Irrelevant But Awesome

Joel:   It wasn’t as rough as last season’s Christmas episode, but this one still has that oomph to it that you have to take a few days to recover from. After the first handful of episodes at the start of the season, everything seems to have pretty much gone back to normal. There hasn’t been a huge, Josh centered episode since the shooting and recovery, but he’s been around and seems to have been keeping up with everyone else just fine. That is until this episode. We pretty much get the entire story through flashback snippets of the past three weeks. Normally, I would say it’s a bit of a stretch to see someone acting perfectly fine, only to have them acting entirely differently during the one episode where they address the issues, however this particular episode does a fantastic job of that. It helps that we know the content takes place over a period of three weeks, but what really makes it work is the subtle changes in Josh’s demeanor and personality as the show goes along....

Joel:  It is perhaps unfair to WrestleMania VIII, but the show often ends up getting to compared to the WrestleMania that could have been. This was without question the moment in history where we should have had a Hogan vs. Flair main event at WrestleMania. It’s the main event we never got from that era that should have happened. It was clearly on the card at one point, but for whatever happened it didn’t come to fruition. It’s a shame that WrestleMania VIII has become known as the one where a match didn’t happen, because it’s actually been one of the best WrestleManias so far, and that is because of the undercard matches. First of all, I subscribe to the theory that their is only one true main event on a show. This whole co-main event thing doesn’t quite work for me. They really tried to make it feel like there were two main events on this card, with having both “main events” featured on the promotional poster and having two different taglines for the show, one for each mat...

Joel:  Confession time. I love space. I feel like the idea of going to space, and exploring space should be much more in the forefront of the national conscious than it really is. So of course I’m going to have affection for the episode of The West Wing where they talk about exploring Mars and why it’s the right thing to do, not only politically, but as a species as well. I remember the first time hearing Sam talk about why we were going to Mars. If’ you’ll recall, I was still quite young during the first run of The West Wing, it was a show that my mom watched and I watched it because any tv is better than no tv at that age. I remember Sam voicing thoughts and opinions that I didn’t even know that I had. The thought of things that we made here, on this planet, going out and landing on other worlds is something still fills me with a sense of wonder. I stand with the President on this one. There is a right way to say it. Chris: You’re not going to get anyone on this art...

Joel:  Two of my three favorite Thanksgiving moments in the show, and they’re both from the same episode. The first is CJ asking the president to pardon a second turkey. This comes at the end of a storyline where CJ has to choose which of the two turkeys that have been brought to the White House is going to be pardoned, knowing that the other one is going to be eaten. The whole story is about how strangely difficult and bizarre making a choice like that is. It pretty much comes down to a coin flip but one of the turkeys is going to get a long happy life while the other one won’t live to see tomorrow and you have to decide which is which. Yes, they’re just birds and have no idea what’s going on, but still being the one to actually make that call can be harder than expected. And the whole thing ends with a great scene where, you know what? The President’s just going to pardon both of them this time around. There is some fantastic back and forth in this scene with the President...

Joel:  One thing I love about this show is how busy everyone seems all the time. The walking and talking gimmick, used to show that everyone is always on the move, is the biggest example from the show, so much so that it’s one of the tropes most associated with The West Wing. But there are other things as well, and this episode is a prime example. At the start of the episode we learn that the Assistant Energy secretary is going to be taking the trip with everyone for the sole reason of getting a chance to speak with the president on the way back. That’s how slammed full the schedule is. A meeting, that we’re assuming is rather important, (Because what meeting with the president isn’t?) has to be crammed into the schedule by having it on Air Force One while the president is traveling. That’s mind boggling. Meanwhile, back at the White House Josh has a lengthy discussion with a gay congressman from the Republican party about supporting a bill that prohibits same sex marriage...

Joel:  WrestleMania VII was the proud to be an American one. I know that this was in direct response the Gulf War, which was happening at the time, but watching these things pretty much back to back, makes it feel like they are trying to make up for being in Canada last year by doubling down on all of the America this time around. The ring ropes are red, white, and blue. There are American flags EVERYWHERE! Even the poster of the event was a picture of Hulk Hogan waving an American Flag. (Some promotional posters featured a stare-down between Hogan and Slaughter, but even those had an American flag background. At least this time around it feels like there are two big matches instead of just the one main event match that we’ve had for the past handful of WrestleManias. Obviously the show itself cares the most about the Main Event (after all that’s where all the American patriotism is coming from here). It wasn’t terrible but still felt like a bit of a step back from Hogan a...

Joel:  Like WrestleMania V before it, WrestleMania VI is a show that knows how to build and put on a WrestleMania main event, but pretty much does so at the expense of every other match on the card. So much so that by the middle of the card, I was having to check Wikipedia to remind me of the outcome of matches that had happened earlier in the show. Part of the problem was the fact that there were fourteen different matches on the card. But most of it comes from how little attention seems to be given to any of the matches that aren’t the main event. After years of Andre and Bobby Heenan working together, this was the event where Andre finally snapped and turned against Heenan, but I didn’t remember that until rewatching it. This was also (arguably) the event where Mr. Perfect’s undefeated streak was broken, but there was hardly a mention of that either. No, all the show really cared about was the Main Event, the rest of it was just twiddling thumbs until we got to that point...