The Great West Wing Rewatch: 5.16 "Eppur Si Muove"

Joel: I have to wonder what the original plan was for Will Bailey had Sorkin not left. Clearly he was there to be a replacement for Sam since Rob Lowe was leaving, yet very early on into the fifth season, he’s moved from Deputy White House Communications Director to Chief of Staff of the Vice President, a role which had not really been addressed on the show up until this point. But after Will left, there was no replacement for his/Sam’s job. We still see his office sitting empty whenever Toby walks by. Isn’t that a role that needs to be filled?
Plus, after the first run of episodes with Will Bailey trying to get going in his new role, the character is kind of shuffled to the side, maybe getting one or two walk and talks in an episode but never really having a big plot of his own. This episode is the first time he’s really had something to do and it made me realize that I had kinda forgotten about his for the past several episodes. I wonder if the writers had as well. After all, they had Sorkin’s style of writing they were trying to emulate and here was a group of characters that they had four years of development to pull from. On the other hand, they had a new character that Sorkin had only written for a handful of times. Which character do you think would be easiest to put in a different office and only come talk to the main characters every now and again. Joshua Malina’s Twitter Bio (as of this writing) is “Hi. I ruined the West Wing.” I get that it’s a joke, and that he did have the misfortune of coming aboard when he did, but from the looks of it, he wasn’t on the show enough to really impact the quality one way or the other.

Chris: It seemed like just a few episodes ago where President Bartlet said something along the lines where he would never have to worry about his daughter Elle doing anything too crazy compared to his other two daughters and he's still right because she didn't pick this fight. Instead, the fight was brought to her as a way to get at the president, knowing how quick to anger the president is on the subject of his children. Ultimately, this felt a lot like the writers coming up with something for Elle since very little has been done with her up to this point and this episode crossed that off their list because god forbid the president have a child that doesn't make his blood boil.

And what was the point of Josh pursuing the judge appointment thing this entire episode only for Leo to be all "Never mind that shit..." and basically tell Josh to put it on the back burner because a Supreme Court Justice passed away. For the most part, everything before the Justice passing was for naught and has really no consequence to the rest of the show. They found a way to put muppets on the show and have me not care in the slightest.

A good president holds out for kermit.