Even though Aaron Sorkin was no longer writing these episodes, and people seem to put them down, I still enjoyed the West Wing to the very last episode, and wished it could have continued.
Season 5 was awful, when the writers were still trying to find their footing after Sorkin's departure. Season 6 and 7 were an improvement, but it also became a different show. A good show, but a different show all the same. IMO, it was never as good as it was in the first four seasons. And I still can't justify what they did with Toby.
They did a good job with the overall story arc, but the dialog was horrible. Josh had a couple seconds there that could have passed as Sorkin, but the majority of the last seasons, the dialog was crap.
This is one of my favourite Josh-scenes. Lots of scripts have him joking around, but the scenes where he singlehandedly puts an end to the shutdown and this one are my favourites. Being deadserious and making decisions that alter the timeline.
This was the moment Leo was preparing Josh for. All this time Josh was always going to become Leo. And like most people, Leo knew this day was coming but when it came it is incredibly hard. John mana
This is for everyone who's ever said a candidate needs to "wait their turn", that they "don't have enough experience", that they should "come back in a few years and let the grown ups run things for now". Elections are about the *right* candidate, not the candidate with the right resumé.
sadly in the relatively recent past we had the right candidate, we had the experience, we just had an electorate that didn't care. We had a candidate who had spent 8 years in the White House as a first lady, who fully understood the role of the President, who also was a senator for 6 years and understood the role of a legislature, and who was Secretary of State and understood the role of being a diplomat.... And yet as a country we voted a reality host con artist who understood none of this. And in 3 years has managed to destroy this country...
You must also not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Remembering that democracies are coalitions and you will never 100% align with any candidate.
0:52 its like Leo is saying "you are going to do this for ME...LEO MCGARRY....your mentor, the man you WANT to be, the guy in the hole who pulled you out"
So they had a disagreement, what's the big deal? At some point Josh needed to grow out of Leo's shadow. Furthermore, Josh's stand in Santos's support was pretty much evocative of what Leo did back in the day when Bartlet ran for president the first and the second time despite the immense opposition. People talk about this scene as if this is how the entire show ended. Do you recall that Josh lined up Leo for VC an episode later? Have you seen him in the episodes that followed Leo's death? This is not crappy writing as some viewers might say. The characters needed to develop at some point, like people do in real life. If Sorkin had written the seasons that followed the forth, I bet we would have witnessed the same amount of change, not necessarily in the same way.
I absolutely agree. Bartlet said that Josh never wanted to be the guy, he wanted to be the guy the guy counted on. And now, Josh is playing that role for Santos instead of Leo.
I think at this point no one thought a democrat could win. Vinnick was too strong and had California. Nobody thought Bingo Bob or Haynes had a chance, and they'd been VP. This unknown Congressman from Houston wasn't going to beat a gigantic senator from California. So they wanted to put the most respectable candidate up there they could, have him lose, and get ready to fight four years later.
Why? It was the only way to tell the Democratic establishment that Bartlets policies would be extended, not halted. As Barry (the bigsized lawyer) told Leo in the legal meeting: 'how much we all are comforted by your presence on the ticket'. Santos was seen as a bit of a rogue candidate, despite Josh handling his campaign and platform.
@@seanwebb605 Fair enough, but Leo was a recovering drug addict and alcoholic who had major health issues. He was a terrible pick. I consider this plot twist of Leo being Santos' running mate to be The West Wing's 'jump the shark' moment. It just doesn't make any sense at all.
People get old, change. Leo's priorities shifted to protecting his friend Bartlet's legacy. But like Bartlet said, he and Leo are the past. Josh is the future.
I love this scene, you can see the blood drain from Leo and the power move to Josh at 1:04. I did find it rather odd however how Leo was appointed running mate later that episode (or was it the next one?) Overall though I thought the last two seasons were excellent.
I don't agree with the people who say that the writing is crap. A storyline can go any which way it will. The West Wing Producers could have coddled the public and continued giving us "happy fun time" but that's not how things work in life. Leo's dark side showing only serves to prove his leadership skills. His job is to protect the Presidency, The White House, and The Party. Josh's job is to advise The President, and The President's job is to take all the advice given him and make a decision.
A lot of people have criticized this scene, but it is a continuation of the struggle threw out the entire show as the staff struggle between politics and there morals. Leo is doing what he thinks is best for the party, not what is best.
@@Ares99999 Josh lived for Leo... ( _"You're not willing to toss it overboard to win. You're willing to toss it overboard to avoid disappointing Leo..."_ ). But he finally stepped out of his shadow and defied him (and the President) because in Santos he saw the next President.
Get fucking real, bro. Start the clock in May 2015, and put the establishment Democratic Party in the unbiased column - and I don't just mean the politicians, but the news media and big corporate party backers as well - then tell me that she wins. CNN, MSNBC, all the establishment national media were covering Hillary Clinton like she was the best Democratic politician since Kennedy. The money invested in them demanded it. From the moment he announced until the moment he dropped out, Sanders was being covered in the media a minute fraction of the time Clinton was. Everything was lined up for HRC before the primaries even started. There's no fucking way she wins that primary if the entire Democratic Party establishment didn't make it so. Bernie was fucked over more than any progressive since Henry Wallace.
@@charlietu 3 years late but I applaud for being real. People really hype up Bernie's run like he was the choice of the people. The people didnt want him and he isnt even a democrat so no suprise the DNC didnt want him either.
I was always a little upset with Leo - and even Bartlett - for this. They're retreating to the safe option out of fear regardless of whether it's the best option while Josh fights for a principle.
People blame the problems with West Wing on the loss of Sorkin. But remember that Sorkin initiated all the sappy episodes about the travails of Zoey, including her improbable romance with Charlie that led to an assassination attempt, and the idiotic kidnapping that initiated a constitutional crisis.The storylines were idealistic and sloppily sentimental (which Sorkin admits), and in no way were they the realistic political drama that people seem to want to "remember."
Sorkin's episodes were more poetic fantasy than realistic, which is really what made them engaging. The show became more realistic after he left, and it also became more stale and boring. In the post 9/11 political climate, the writers seemed to become more interested in being politically relevant than they were in writing engaging stories, or in bringing the funny, for that matter.
I think The West Wing lost it's premise way early when the Bartlett character became the focus. I think it might have worked better in the long run if Bartlett was the day player he was meant to be. It became more The Oval Office than The West Wing; I think Sheen liked being POTUS way too much.
Then why did both CJ and later Josh keep a WWLD (What Would Leo Do) paper to keep themselves focused as Chief of Staff? This might have been Josh's moment, but Leo always remained his ideal. And, I'll be honest, Josh never reached Leo's level during the series.
@cliverdum I'd heard that. Something about not wanting the season to go out on such a depressing note. Personally though...I never cared for Santos as a character. I thought he was dull. I kind of wish they would have had Josh running Vinick's campaign. Alda made that character one of the all time high notes of the post Sorkin era West Wing.
I love this scene, and I loved this series. I've watched all of it, although not in the original network run, with the 18 minutes of commercials for 42 minutes of programming. It was really entertaining television. It stood out from the network schlock, but it was still just entertainment. It was not the great drama that so many believe that it was. It had all those irritating melodramatic season finale cliffhangers for example, and the later episodes were only mediocre at best.
I always thought that the premise of Leo McGarry being a Vice-Presidential candidate was simply ridiculous. The guy was too old, he had already had one heart attack, and he had a documented drug and alcohol problem. The fact that John Spencer actually died and took Leo McGarry with him just got the writers out of a hole that they should never have dug for themselves.
In-universe, Leo McGarry was about 58 at the time of the Santos/Vinnick campaign (2006)- making him 2 years younger than John Spencer. So, not remotely too old. This makes him about the same age as Dick Cheney was when he ran for and won VP. Cheney had already had 3 heart attacks before he ran for VP. The man he ran with George W. Bush, had serious problems with alcohol and gave up drinking, although he never admitted to being an alcoholic. So, tl;dr- you're wrong.
@jimbobjimminy I still liked the show after Sorkin's departure, but you have a point. Quality went down somehow, and some storylines were just plain ridiculous.
Leo was wrong and that is rare and look who won and who ended up on the ticket as VP. But it was heartbreaking, like Josh disobeyed his father or something, when Leo walks to the door you could see how that was hard on Josh.
@katcot947 You know, I think this was Leo being selfish. He wanted to protect Bartlett's legacy. A unified ticket was the best way to beat Vinick in his view, and in order for all the work he and Barlett did to remain intact, they needed the Dems to win. So Leo sold out all his principals and integrity because he didn't care about the next 8 years, he just wanted the 8 he had worked on to not get undone by Vinick. He probably figured they could manage Russell until someone better came along.
Josh might have been smarter, but Leo was more experienced and taught him everything he knows. To you its not worth respect and admiration? To me and most people, it is. Don't say crap like 'undeserved'.
@Julie AS He got caught doing heroin, and at the same time he was fighting Times Warner management who wanted the show to go somewhere else than where Sorkin intended, after the fallout both Aaron Sorkin and Rob Lowe left the show until season 7.
I agree that the writing may not have been as good after Sorkin left but if you listen to his last commentaries from season 4 he did leave a road map; Josh and Donna being one of them. I didn't like where they took Toby but there were still some good moments during the last 3 seasons. The loss of John Spencer most probably altered the course of the better part of season 7 but it still remained one of the better series, ever.
Leo (in Season 1-4) would never talk like this. Leo, here, is combative with his own agenda and unsupportive of an idealist candidate. The exact opposite of how Sorkin wrote Leo.
To be fair.. Leo had gone through a lot at this point... A heart attack... A severe split with Bartlet on matters of foreign policy that drove a wedge between Bartlet and himself.. and ultimately losing his Chief of Staff job... He was not the same guy.
@katcot947 This is yet another example of crappy writing after Sorkin's departure and the new writers not understanding the characters. After S4 they all started acting completely out of character, like Leo in this scene. He would never have acted this way in S1-4.
This scene always bothered me. Leo wants Santos to drop out of the race for the good of the party. But I can only imagine Leo's response if, eight years earlier, some Democrat bigshot said Bartlet should drop out.
The power went from Leo to Josh? Are you kidding? Santos practically fired Josh and left it up to Leo to deliver the news. They wanted Leo to act as both VP candidate and de facto campaign manager. Down the stretch Josh Lyman drowned under the weight of the responsibility of a campaign manager and was second guessing himself at the electoral map wondering where to cut back funding and where to increase it. It’s by the good graces of Leo Mcgarry that Josh still had a job in politics remembering that Bartlett actually ordered Leo to fire Josh for mouthing off to Mary Marsh in the pilot episode saying her God “should be indicted for tax fraud.” So that’s TWICE Leo saved Josh’s job and kept this moron in politics. Even the President said to Josh for every one thing you do right you do 10 things wrong. Let’s not talk about losing Senator Kerrick with the military promotions and making him switch parties. I could go on and on. But PLEASE stop saying Josh became Leo! He can’t carry Leo’s briefcase on his best day!
