Irrelevant But Awesome

Joel:   The Nightmare Scenario speech. I’m not a parent (nor am I the president) and I still get stressed out just thinking about the nightmare scenario speech. I can’t imagine what it must be like to be a parent and know that your child is not only in a fair amount of danger on the daily, but that the danger is directly related to you and your job. Obviously more about this will be addressed in an upcoming season, but for now, just the speech itself is enough to stress me out. The other big moment from this episode is Mr. Willis casting a vote in place of his wife. So much of the show is about beating the other side. Yes, the show does talk about the issues and how one political party is either for or against the issues and why, but there is still a very heavy amount of republicans vs. democrats talk throughout The West Wing, just as I am sure there is in real life. What really resonates from this storyline is a character who casts a vote not because it is best for party, b...

Joel:  There is a recurring feeling you get when watching this show. Every couple of episodes a thought will pass through your mind as you watch the events of the show unfold. A thought that is always the same. That thought is “Boy, am I glad that I’m not the president.” This episode picks up pretty much where the previous one left off with Bartlett and company having to deal with the fallout of the deaths of 58 US military healthcare workers that we learned about at the end of the previous episode. We have seen the respect that the office of the president holds but this is the first time we see the potential power of it as well. We an entire table full of we educated men with years of military experience come up what an appropriate response and we see that all can be changed just because the president says “No, do it this way.” This isn’t even close to the hardest decision that Bartlett will have to deal with in the show. The show makes it very clear that in this case the...