Irrelevant But Awesome

Joel:  I love the game of chess. I love everything about it, from it’s game design to its history. So even though the trope of chess being used as a parallel to real world strategy is a well worn one, I fall for it every time. It just works for me. I love the visual of the President and Sam discussing important worldly matters over a board game. Even though phrases like “See the whole board.” are pretty generic ones, I get caught up in the moment and it never fails to impress me. If you don’t get the chess thing, I can’t blame you. It shows up a lot and can easily feel overused and shoehorned in. But sorry, I love it every time any show or movie pulls this one out. Side note, I also love that chess is considered to be a high class form of warfare, and the chess episode is the same episode to have a prank war in it, a substantially more low brow type of warfare. (The prank war totally worked for me too, as it’s some of the funniest material that The West Wing has pulled of...