The Great West Wing Rewatch: 6.5 "The Hubbert Peak"

Joel: The first part of season six is filled with echoes of the early episodes of West Wing. These guys have been through so much lately, from Zoey getting kidnapped, to Leo having a heart attack, and all the political beatdowns they’ve received in between, you almost forget what those early storylines were like. And then, we get almost a perfect turn around back to the characters and stories we were getting way back in season one.
Josh is probably the smartest guy in the room 95% of the time, but he can’t prevent his initial instincts from getting in the way of his better judgement. Echoing Josh’s previous run in with the internet earlier in the series Josh relies on his own brilliance to get him out of a situation, only to end up making everything worse. Toby, also feels like the Toby of old, forced to brief the press in CJ’s absence, we get the Toby of early seasons, the one who is constantly frustrated that people won’t just shut up and do as he says since he is so clearly right about everything all the time. We even get a tease of Charlie and Zoey’s relationship from the early seasons with Charlie asking her out on a date. I think it’s clear here the the writers saw what worked, and more importantly what didn’t work, with the fifth season and are taking proper steps to course correct. The West Wing was never bad exactly, but this is a definite sign of an upswing in quality as we head into the two final seasons.

Chris: This reminds me of an episode from the previous season where the work Josh was doing the entire episode was thrown out by the end of the episode, making us feel like those were wasted scenes. That happened again with Josh as he was trying to clear up this energy situation he found himself in while ultimately the meetings led to nothing and the president basically says as much by the end saying that the solution won't be made in a 20 minute discussion. Perhaps that's the whole problem with the energy crisis and oil dependency, there's not a quick solution that doesn't have either similar drawbacks or new drawbacks that might be more environmental damage. However, if there were a solution, I have a feeling a television show probably wouldn't have the ultimate solve in all of it.

A good president kicks out his personal assistance for graduating college.