The Great West Wing Rewatch: 4.18 "Privateers"

Joel: It not really focused on much, but I love that this whole episode takes place over the course of a single day. We start the episode with the President being woken up, and end with him going back to bed that night. And everything in between is the mad dash and hubbub that goes on any given day at The White House. It reminds me of a season one episode in a lot of ways. We’ve recently had to go through lots of major stories that arch over several episodes. From the MS scandal, to the election, to the decision to assassinate a foreign leader and the ramifications of that decision, to then having to deal with an attempted genocide, some of the day to day aspects of the early episodes have fallen by the wayside. This episode has a bit of that old, familiar comfort. It’s nice to remind people that in the middle of all these big event stories we still have the day to day things, where compromises have to be made to get bills passed, sometimes awards have to be made up because the wrong person go mad about a dumb thing, and we even get some Zoey and Charlie scenes, just like season one all over again.

Chris: Amy is typically the one with everything together. Sure, we don’t get a whole of episodes don’t feature but a handful of scenes with her and it’s not until you get a brighter spotlight that you start to see the cracks and that’s the case here. Not saying that Amy was anywhere near cracking but it’s one of the few times where she is simply having a bad day with the frames, the door, dealing with a heavy issue on her first day as the First Lady’s Chief of Staff. And I appreciate Charlie just laying it all out with Zoey especially now that it becomes increasingly apparent that Jean-Pierre is just bad for her. And as always, Charlie plays the fair game and doesn’t bother to tell Zoey about her boyfriend being stoned in the White House because Charlie is a gentleman and he’s smart, that information coming from him would sound like a cheap shot to try to win Zoey back. Stuff like that is always better to hear from a friend and it’s too bad that she doesn’t have better friends. Writing this review just reminded me how this season ends and I’m so not looking forward to it but we’re here in this together, right? Right.

A good president changes the kind of free world they’re running on a given day.