The Great West Wing Rewatch: 1.8 "Enemies"
Joel: I want to go back a second to the moment in episode four where Leo says that his job is more important than his marriage. It doesn’t matter if you agree with Leo about that or not, the point is that to Leo, and the rest of the people on the show, for these eight years their job is the most important thing that they could do. And I think that’s a good thing. These are the type of people that you want in charge of the country. America doesn’t close at five, so sometimes people need to stay late. But it can be complicated. Take this episode for instance. It isn’t just Leo and his wife who are affected by his job. To Mallory, working at the White House is what ended her parent’s marriage. And it can be hard to understand that. And it can’t be fixed simply by Leo saying that this is the way it is. What I love about this little ploy is how relatively harmless it is. Nobody was hurt or offended, and at the end of the day Mallory gains a better understanding of how the jobs i...