Toby didnt "own" the senator. This episode is part of an arc where Bartlette is running against his own principles because he thinks it will win over "moderates". Toby is angry because he agrees with the seantor. He saying Bartlette is the leader of the party as much to justify his own actions as to tell off the Senator. Eventually we see Bartlette reverse this and embrace himself fully. Its a brilliant writting that ties the season together.
“Come at us from the Left, and I’m going to own your ass.” Why is there a flaw in your Left flank for someone to breach? You should’ve been there already, Toby. I thought you were supposed to be the most Leftwing member of the President’s groupies. And, also, if the leader of a party betrays that party, then the other members should call him out.
I wish Ed had been cast in more episodes; his character was the 'truest' liberal in the show. Not to say Toby wasn't. Hell, Toby was the heartiest liberal by far. But his character's attempts to compromise (govern) always was half-hearted and met with stiff resistance that he never really tried to fight. Leo and the President were 1st generation Neo-Liberals, with Josh being an up-and-coming 2nd generation Neo-Liberal and Sam being a liberal in social issues and tepidly at best. This is my opinion after watching the show repeatedly for two decades. That said, I've deciphered the characterization of each character in the show and each other. The President is the father. Leo is the President's best friend. Josh, the President's oldest son. Charlie, his adopted youngest son. Toby, his little brother. C.J. is Leo's adopted daughter and the President's god-daughter. Donna, his daughter-in-law. The Surgeon General is the President's ex-girlfriend. Leo's sister, the "hippie aunt." Lord John, the "creepy uncle." Miss Fiderer, the President's crazy cousin. Mrs. Langingham, the President's big sister. Adm. Fitzwallace, the President's old high school coach. Ron Butterfield, the local mailman. Margaret, the neighborhood "cat lady." The Speaker of the House, a former 'snoty boyfriend" of the President's daughter. Dr. Bartlet is "Lady Macbeth". Mallory is a shiny reflection of Lady Macbeth. Ellie, the shiny reflection of the President. And Zoey is just Zoey. Thankfully there were no dogs.
It's funny to see young people on RU-vid thinking Toby Ziegler owned some far left Senator when this sort of thing will bite you all in the ass when you're at retirement age.
Are there actors that are better at playing complete d-bags than Ed Begley, Jr.? If there are, I'm not aware of them. He's so good at it, it makes one question where the line between acting and reality lies. Richard Schiff, as always, is an absolute beast. Any scene he's in, I'm just waiting for him to eat the other actors' lunches for them.
Toby is looking right through him here. I guess injecting yourself with all chemicals known to man finally paid off! ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-hSQWyx26FnY.html
Some of the early seasons of "The West Wing" was very good writing. This was back when Sorkin did not go full Hollywood libtard and had the confidence to show that sometimes being intelligent responsible adults means you have to have disagreements with people on "your own side" of the political spectrum. This is what made the scenes compelling, you really had to keep thinking about what you just saw and have ongoing debates about who was right and wrong and there was a lot of nuance. Fast forward to "The Newsroom" and Sorkin lost that ability or desire to have nuanced debate and dialogue. The "bad" people were clearly delineated as blond hair, blue-suited middled aged men with essentially a "hi! I'm a Republlican" name tag coming off the screen. These "bad" conservatives would spout off very clear bigotry or hate for the hero liberal to smack down. These later Sorkin scenes had all the nuance, intelligence, and suspense as a STeven Seagal bar room fight. Just set up the dumb bad guys for the hero to knock down.
Sad because I, as a lifelong Republican and even as one of those dreaded Trump voters, think one of the smartest TV lines I ever heard was from Sorkin, a lifelong democrat. From Sports Night, Isaac told Jeremy "If you're dumb, surround yourself with smart people. And if you're smart, surround yourself with smart people who disagree with you." Raising the level of debate, and pushing each other to do better makes us all better. Sitting in an echo chamber makes us all drones.
I knew odin from god of war seemed familiar. Had to look this up and no wonder. Haven’t seen this show in 13 years and I remember this actor from a videogame character which is wild
It is interesting (and sad) that 25 years later liberal issues discussed in The West Wing, are still only being discussed - such as the future of social security, the cost of college education, the cost of drugs and healthcare. Even the risks of pandemics were touched on in the series.
@@tomblah If its Toby then he's also the Scientist that questions superman when Supes pretends to get arrested, if its the other guy he is in young sheldon as one of the physcis professors and in the female Ghostbusters movie. I really don't know why neither of these guys are hired for comedy, think Robin Williams serious to comedy and back movies but with more weight and less comedic genius...Nanu nanu.
"You don't think I won't publicly condem a member of my party"... If democrat's stop eating their own, they would win more. Something that republicans' figured out long ago but the democrats still haven't. Rashida Tlaib's response to the State of the Union speech by her own party is the latest example.
Huh. Watching this clip help crystallize what's always bothered me about the WW. There's plenty of smart and snappy dialogue and the President is likeable and says the right things. But, in the end, they are just middle of the road corporate democrats. Right here - Toby doesn't even deny that they are moving to the right on the environment, they are considering options to "reform" (meaning privatize or reduce benefits on) Social Security and they are on the wrong side of police brutality. They can have all of the smart dialogue and interesting characters they want, but the are middle of the road on so many issues. Another great example is the Ainsley character. Very likeable, but they go out of their way to support her conservative ideas in so many scenes, it's hard to really understand what the Bartlet administration really stands for beyond the president being a "good man". I mean there's also the entire thing where Josh pushes for allowing the republicans in Congress to get a supreme court nominee so they can have theirs and have a balanced court. In some kind of theoretical world that might be a good idea, but in the real world where the next conservative president is going to nominate all conservative judges, how is that a good idea?
@@mja91352 People in the White House behave and speak like people everywhere behave and speak, and nobody behaves or speaks like TV characters. As for entertainment, I said the show was cute, so it was entertaining on an elementary level. But it was pure fantasy, especially now that a doddering old Alzheimers patient is in the Offal Office. surrounded by those dweebs in his administration. I wonder if it's Kumzwala or somebody else who's telling mumblin' Joe what he can and can't do. Somebody else is definitely running things there, because Joe ain't doin' it. I can just imagine what would have happened if anybody had dared to tell Trump he couldn't take questions from reporters, or anything else like that. Our current President absolutely has a boss.
130 degrees in Death Valley today. Would have been nice if we listened to some of those "crazy environmentalists" 20 years ago. And it would be nice if my retirement age was the old 65 instead of 67. But at least Toby got the "cops beating a black guy" problem solved through his bipartisan work.
How so? It seemed to me like very little of what Toby was saying was actual policy positions so much as pointing out the problems with the Senator's arguments
@@gcharlton7895 I remember in the 1970's watching a debate about gun control where one person was advocating for the complete elimination of private ownership of handguns, and the other person dismissed it as an impossible, unworkable pipedream, saying it would take fifty years to get all the private handguns out of circulation. Well, that was fifty years ago. What would things be like today if they'd tried?
@@gcharlton7895 The president of the United States just turned 80. The average age of Congress is 60. It's not surprising that Washington would think 67 instead of 65 is a reasonable increase in the retirement age. As for the "crazy environmentalists" Toby was worried about, he was specifically talking about people who'd blown up a ski resort. TWW is a show that's very much in favor of listening to environmentalists. They did a whole episode about a glacier melting, for pity's sake. It's definitely troublesome that they created a storyline where a cop was found innocent of beating up a black kid (apparently, the kid broke his leg *before* the cop found him). But, in the same episode where they admonish environmental terrorism, they also have a black comedian call them out for not having his back when he told a joke about white cops. It's not like they get away clean with everything. The show takes more shots at the Democratic Party from the Left than it does from the Right.
why the Dems fail--they try to make friends out of idealogues who always will see them as the enemy. the result tends to be the lost opportunities that folks spot easily as the reason Dems fail.
With friends like this, who needs anemones. Yes, and with Democrats that defend cops beating innocent black kids, screwing with social security and failing to back reasonable climate change policies, who needs Republicans?
@@DavidHeffron78 The persistent insistence on gutting social security was insane, but so was the rest of this schmaltzy yet condescending alternate present that liberals, to this day, substitute for reality. Naturally, every country that we gave West Wing box sets to had its government engage in genocidal war against their public, and government by West Wing fans will see death camps opened on American soil because these morons hate the public and love Republicans.
And 15 years later in the real world, it turns out the Senator was right. Moderation and Republican appeasement became a deathly cancer for the Democrat party and the entire country/world for that matter.
