Irrelevant But Awesome

Joel:  This is what it’s all been leading up to. For the past season and a half, we’ve been largely focused on the election, so when the election day is finally upon us, it’s a pretty big deal. On one hand, of course the election plot is going to be two episodes long, it’s the biggest storyline since Bartlet got elected for a second term. On the other hand, election day for the most part seems like it’s going to be people sitting and watching the news all day, and you have to wonder how that gets stretched into two hours worth of content. Well they successfully make that stretch. Honestly I feel like there was a storyline that never fully developed here. For much of the first episode we have Josh and Bruno each talking about how the numbers aren’t adding up right while everyone else takes the numbers at face value. Josh and Bruno are supposed to be the smartest guys in their respective rooms, so it felt like this was all leading up to a big reveal, of something that had bee...

Joel:  The Hoynes storyline in this episode is upsetting. Not for the character himself, but because it shows a reality of Washington. The Presidential election cycle just ended. It’s going to be four years before another election is held. We are literally as far away from a Presidential election as we can get, and yet for Hoynes (and I’m sure several other people in Washington) it’s time to start campaigning all over again. Sure it’s not the “Vote for me,” on the road type of campaigning we see during the actual year of an election, but make no mistake, it’s still campaigning. I remember being a kid and thinking that four years was forever (mind you, I was six at the time so it was two thirds of my lifetime) and surely we needed to hold elections at least every year. But now, it seems like half of the first four years is focused on getting the second four years. And even then, some of the second four years is focused on the making sure the next guy is from the same party. A...