The Worst Wing

Leo returns to the White House and employs himself in very Serious Old Man Ways such as puttering, attempting to garner attention from younger people with more power than him, and watching VHS tapes. Remember VHS, kids? We take brief breaks from the TV cart that was rolled into 7th grade science class to examine Sorkin Sexism as prosecuted by female characters against other female characters. Pee...

We're goin on location in New Hampshire, the state that's Important For Some Reason! Josh and Matt Santos HIT THE TRAIL, the campaign trail that is! And mill about bouncing their personalities off of one another as they try to get this, heh, "single digit spoiler" campaign off the ground. There's an I N C R E D I B L E phone call, a perfect phone call, that me, I made, in the middle of the episode...

Ha ha great descriptor of the administration's COVID protocols in 2022! Occasionally we see an episode of this show that is just SO alien in even its premises that we have to kinda go "Really?" and this is one of them. What if... CJ Cregg... were (wait for it, go with me here) a lesbian? Because she played sports!! DON'T YOU SEE?? SHE'S TALL! A real artifact of the times, not because of the basele...

I would simply not diplomatic meeting myself to death. Of course, my name isn't Josiah Edward "Jed" Bartlet, President Of The Universe and ultimate Liberal God-Emperor. Continuing down the China Summit storyline we have some more racism, some more horrible tailoring, and a strange unifying thread of unilateral actions fracturing the ol' White House team. Also a Don't Look Up style manufactured cri...

When are they gonna get to the DIPLOMACY FACTORY?? Super guest star power drives this episode home: we have the introduction of Arnold Vinick, soon-to-be primary challenger. We have Zoey's birthday party entertainment making hamfisted free speech arguments. And I guess also the surgeon general? Is back. Typical policy-blob chauvinism is about the worst of the politics this episode digs into becaus...

When reached for comment, white house communications director Toby Ziegler, recently in hot water for his collar-tuggingly awkward press room flops, just sorta racistly rattled off the following statement: "China BAD, Asian food WEIRD, politics DUMB, these BROADS AM I RIGHT, protocol CORRECT" James Taylor is the most bland, tepid, plain icemilk choice for a superstar guest on the show. In classic...

Is Delaware even a thing? Has anyone... been to Delaware? Who is Senator Chris "C**ns" Coons? Why are there now TWO government grandpas from there? How?? The reference Stu makes out the gate is to the following tweet: https://twitter.com/ManuclearBomb/status/1487483303745708040 Anyway this episode is about the fallout of the first American casualties of the fragile peace process that the administr...

It's Josh Versus The Internet Round Two: FIGHT A bit of a scattershot episode today that completely enwrongulates the concept of fossil fuel reliance in a globalized marketplace. Tropes about fart-sniffing liberals in the alternative energy industry abound! CJ is getting used to her job, Charlie is given a BUNCH of stuff that is cool because I guess he of all the characters deserve it? Anyway Phan...

Greetings from the plaguelands. We're back and it's fuckin time for CJ to get her DUE because she's been working her ass off get it girl hashtag werk hashtag girlboss!! anyway this was a pretty good episode as far as things go because we get the cast shaken up quite a bit with guest/recurring stars. Also no politics to speak of really. Music by Deer Tick because COVID'S OVER BABY LMAO GO GET UR AI...

Welcome to Season 6, wow we're really screamin now. We'll eventually pare it back down to one episode per session but the first THREE eps of this season are a complete arc culminating in, surprise, a peace accord between Isra*l and Pal*stine (let's keep this on the DL), and Leo handing off the chief of staff role to CJ. We have little left to say regarding the political stance the show takes on I/...

We're bringing season five to a close (finally!) with a bang (literally!). A huge mess of orthodox Israel/Palestine takes, with a great guest appearance by Jason Isaacs, hubba hubba woof woof awooooga. Emma, if she listened to our show, would never forgive me for conflating ID4 with Armageddon. Fitz dies, Donna does not, and we set ourselves firmly on a track where Leo is losing his grip on the Pr...

We're back to our S5 format: two episodes of... well one episode of utterly puerile naivete regarding the economic orthodoxy that's literally killing your constituency, and one episode of tense as hell cool fuckin thriller-ass bioterrorism interjection. In "Talking Points" we have a lot of shit swirling around CJ and Josh with regards to a trade deal. The Prez is captive to Von Mises. In "No Exit"...

the ultimate masturbatory narcissistic episode Of this fucking show. You should 100% not watch this garbage, it's insanely bad. you SHOULD watch and cackle crack-pingedly at this clip from one of the most-watched CURRENT television disasters: https://twitter.com/LiveOnTheChat/status/1441423559516213248?s=20 *walt voice* we, are going, to die music from spoon and modest mouse because I'm too fukkin...

We made it! After literally almost exactly 3 years (we first published on August 18, 2018) we have arrived at Emma's favorite episode. And true to her promise then, she joined us to chat about the powerful fantasy that this episode promotes. To this episode's credit: It's narratively focused, well-written, powered by insanely good guest stars including Glenn Close, the literal legend who the produ...

This has all happened before, and it will all happen again. It's time to be a racist! It's time to hem and haw. It's time to cram the show full of the neoliberals' flaws It's time for Jon Podhoretz (again) It's time for DeeDee Myers It's time for awkward CJ putting out the admin's fires. This is what we call the ELMOSOOOOODE

A tremendously JPod-tainted international incident threatens the world stage with a NEW nuclear power! Made up buzzwords like "NuDet" (lmao) sell the drama alongside heavy-handed racist stereotypes of the Islamic world. And then... whoopsy doodle, the Vice President deus ex machinas the entire conceit! The second episode is about how baby-brained, open-mouth gaping, blinkered and broken, fundament...

Blazing through this season like a wildfire through British Columbia, we're tackling another two episodes in quick succession. Gabby Union makes a spectacular guest appearance not as an East Compton Clover but as a reporter that Charlie screeches from 60 to 0 with for... utterly banal and stupid reasons. It's GABRIELLE. UNION. CHARLIE! The second episode intones the solemn Fixing of Social Securit...

Now we're really cranking through this shit: another twofer today because there just isn't really enough to talk about in any particular episode any more. Even though there is a LOT of content? In each one. Assisted suicide sets up a federalism crisis, which is not nearly as funny as the "Civil War was about industry" takes in the second episode. Ex-president Reagan Stand-in dies. A bunch of blink...

Ooh a cliffhanger! Know what communicates that to the audience? Overwrought horribly campy sound effects! We have a ginned up crisis created out of whole cloth by Republican intransigence (surprise!) that is handled by the administration's gumption and willingness to compromise everything they claim to believe in (also surprise!). The chief justice of the supreme court is going gaga as well. This...

The only Disaster that needs Relieving is the script and acting and filming of this episode! It's bad folks, I dunno there's a tornado, and a Greek/Albanian conflict. Also you've got Locke as the new Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Don't watch this episode and if you have already well I imagine there's drugs enough to drive it out of your brain. Greensky Bluegrass does the one song.

Life imitates art in this episode as we have Tom Skerritt playing an Arlen Specter-alike except switching parties the Bad Way, presaging Specter's move by almost 5 years! A discussion ensues of the relative pros/cons of this party flipflop... and whether it really matters nowadays. Some other things occur and mostly it's just miserable sacrifices of characters on the altar of convenience depending...

Turning some racism dials with the least likely character to indulge in it, the writers bring a bit of Orientalist flair back to the West Wing as they deal with a "crisis" involving a North Korean defector. Josh and Amy somehow absolutely refuse to just Fuck, Donna has cheesehead relatives, Bartlet actually errs on the correct side of stimulative spending, and we all go to bed in a fake world wher...

This is a scattered entry in the show's canon that's sort of transitional, even more so than the wrap-up of the cliffhanger from last season. We are introduced to the nominal New Villain, Jeff Haffley. We are shown rather hamhandedly how Zoe is still traumatized and working through her recovery. We have to select a new vice president and Bartlet just fuckin hates the guy. It's bad folks! There's a...

Already noting a precipitous decline in quality, the crew is really putting in work to get the show back to at least a baseline of "Sorkin didn't dump this steamy loaf in our lap out of spite". Wrapping up plotlines left and right, maundering through drawn-out conversations that go nowhere... perhaps next week we'll be able to start fresh and the show can regain a bit of the pffahahahaha Music is...

Launching season five, it's the post-Sorkin years! Off to a blazing start as the Evil Bad Red Team takes the driver's seat of the presidency, profaning our sacred Decorum with things like "being honest" and "having a coherent ideology". I'm gonna be honest if my spouse was contemplating extrajudicial murder as an avenue of international imperial diplomacy I would NOT want to hear about it? But Abb...