclerosis isn’t a big deal, but in this case, Bartlett is never in any real danger, and he’s moving around fine again by the next episode. It’s a small thing but I want to go ahead and commend the show for putting that information into this episode. The issue will come out in a big way in season two, but if we the show had waited until then before informing the audience, it would have seemed to come out of left field. This way, we get the information we need, the current issues are wrapped up in a single episode, but we still get to know that this is likely to come out at some point in the future. In fact the illness takes a back seat in this episode to The State of the Union and Leo’s storyline, we know that Bartlett is sick, but it’s not something where we need to concern ourselves with ...

Joel:  I want to talk for a brief minute about the idea of filler episodes. For those who don’t know a filler episode more or less comes from the idea that a season of television has to have around 22 episodes even if there is only 13 episodes worth of story to tell. While The West Wing does have filler episodes in its run, it is far more difficult to tell if an episode could be considered a filler episodes than on some other shows. That being said, this might be the first episode of the run that I really felt like it could be considered a filler episode. Not that that’s a bad thing. Filler episodes can be some of the highest quality episodes on a show, and in this case, I feel like we needed something of a breather after watching “In Excelsis Deo” last. While we do get some heavy topics addressed, like the furthering of the examination into Leo’s addiction, we also get far more lighter scenes than we did last episode. The scene between Charlie and Zoey is adorable, and is on...

Joel:  Of the nine episodes that we watched before this one, I think that eight of them have made me tear up at some point or other. Watching Bartlett talk on the radio to the men about to face a hurricane. Seeing Leo watch his marriage crumble and knowing that he wasn’t going to be able to save it. The emotion that washed over Mendosa’s face when he learned that he was going to be nominated for the Supreme Court got me as well. But nothing comes close to this episode. Every moment of this episode is just so frustratingly powerful. We get Toby realizing that nobody was in a rush to do anything about the deceased veteran. We learn about Mrs. Landingham’s sons. We get CJ’s passionate thoughts on a hate crime that occurred. We get Toby under the bridge trying to find relations to the deceased veteran that results in him giving away all of his money only for some of it to be returned by the homeless man so that he can take a safe cab ride home. We get Josh and Sam having to apo...

Joel:  I would like us to all take a look at this quote from Sam Seaborn in this episode. "It's not just about abortion, it's about the next twenty years. The twenties and thirties it was the role of government, the fifties and sixties it was civil rights, the next two decades are going to be privacy. I'm talking about the internet. I'm talking about cell phones. I'm talking about health records and who's gay and who's not. Moreover, in a country born on the will to the free, what could be more fundamental than this?" As we approach the twenty year mark of this quote, you can pretty much see that Aaron Sorkin predicted the future perfectly here. What was already a powerful quote has only gotten more powerful as the years have gone on. When this episode aired, Google was barely a year old. Facebook and youtube weren’t even close to existing yet, and Sam Seaborn could already accurately see what the biggest issue of the future would be. It’s ...

If you happened to watch our first short film  "Taker Taken!"  last month, you might have noticed a message at the end of the credits that read "#ForceJoelToMakeBallin2" and was a nudge to IBA's Joel to finally make a short that we had been discussing for years. Well the social media campaign worked and tugged at Joel's heartstrings. Ballin 2 begins shooting this weekend! But a lot of you might be thinking "Well, that's fine and all but what is Ballin?" I'm glad you asked, made-up person. Ballin was a short film done back in 2009 by members of the IBA family as part of the 48 Hour Film Festival. And to celebrate the forthcoming sequel, we've re-uploaded the original short which you can watch below: (NSFW Language Warning)

Joel:  I want to go back a second to the moment in episode four where Leo says that his job is more important than his marriage. It doesn’t matter if you agree with Leo about that or not, the point is that to Leo, and the rest of the people on the show, for these eight years their job is the most important thing that they could do. And I think that’s a good thing. These are the type of people that you want in charge of the country. America doesn’t close at five, so sometimes people need to stay late. But it can be complicated. Take this episode for instance. It isn’t just Leo and his wife who are affected by his job. To Mallory, working at the White House is what ended her parent’s marriage. And it can be hard to understand that. And it can’t be fixed simply by Leo saying that this is the way it is. What I love about this little ploy is how relatively harmless it is. Nobody was hurt or offended, and at the end of the day Mallory gains a better understanding of how the jobs i...

Joel:  Boy when things go bad you guys. I don’t think there was a single storyline in this episode that ended where we would have wanted it to. How incredibly heartbreaking and frustrating a day like this must have been. The thing is, everybody on staff was doing what they genuinely thought was the right thing. Toby felt that he was right to say the things that he said, he strongly believed in what he was saying, but that doesn’t matter. His actions still cost him and his co-workers. Mandy wasn’t wrong either. Her idea was not a longshot. It was a reasonable idea and had the potential for the best possible outcome. But that’s not what happened. It was her idea that caused another person to get shot, and you can see how that emotionally tears through her when she realizes the consequences of her idea, and again, it was an idea that wasn’t a bad one. The same thing is true with the hurricane storyline. In that case there really wasn’t even a choice to be made. There was a clea...

Joel:   The Nightmare Scenario speech. I’m not a parent (nor am I the president) and I still get stressed out just thinking about the nightmare scenario speech. I can’t imagine what it must be like to be a parent and know that your child is not only in a fair amount of danger on the daily, but that the danger is directly related to you and your job. Obviously more about this will be addressed in an upcoming season, but for now, just the speech itself is enough to stress me out. The other big moment from this episode is Mr. Willis casting a vote in place of his wife. So much of the show is about beating the other side. Yes, the show does talk about the issues and how one political party is either for or against the issues and why, but there is still a very heavy amount of republicans vs. democrats talk throughout The West Wing, just as I am sure there is in real life. What really resonates from this storyline is a character who casts a vote not because it is best for party, b...

Joel:  It’s big block of cheese day! What I love about these episode is that these are issues that Sorkin is clearly fascinated with. Not necessarily issues that he feels passionate about, but issues that he’s interested in and is fascinated that other people can feel such passion about these issues. The West Wing is a show that constantly focuses on military issues, civil rights, gun control, and other big issues the government has to deal with, but sometimes it’s great to see that same show put the focus on the possibility of UFOs or how maps look (more on that later in the series) and other offbeat passion issues like that. Can we also take a moment to talk about the end speech of this episode? Every now and then an episode of this show will end with an Aaron Sorkin speech that will make you want to cry, cheer, punch the air, hug your wife, and feel incredibly patriotic all at the same time. This is the first of such speeches but it very much won’t be the last. Ale...

Joel:  The West Wing should be a very boring show. It’s about the most boring aspect of politics. It’s just about the talking. And somehow it’s not. This episode is the first, real prime example of that. There’s a vote taking place about gun control and our heroes learn they they are five votes short of what they thought they had. This should lead to some very boring scenes but instead it leads to scenes of people sitting around a table that are more tense than most action thrillers. The West Wing does this time and time again. John Spencer also needs to be specifically mentioned when talking about this episode (Spencer was actually nominated for an Emmy for this episode.) Most of the show takes place in the West Wing itself, so very little of the show spends time on the families of the people who work there. The moment where Leo gets home to find his wife is leaving him is one of the most heart wrenching scenes to date and Spencer does the scene masterfully. Leo, in the scen...

Joel:  There is a recurring feeling you get when watching this show. Every couple of episodes a thought will pass through your mind as you watch the events of the show unfold. A thought that is always the same. That thought is “Boy, am I glad that I’m not the president.” This episode picks up pretty much where the previous one left off with Bartlett and company having to deal with the fallout of the deaths of 58 US military healthcare workers that we learned about at the end of the previous episode. We have seen the respect that the office of the president holds but this is the first time we see the potential power of it as well. We an entire table full of we educated men with years of military experience come up what an appropriate response and we see that all can be changed just because the president says “No, do it this way.” This isn’t even close to the hardest decision that Bartlett will have to deal with in the show. The show makes it very clear that in this case the...

Remember when J.K. Rowling insisted that Harry Potter would end after seven books? Luckily for us Potterheads, she changed her tune. While she stayed true to her vision and wrapped up Harry’s adventures at Hogwarts and his battle with Voldemort in seven parts, she’s delved deeper into her vast magical universe in the years since the series ended. In addition to the countless tidbits she offers on Pottermore and the two-part sequel play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, bowing next summer in London, in about a year we’ll step into the past and explore a new corner of the wizarding world with Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. And we now have our first look at the film, courtesy of Entertainment Weekly. Fantastic Beasts follows British magizoologist Newt Scamander – whose textbook will one day become required reading for Hogwarts students – on an adventure in New York City decades before Harry receives his Hogwarts letter. EW’s cover story this week offers an early ...

Joel:  There’s going to be a large amount of death on this show. Not of main characters (Though we will be addressing that later in the series. Stay tuned), but because of the nature of the show and the position of power that these characters are in. The President and his staff make decisions, or recommendations that can drastically alter the lives of hundreds of people. For the most part, these deaths happen off screen and we only know about them because of a single line of dialogue informing us of a death, or a body count, or whatever consequences of a decision that was made earlier in the episode. In a lesser show that’s all that line of dialogue would be. Just some information for you the viewer. But on this show the impact and the weight of the information that is felt by the characters is felt by you the viewer as well. The first example is in this episode. There is a character that we meet for maybe six minutes of screentime in total. And in those six minutes we bond ...