The Great West Wing Rewatch: 6.21 "Things Fall Apart"

Joel: This show has a strange love/hate relationship with space exploration that I can’t help but focus on every time NASA or anything space related is a topic on the show. The West Wing seems to swing back and forth on the appeal of NASA depending on what works best for the episode at hand. We have Sam’s famous “because it’s what’s next” bit from early on in the series, but later on we have an asteroid threatening all life on earth that seems to come out of nowhere because NASA missed it. We also have satellites crashing and Josh telling NASA that they’re simply not worth much funding because they’re not interesting and make too many mistakes. And with that particular Josh storyline, we get a lot of good talk about space exploration, and Josh seems to learn the error of his attitude, but nothing ever comes of that. And then there’s this storyline. And it’s a big one as the fallout here has a major impact that lasts well into the next season. We have the International Space Station developing a leak and three crew members who need to be rescued quickly as they are rapidly running out of oxygen. I understand that the main point of having this storyline is the long reaching consequences down the road, but it bothers me that the path to accomplishing this is to make NASA look like an incompetent, badly managed organization.

In real life there are many more options and fail safes than the ones discussed here. For example according to NASA’s website, a Russian Soyuz space capsule is docked at the ISS at all times to serve as a sort of lifeboat in case of emergency. And it just happens to be able to transport up to three astronauts, the exact number that were trapped in this episode.  And even if astronauts were trapped on the ISS, unmanned flights to the ISS are also made several times a year. While these may not be able to rescue the astronauts, it’s possible that they could bring oxygen to the ISS buying more time for a solution to be found. I just wish that they hadn’t worked to make NASA look as bad as it comes across here in order to jump to the secret military option.

Oh, and they also started the DNC in this episode, but since that goes over two parts, I’m saving reactions to the convention storyline for the next recap.

Chris: It's interesting to see exactly what the cause was for Santos not taking the Vice President offer from Russell and how closely it resembles dumb pride, which is exactly what it was. It all came down to Russell being a tad too smug in their one-on-one meeting especially since everyone in that room knew that Santos is the superior politician and Russell has his position and lead because he was the VP nomination that didn't rattle the Republican cage. Had Russell reeled in the attitude a little bit, Santos would've caved but we wouldn't have the televised car crash that will be the next episode.

This episode is essentially the part one season finale since the next episode is 100% taken up by the convention, so a lot of the other storylines that lead into next season are set up here. One of which is Bartlet's awkward run-in with Charlie, something I'm surprised didn't happen much sooner. Finally there's the secret spaceship leak which will be a huge catalyst that will affect the show up until the final episode.

A good president should always assume Charlie is going to marry their daughter.