Chris: Being on the campaign trail for this long, it's understandable that it takes it's toll on the candidates but it never would've crossed my mind the toll it would take on your hand from all the handshaking. And to follow up on what I said about the Santos campaign being unable to capitalize on their momentum, we get it again when Santos goes full force in California at the last minute only for Vinick to come up with a strategy that steals from Santos' California media day. Again, this is of no fault of anyone in the Santos campaign and it's not even from bad luck, it's due to Vinick making a good chess move to stop the momentum leak had been experiencing and find a way to move beyond the nuclear leak. Also, with the briefcase, the scandal that Bruno stumbles upon sets up the entire episode to make the audience see Santos is a different, negative light only for it to backfire and cause the audience to see Vinick in a negative light for making the assumption. Yes, Vinick did the morally right thing as to not jump to assumptions and leak the information without knowing the full stories but an assumption was still made when he probably just should've given the briefcase to secret service as he was originally going to do.
Joel: This was an interesting little morality play to show up in the middle of the season. Not that I didn’t enjoy it, it was a good episode, but it seems to come out of nowhere. The setup here is that Bruno has accidentally gotten a hold of a briefcase that belonged to Matt Santos. It was an accident, but it reveals some information about Santos that could potentially swing the election. Now Vinick has to decide what to do with the information that he has. It’s a really good setup. Vinick is unexpectedly down after having been leading the whole race. This new uncertainty isn’t the result of anything that Vinick did, or any misstep on the part of his campaign. Leaking the information about Santos, it could be argued, wouldn’t be anything more than re-leveling the playing field. After all, there wasn’t an malicious intent, or even a plan to get a hold of the Santos briefcase or the information within. It literally fell into their lap. Bruno also makes an argument that this is information that the voters have a right to know. That if this comes out after the election then everyone’s in trouble because it’s hard for a president to make an impact when he’s trying to keep his head above water in scandal. Bruno argues that using the information is not only the right thing to do for the campaign, but the right thing to do as a duty to the American public, and it’s not an unconvincing argument. Ultimately, Vinick gives the briefcase back to Santos, though he warns him about the incriminating evidence in the suitcase. It’s a bit of an awkward spot to end the episode, because we get very little fallout on the Santos side of the story, but this was a Vinick themed episode, and ultimately the point was to remind us of the type of man that Vinick is.
I also want to make a mention of the “talk till they drop” speech that Vinick gave. I know it was specifically about the Nuclear plant in this case, but it was an open field for questions from the reporters who could have asked anything they wanted. Can you imagine if this kind of thing were to happen in real life? Two weeks before the election, both candidates had to take questions until the reporters were done, not the candidates. Just one of the many West Wing things that I would love to see in real life.
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