Irrelevant But Awesome

Joel:  This is the first episode of The West Wing where I have a clear memory of watching it on television during it’s original airing. I remember trying to grasp exactly what a filibuster was, why one might be useful and how exactly they “won” at the end of the show. Looking at it now, the episode actually does a pretty good job of explaining what a filibuster was and answering all of the questions I was having back in the spring of 2001, but at the time I just wasn’t quite able to grasp it. I do however remember that this was the time where my mother (who I was watching the show with) made a rule that I could only ask questions during the commercials because everybody on the show talked too fast and if I asked a question while the show was on, we would be missing something important. Rewatching this episode now, it’s one of my personal favorites. Not only because it was my initial introduction to the show all those years ago, but because it shows these characters being ...

Joel:  I forget sometimes, when it’s been awhile since I’ve seen it, just how good that Bret Hart and Stone Cold match really is. I think that the hype surrounding that match is making me remember it as a better match than it actually way. But then, when I watch it again, It blows me away every time. This match is near wrestling perfection. Everything about it just clicks into place. The double turn is something that should be close to impossible to effectively pull off, yet these two guys do it is a way that is so smooth and natural, the entire thing feels like a seamless part of the match and the storyline. This is, without a question the best WrestleMania match that we’ve seen so far in this series. Unfortunately, that match pretty much had to carry the entire rest of the card. No other match stands out in any positive way. At best we get moments like seeing Rocky Maivia and knowing that guys going to be a big star in a few years, but as far as his actual performance at W...

Joel:  This was a heavy episode. From the very first opening shot, we know that things are going to be tough, just the way that this episode is setting up the day that these people are about to have. All of the heavy themes here are centered around Sam, who had just found out that his father has been having a twenty year long affair. I’m actually surprised how little the episode goes into that. We don’t see Sam learning about the affair. We learn about it three days after it’s happened. Sam only talks about it in the introduction, and hardly makes mention of it again till the end of the episode. We watch Sam process this instead by focusing on the equally heavy episode where he learns that someone’s grandfather was in fact a spy. There’s just no good news for Sam in this episode. Honestly it’s a good thing this storyline was paired with Big Block of Cheese Day so that we can have something lighthearted to cut through Sam’s storyline. I love the idea of Sorkin finding tiny ...

Joel:   So much of this WrestleMania is all about the one match it’s hard to separate the two. In many ways a review of the Iron Man main event match is a review of WrestleMania XII itself. Fortunately, if there’s going to be a pair of wrestlers that put on an hour long main event these are the two. It’s hard to compare this match to other matches because part of the marvel of a 60 minute iron man match is the sheer fact that it’s happening. I will say that even with this clearly being the best possible choice for who you’re putting in your hour long iron man match, it still felt like a very long match. Minute twenty feels like a dark point in this match knowing that there were still forty minutes to go. But still, you have to give this one match of the night. I’ve heard this match described as a four star forty minute match followed by a five star twenty minute match that was put on by the same guys, which is a really accurate way to look at it I feel. I would like to see m...

Joel:  So exactly one episode after we have a very serious discussion about how the war on drugs isn’t working, and all the damage it’s doing and how something needs to be done about this, we have an episode that pretty much says marijuana probably isn’t all that bad, but thanks to politics there’s nothing we can do but stay the course, and anybody who goes against that is getting let go. I know that wasn’t exactly the main point of the previous episode, but it’s still kind of jarring to see these two different stances being made by the same show back to back like this. Most of the focus here is on Bartlet’s relationship with his previously unseen daughter Ellie. We don’t get a whole lot of time with Ellie and this is the big episode where we really get to establish her relationship with her father. Storywise the big thing you can do with character like Ellie and Zoey are to tell stories about how your father being president can change your life. For Zoey, that’s mostly be...

Joel:  While there is a small side story of Ed Begley Jr. threatening to run as a third party candidate in the next election, the bulk of this episode is dealing with the hostages in Colombia that we learned about in the previous episode. What’s interesting to watch is how several different political issues are brought up here. The events of this episode address the ongoing war with drugs,military involvement, proper response to terrorist threats (which is even more eerie now, knowing that this episode aired just seven months before 9/11), deciding when a war is worth fighting, and foreign relations. All of these political situations have to be considered before taking any kind of action, and at the same time, there are hostages being held, and the clock is unquestionably ticking. It’s a stressful episode and one where there isn’t really a chance for an ending where everything goes our way. The West Wing liked making things difficult for the main characters, and the phrase “w...

Joel:  Man we have had a bit of a roller coaster in quality these last few WrestleManias haven’t we? It seems like the past couple of higher quality events have been quickly followed by some of the harder to get through events and WrestleMania XI very much that. First of all, there were only seven matches on the card and in total, only about seventy-seven minutes of wrestling in the whole show (according to Wikipedia’s match times). The rest of the show is full, and I mean FULL of backstage skits and celebrity appearance. A rather sizable portion of the show is dedicated to trying to find Pamela Anderson who is supposed to walk Shawn Michaels to the ring, but seems to have gone missing somewhere backstage. Not to spoil the big twist for you, but she eventually appears on the arm of Diesel, Shawn’s opponent! There’s the big WrestleMania shocker for you. WrestleMania XI is back to WrestleMania I levels of celebrity involvement, up to the point where, once again, the main eve...

Joel:   A lot of the big things in this episode are undercut by the buildup for the next episode. We learn about an issue with five captured DEA agents that will really blow up in the next episode, but for now that storyline is all buildup. What we do learn, is that at some point, probably before any campaigning really started, there was a deal made between the Bartlet’s that should Jeb Bartlet win the election, he would only be serving one term. That is a big turn from where the series seemed to be headed up until this point. Of course, watching the show today, you know that he had to run for a second term because there’s seven seasons and only four years in one presidential term, but even before the reveal in this episode, it seemed clear that Bartlett was planning to be an eight year president. The Bartlet administration spent a lot of time in the first season getting kicked around, because they were trying to play nice, knowing that they still had one more election to wi...

Joel:  For most of the WrestleManias so far the first match has been somewhere between “not bad” and “pretty good.” The kind of matches that are interesting when it’s the first match of the evening, but would be harder to swallow if it was further down on the card and you were starting to get tired of watching. None of them have come close to being a Match of the Night before now. WrestleMania X starts off with Owen Hart vs. Bret Hart, which is easily the best opening match up to this point, and one of the biggest highlights of WrestleMania so far. It did go on a little long (it was the longest match on the card that night) but still, if there’s a match on the card that’s going to break twenty minutes, this should be the one to do it. The other big match worth mentioning was the ladder match between Shawn Michaels and Razor Ramon. Honestly in my memory of WrestleMania X, this was the main event and for the main title rather than the IC title. And watching it again, I can s...

Joel:  You know, this episode actually bothers me a little bit. It’s made very clear to us that Sam is working incredibly hard on this speech. Obviously he probably works incredibly hard on every speech he writes since the words he’s writing are going to be said by the President, but all the same, we take some time to see that Sam cares a great deal about this speech in particular. He’s slaving over every word, and he has visions of the speech bringing the room to it’s feet by the end. He has worked hard and has a final product that he is proud of. And the whole thing is taken out right from under him. I’m not here to say if the President should have admonished the GDC or not. There are reasons both for and against that happening. But I don’t understand the thought process in intentionally leaving someone out of the discussion. It’s not like Sam had done anything wrong in the previous episode that resulted in leaving him out in the cold here. According to Toby it was simpl...

Joel:  A big part of why I love this show, is that it shows pretty much an idealized version of a presidential administration. People are there who truly want to work hard to make America a better place. I bring that point up a lot in these episode reviews, but every now and then, I love getting to watch them play the political games as well. This episode is full of people with hidden agendas, some we know about at the beginning, some we don’t find out about until later, and our heroes are a bit blindsided at one point. But man do they regroup in this episode. There’s a scene, and it’s a small scene in the context of the whole episode, but is shows everyone in a brief huddle trying to come back from an unexpected attack. In a manner of seconds they come back with a retort, as well as a snappy line that is smart, witty, and will be what is quoted by the news cycle and will be the line that sticks in the head of the american public. Yes, this is an idealized administration ...

Joel:  I’m not going to dance around the fact. WrestleMania IX is pretty much the worst WrestleMania of them all. Most people are eager to credit that to the whole “toga party” theme that ran throughout the show. Don’t get me wrong, that was a bad idea top to bottom. Every single aspect of the whole theme was a dud from changing people’s names to give them more “ancient roman” sounding names to the “hilarious” moment of Bobby Heenan struggling during his entrance. Pretty much everything falls flat. But if that were the main problem of WrestleMania IX, then I could look past that. Themed WrestleManias are dumb and they’ve never tried to lean into a theme as much as they did this one so maybe they learned the lesson. No the problem here is how badly almost every match is booked on this card. Seriously, Doink the Clown has an eight and a half minute match on this card! Razor Ramon’s match was less than half that time. Undertaker has the worst match of his streak on this card...

We are merely 14 days into 2016 and already it's been heart-wrenching.I know there are a million tribute articles out there already but I would feel amiss if we, here at IBA, didn't have our own. A few days ago, the world lost a brilliant and creative mind. There isn't much to say about David Bowie that hasn't been said already (and probably better). The first time I remember David Bowie being a thing was when I first saw The Labyrinth as a kid. The character of Jareth the Goblin King was fascinating and terrifying. He made the character into a real person and made us feel for him even though he was probably a sociopath. And the soundtrack to that movie is still one of my favorites of all time. All anyone has to do is walk up to me and say "You remind me of the babe," and I go into full Bowie mode. His music has been an inspiration to musical artists the world over and will continue to be for generations to come. He has been called avant-garde, outlandi...