7x16 Election Day (1)

6.7/10. The idea of “Election Day pt. 1” is a great one. Taking the time before the election returns really kick into gear to explore the relationships between the characters, reflect on what come’s next, and show how many of these people, Josh especially, only have one mode and don’t know how to function when they’re not in it, is a canny choice for the lead up to the finish. The problem is that little of it is especially good, and much of it feels fairly scattershot.

The most prominent through line in the episode is that latter point – the idea that Josh and Bruno and the cadre of people who work for them have been so focused on election gamesmanship that they don’t know how to turn it off when there’s not much more to do. It’s a nice parallel when the episode shows the two of them freaking out about the same exit poll numbers that each swears can’t be right. And we get little details like Josh and Lou wanting fifteen different versions of Santos’s end-of-the-night speech to cover every possible contingency, Josh micromanaging the setup of the ballroom, and dealing with changes to the speech from the transition team.

The upshot is clear – all Josh knows is crisis, and when faced with a situation in which all these contingencies are already planned for and there’s nothing more to do, he tries to create one out of whole cloth because he can’t stand sitting on his hands. In a show that almost always has a Crisis of the Week, that’s a bold choice, and the most solid part of the episode. The problem is that the episode hits that same note over and over again without much variation or intrigue. Josh’s freak out toward the end of the episode is fine as an exclamation point on that theme, and his failed “inspire the troops speech” is a good signifier that he can only see more problems to fix, not successes to be proud of. But at some point you just want to say, “We get it! Josh can’t relax!”

Or maybe he can. After years, years of teasing it, The West Wing finally pulls the trigger on Josh and Donna. After a scene where every member of the Santos staff is basically paired off (and even Bruno is using his current position to hopefully get himself into another), the last two folks left in the room are Josh and Donna who, after so much fumfering around, get together.

So we do the awkward morning after thing. And it’s fine. To be fair, I don’t know how you pay something like this off – which the fans desperately wanted but which doesn’t make a lot of sense – in a satisfying way. But the development is kind of underwhelming, with the standard post-coital awkwardness and neither knowing how to approach their friendship or budding relationship afterward. There’s the occasional fun moment, like Donna telling Josh she already knows how he likes his coffee, but for the most part it feels like The West Wing briefly turned into an episode of Melrose Place with an odd amount of focus on everyone’s romantic lives.

After all, even “Congressman Casanova” and Helen Santos find a productive use of the first bit of time off they’ve had in weeks. We get a scene of Lou and Otto, where the Otto is a bit more sentimental about their dalliance than the prickly (and frankly pretty mean) Lou is about it. And, of course, we get another scene exploring the relationship between Will Bailey and Kate Harper. There’s the noteworthy reveal that Kate voted for Vinick, and I appreciate the show depicting the senior staff as not so monolithic in their political preferences, but for the most part, it falls into the same Melrose Place territory. Will talks about going off to run campaigns in California again, and Kate talks about sticking around to serve whoever the next president is, and the pair try to navigate the awkwardness of their undefined relationship, which is about to face a big transition.

That’s the other major thread in this slack tide episode – what comes next. The staff of the Santos campaign, the Vinick campaign, and the White House have poured their lives into something that basically comes to an end on this very day. Two-thirds of these folks are going to have to find something else to keep them busy not long after election day, and while most of this facet of the episode ends up feeling pretty meandering, it’s a nice note to hit for the characters at least.

That idea works best with Charlie and C.J. (who are, admittedly, two of my favorite characters on the show, which biases me). We haven’t seen Charlie in a while, and when we do, he’s pressuring C.J. to start looking at other jobs for when the Bartlet administration ends. She, of course, is still “living out the first line of [her] obituary” and doesn’t want to focus on anything beyond what’s in front of her. But then Charlie says something undeniably sweet when pressed on why he keeps pushing this – he admires her, and wherever she goes, he’d like to keep working for her. In an episode that spends so much time and energy on romance and relationships, the most heartwarming and compelling moment in this episode is one between colleagues, not lovers.

We also see Matt and Helen Santos thinking about what will happen tomorrow, whether their lives will, perhaps, go back to normal, albeit with a crushing loss to contend with, or whether they will change forever. After the hustle and bustle of the campaign, the thought of raking leaves in the backyard doesn’t sound so bad. And Bruno, who’s asked by Bob if he wants to go into business together, politely declines and says he’s done when this is over. Bruno’s not an old man, but you get the idea that he has a little more self-awareness than Josh about this. When he’s this close to the flame, he can’t help but stick his hand in the fire, and his only salve is getting himself the hell away from the conflagration.

There’s a lot of interesting ideas in “Election Day pt. 1”: the calm before the storm that leaves everyone anxious for the thunder to start rolling, the summer camp romances that inevitably emerge when you throw everyone on the same bus for six months, the ruminations on what happens after this is all over. It all fits together like somebody jammed a bunch of play-dough together rather than feeling like a well-oiled machine of an episode. But maybe that’s intentional. In a show, and for a set of characters, who are constantly moving forward, it’s ambitious, if nothing else, to show what happens when nothing’s happening, so they can’t help but reflect on the past, wonder about the future, and find the oldest way to pass the time in the present.

(And, for those of you waiting with baited breath, I'll talk about the events of the very end of the episode in the write up for the next episode.)