Irrelevant But Awesome

Joel:  Though he showed up for the first time two episodes ago, this is the first real introduction to Santos, and it’s masterful. We know that Santos is leaving it’s been well established both in the earlier episodes that he appeared, and again at the beginning of this episode. But so far we’ve been told that Santos is a great senator without any real proof presented in the show other than the word of the characters. Now, this is the first time we get to see his political skill in action. Throughout the whole episode, his actions don’t seem to line up with his words, and we’re on the trial with Josh the whole episode long trying to figure out what’s going on. This storyline almost plays like a murder mystery, it gives us all the clues as to what the true motivations of Santos are, and then in the final scene spells out the reasoning for us when we couldn’t figure it out on our own. At the end of the episode Josh tells Santos “You’re too good at this. You can’t just walk away....

Joel:  The scene that really stays with me from this episode is toward the end, where CJ confronts the President after he’s stayed in Oklahoma about a day longer than he should. There’s a lot to unpack in that one scene. First of all, I very much get where The President is coming from here. The glacial pace of government progress can be incredibly frustrating. I’m constantly frustrated by it in real life, and for the most part, I’m just an outside observer. I’ve even gotten frustrated with it on the show. It seems like each episode has an episode long issue that should really be taken care of in ten minutes if everyone would just shut up and listen to the smart people. I get how it feels like he’s finally doing something really helpful instead of sitting in the Oval, signing papers and talking about places a million miles away. At the same time I get where CJ is coming from. It’s easy to call her crass because she’s looking at the political angle on the disaster, but It’s...