"Shutdown"

The president engages in a war of wills with the GOP house speaker (Steven Culp), resulting in a government shutdown; Bartlet seeks to end the fiscal crisis by challenging the Republicans in the halls of the Capitol.

Cast: Martin Sheen, Bradley Whitford, John Spencer, Richard Schiff, Allison Janney, Dule Hill, Janel Moloney, Stockard Channing, Steven Culp.
Producer(s): John Wells.

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From the looks of the preview, we may be in for some unrealistic melodrama tonight.

Let's see if the post-Sorkin team can string together 2 good eps in a row.

Sounds like a US version of UK Prime Minister's Questions from Parliament.

the writers took the easy way out by not showing the rest of hte meeting. it looked like bartlett lost it in there, i figured that was enough for the speaker NOT to back down.

I thought it was good. It was great to see josh calling the shots on strategy again - and winning!

Donna HAS to get a promotion, or thereis no justice.

WTF was the deal with the girl who was cleaning up all episode? What were the writers trying to tell us? Aside from the fact that they have the power to write in cute brunettes wearing really short skirts. (I'm not complaining, mind you.)

Pretty good episode. Nice to see Josh back in the game, but a little humbled.

I was disappointed they didn't show more of Bartlett and Bobby Kennedy. I buy the walking to the Capitol stunt might've caused the GOP to settle for 2%, but it would've been interesting to see Bartlett talk him into 0%, plus getting his college initiative back, plus having the GOP cut $50B from their side.

And can anyone else remember ever seeing a scene that did NOT contain one of the main characters? I found the scenes with just the GOP leadership very jarring. Showing the other side opens up a whole can of worms, and I hope they don't go down that road. The show is about the West Wing, and all the people in it. I don't argue they could stand to hear more from the GOP, but the WW staffers should always be the common thread.

I just noticed another thread was started for this episode, can they be merged?

yeah, i noticed this thread after i had already started the other one. my bad.

Did you think we were going to wait for you to come to this thread? Oh no. We walked to your thread, and when you didn't respond we walked right back here. And now you're here. I guess that showed you.

A couple of questions. I've missed the past 3 eps so I'm kinda lost.

- Who's Angela and what is she?
- Why was it such a big deal that Josh be "back in the War Room"

A couple of eps back, Josh gambled on a Democratic senator from Idaho to toe the party line. But the senator switched parties instead. So Josh was put in the doghouse and Angela was brought in to take over some of his duties. Now it looks like he's back.

I'm still waiting for one good episode in a row from Wells.

But the good news is, my season 1 DVDs are in the mail!

Well I thought that was 2 good ones in a row. They were definitely entertaining.

The better news is that I received S1 set in the mail Monday (from overstock).

I thought it was pretty good. I know they're going over the top a bit on the storylines, but I understand why, and I don't have a problem with it. I didn't like the da-duh-DUH editing on the "shutdown" just as I didn't like it last week, but everything else worked for me. I really enjoyed the scenes with Josh and the scenes with Mrs. Bartlet, and I liked how everyone else just didn't get it. The smile on CJ's face when she found out what was brewing was a nice touch.

As for showing the details of the budget meeting, why? When Bartlet made it clear where he stood, the battle was over ... why show us the boring aftermath?

"What's the score?"
"Doesn't matter ... these things are won in the last 5 minutes."

das

Oh, watching Angelica prance around the White House earns a big

das

I hope we're headed back toward the days with several subplots per episode - watching the reruns on Bravo, you remember how each show used to have a Prez/Leo story, a Josh story, a Sam story, etc. Now it seems each episode is about one big idea, which doesn't leave much time for the individual characters to shine. I always enjoyed the smaller moments between staffers in hallways, offices, etc. Now everything seems like a huge, life or death meeting.

Bastard! I knew I should have chosen a quicker shipping option from Amazon. Alas, I was too cheap for that.

Perhaps I am still comparing the show to its old self, instead of with the other crap that is generally on TV. Maybe thats not fair, but I have a much higher standard for the West Wing than anything else.

I enjoyed the episode overall and I'm hoping now that the budget showdown is over things can go back to normal.

Nice to see Josh back in the game. Walking to the Capitol was a nice touch. So much more in character for Bartlett than having Josh scream at the building. The raising of the voice during the negotiation was cool. Nobody else except Bartlett and Josh got the whole "we had a deal" notion and it was good to hear him scream that at the Speaker.

I too found the GOP scenes a bit jarring. I can't remember if they've had other episodes without the main characters in a scene. It was interesting to see they're point of view but it was just unusual. As I've said in previous posts: the show has enough great characters and actors, there's no need to add more people to the mix.

Back during the House hearings about the MS they showed a little bit of some meetings with just House Republicans, but not nearly as much as it did last night.

For those who think the show hasn't been good this year, this reviewer agrees.

I agree that it's nowhere near as good, but "awful" is the type of all-or-nothing speak that makes me not take a reviewer seriously. Where's the balance?

As for the criticism of the NBC promotion department, where has this guy been? The West Wing, even at its best, was always cheesily promoted by NBC as a paint-by-numbers drama, where the fate of the nation rested on whether we watched the next week's "shocking" episode. This is nothing new.

I wish reviewers could note the good and bad, instead of simply establishing a position on one side or the other and then harping that position to death. The West Wing is not the best show on network TV anymore, something that's painful for me to accept, but it's far from the worst.

das

Agree 100% with the above.

One thing I neglected to mention - Leo made "The Call" to get Abby to come back. What purpose did that serve, exactly? I assume Leo wanted her to talk some sense into Bartlett, but he stuck to his guns and got what he wanted.

Not often, but it does happen. For example, we saw the racist who shot the President hanging out in a roadside diner and stepping outside for a smoke, where he promptly got surrounded by a jillion cops and FBI agents.