9.3/10. I think we’re close enough to the end of The West Wing that I can safely make a somewhat startling confession – I like the Wells years of the show (Seasons 5-7) better than the Sorkin years (Seasons 1-4). I realize this is pretty much blasphemy, and it’s not as though there’s not a lot to like about the first half of the series, but overall I respond to the later seasons of the show much more than its early goings.
Part of the reason for that is something very much on display in “Requiem.” Wells & Co. are much more devoted to the idea of balance, to the idea of needing legitimate challenges from within and without the party to keep everyone in government honest, to temper one branch of government’s good intentions against those of another, even when there’s a cost. Sorkin’s philosophy was much more stubborn and myopic, of the idea that you should stand by your ideological purity and anyone who disagrees should get out of your damn way.
You can see this sort of philosophy reflected in Amy Gardner, who’s never been my favorite recurring character on the show. Her single-minded devotion to her cause, a great cause though it may be, leaves her taking some pretty unreasonable actions of the course of the series. But as Santos puts it, it’s easier to throw rocks at a house than to try to build one, and the idea of her being folded into the administration, having to balance her agenda with the myriad other important legislative issues.
On the other hand, it’s interesting that in an episode which gives two-seconds to almost every notable tertiary character The West Wing’s ever had, we also get a brief moment with the long-absent Ainsley Hayes. Hayes was one of the few characters in those early years of the show who provided a challenge to the hegemony of the Bartlet administration without being treated as a snarling villain or unreasonable obstacle.
But beyond the cornucopia of guest stars in the episode (which left me wishing we could have gotten two seconds of Rob Lowe as Sam Seaborn), the story that really exemplifies this is Santos deciding whether to intervene in the race for speaker. Josh advises him to hang back and not to mire his office in the house-specific leadership contests. Santos wants his old buddy from Congress to win because he’ll be there to help enact his agenda (lobbying reform), but the guy’s down a few votes and it’d take the intervention of the President-elect to change that. He doesn’t want the current vote-leader to win, because he basically straight-up tells the President-to-be that he’ll resist his agenda in order to help preserve the House Democrats’ seats.
So Santos tries what is often the solution to these sorts of intractable problems on The West Wing -- he tries a third option, one that involves a bit of political gamesmanship but will hopefully achieve the administration’s desired goals without upsetting the applecart. The catch is that when he makes a move to prop up the “just for show” third candidate for the speakership, Santos realizes he’s getting a propped up rubber stamp, someone who wouldn’t really be a leader in Congress, but would instead be seen as a Santos stooge with no credibility, mostly because that’d be an accurate assessment. At the same time, Josh is frustrated himself, feeling like Santos is deferring to a flattering party elder rather than him, emphasizing that he too does not want to be just a yes-man.
So instead of backing his buddy, or taking the magical third option that so often appears, Santos just takes the hard choice. He listens to Josh. Santos brings in his buddy to tell him that the President-Elect can’t back him, instead advising him to back down, not just because of the impropriety of it, but because Santos realizes he wants someone who isn’t just a puppet in charge of the House of Representatives, someone who will stand up to him, who will pursue Congress’s interests as the framers who set up the checks and balances intended rather than just rubberstamping Santos’s ideas, even when it’s someone from within his own party. There’s a startling idea for The West Wing baked in there – that the executive shouldn’t be monolithic, that there’s merit in reasoned and fair opposition, and that sometimes your agenda has to take its lumps to do right by our system of government.
But even more than that, there’s a personal cost to it. Making that choice, one I would argue was the right choice, hurts Santos’s relationship with Congressman Fields, someone who helped him a great deal when he was an up-and-comer in the political world and who is a trusted ally. Doing the right thing has to have consequences – something we’re seeing in Toby’s story this season – because that helps give it weight. (As an aside, Charlie waiting to walk to the burial with Toby is a quiet but incredibly sweet moment in this episode.) Taking the right course of action isn’t always some magical thing that makes everything okay. Sometimes it helps in the long run, but means you have to pay a price, even lose a friendship and a mentor, in the short term.
And in the wake of Leo McGarry’s death, everyone among the senior staff is feeling that sense of loss. Sure, some of them are having a semi-amusing comedy of manners when it comes to sleeping arrangements between C.J. and Danny (hooray!) and Josh and Donna (still eh), but for the most part, the people we see sitting around together at the residence have all been moved in some way by Leo, are all doing their best to remember who he was and what he did for them, without lingering on the thought that he’s gone.
And for no one is this truer for than President Bartlet. For the early part of the episode, we see a lugubrious man, who is hardly there in the midst of all his grief. But when he has to face the public, to face his friends, he is all smiles, all about celebrating the memory of his best friend, about remembering Leo the way he’d want to be remembered, as a source of joy, of amusement, of fond reminiscing. The standout scene of the “Requiem,” an episode that isn’t short on them, is the gang all sitting around with the President, laughing about Leo’s tall tales and feeling for all the world like a real group of people remembering their dear friend. In my write up for the last episode, I lamented the crassness of using John Spencer’s death for drama a bit, but it lends an air of verisimilitude, where these actors are just as much remembering a departed friend as their characters are.
It’s remarkable work from Martin Sheen, but also from Stockard Channing. She doesn’t have much to do in the episode, but with just a few, very strong looks, she absolutely communicates how Abby Bartlet both understands the profound pain her husband is experiencing at the moment, and also the act he is putting on not to have to feel those feelings, so as to stand as the figure of strength at the center of this world that he’s supposed to be and to not make his personal hurt anyone else’s problem. When Mrs. (Dr.) Bartlet tells him it’s time to wrap things up, it’s not just her watchdogging his MS. She’s telling him it’s time to stop, to drop the façade he’s trying so hard to keep up, to face the difficult feelings he can avoid so long as he’s maintaining the act.
Because Leo was often the one telling the President to make the hard choices. Leo was the one who told him they don’t always know how it’s going to work out. He was to President Bartlet what Josh is to Santos, not just a Chief of Staff, but a man who would speak truth to power and give his honest opinion when he thinks the most powerful man in the world is making a mistake. “Requiem” gives us the beginning and the end of that relationship for a President: the arguments and frustration we see between Josh and Santos as they navigate the difficulties of wanting to move in different directions, and the sorrow and masked hurt of President Bartlet, who realizes that as he reaches the end of his journey, the man who walked with him down that path, who spoke up when he thought they weren’t headed in the right direction, is no longer beside him.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParent2016-10-23T06:21:01Z
9.3/10. I think we’re close enough to the end of The West Wing that I can safely make a somewhat startling confession – I like the Wells years of the show (Seasons 5-7) better than the Sorkin years (Seasons 1-4). I realize this is pretty much blasphemy, and it’s not as though there’s not a lot to like about the first half of the series, but overall I respond to the later seasons of the show much more than its early goings.
Part of the reason for that is something very much on display in “Requiem.” Wells & Co. are much more devoted to the idea of balance, to the idea of needing legitimate challenges from within and without the party to keep everyone in government honest, to temper one branch of government’s good intentions against those of another, even when there’s a cost. Sorkin’s philosophy was much more stubborn and myopic, of the idea that you should stand by your ideological purity and anyone who disagrees should get out of your damn way.
You can see this sort of philosophy reflected in Amy Gardner, who’s never been my favorite recurring character on the show. Her single-minded devotion to her cause, a great cause though it may be, leaves her taking some pretty unreasonable actions of the course of the series. But as Santos puts it, it’s easier to throw rocks at a house than to try to build one, and the idea of her being folded into the administration, having to balance her agenda with the myriad other important legislative issues.
On the other hand, it’s interesting that in an episode which gives two-seconds to almost every notable tertiary character The West Wing’s ever had, we also get a brief moment with the long-absent Ainsley Hayes. Hayes was one of the few characters in those early years of the show who provided a challenge to the hegemony of the Bartlet administration without being treated as a snarling villain or unreasonable obstacle.
But beyond the cornucopia of guest stars in the episode (which left me wishing we could have gotten two seconds of Rob Lowe as Sam Seaborn), the story that really exemplifies this is Santos deciding whether to intervene in the race for speaker. Josh advises him to hang back and not to mire his office in the house-specific leadership contests. Santos wants his old buddy from Congress to win because he’ll be there to help enact his agenda (lobbying reform), but the guy’s down a few votes and it’d take the intervention of the President-elect to change that. He doesn’t want the current vote-leader to win, because he basically straight-up tells the President-to-be that he’ll resist his agenda in order to help preserve the House Democrats’ seats.
So Santos tries what is often the solution to these sorts of intractable problems on The West Wing -- he tries a third option, one that involves a bit of political gamesmanship but will hopefully achieve the administration’s desired goals without upsetting the applecart. The catch is that when he makes a move to prop up the “just for show” third candidate for the speakership, Santos realizes he’s getting a propped up rubber stamp, someone who wouldn’t really be a leader in Congress, but would instead be seen as a Santos stooge with no credibility, mostly because that’d be an accurate assessment. At the same time, Josh is frustrated himself, feeling like Santos is deferring to a flattering party elder rather than him, emphasizing that he too does not want to be just a yes-man.
So instead of backing his buddy, or taking the magical third option that so often appears, Santos just takes the hard choice. He listens to Josh. Santos brings in his buddy to tell him that the President-Elect can’t back him, instead advising him to back down, not just because of the impropriety of it, but because Santos realizes he wants someone who isn’t just a puppet in charge of the House of Representatives, someone who will stand up to him, who will pursue Congress’s interests as the framers who set up the checks and balances intended rather than just rubberstamping Santos’s ideas, even when it’s someone from within his own party. There’s a startling idea for The West Wing baked in there – that the executive shouldn’t be monolithic, that there’s merit in reasoned and fair opposition, and that sometimes your agenda has to take its lumps to do right by our system of government.
But even more than that, there’s a personal cost to it. Making that choice, one I would argue was the right choice, hurts Santos’s relationship with Congressman Fields, someone who helped him a great deal when he was an up-and-comer in the political world and who is a trusted ally. Doing the right thing has to have consequences – something we’re seeing in Toby’s story this season – because that helps give it weight. (As an aside, Charlie waiting to walk to the burial with Toby is a quiet but incredibly sweet moment in this episode.) Taking the right course of action isn’t always some magical thing that makes everything okay. Sometimes it helps in the long run, but means you have to pay a price, even lose a friendship and a mentor, in the short term.
And in the wake of Leo McGarry’s death, everyone among the senior staff is feeling that sense of loss. Sure, some of them are having a semi-amusing comedy of manners when it comes to sleeping arrangements between C.J. and Danny (hooray!) and Josh and Donna (still eh), but for the most part, the people we see sitting around together at the residence have all been moved in some way by Leo, are all doing their best to remember who he was and what he did for them, without lingering on the thought that he’s gone.
And for no one is this truer for than President Bartlet. For the early part of the episode, we see a lugubrious man, who is hardly there in the midst of all his grief. But when he has to face the public, to face his friends, he is all smiles, all about celebrating the memory of his best friend, about remembering Leo the way he’d want to be remembered, as a source of joy, of amusement, of fond reminiscing. The standout scene of the “Requiem,” an episode that isn’t short on them, is the gang all sitting around with the President, laughing about Leo’s tall tales and feeling for all the world like a real group of people remembering their dear friend. In my write up for the last episode, I lamented the crassness of using John Spencer’s death for drama a bit, but it lends an air of verisimilitude, where these actors are just as much remembering a departed friend as their characters are.
It’s remarkable work from Martin Sheen, but also from Stockard Channing. She doesn’t have much to do in the episode, but with just a few, very strong looks, she absolutely communicates how Abby Bartlet both understands the profound pain her husband is experiencing at the moment, and also the act he is putting on not to have to feel those feelings, so as to stand as the figure of strength at the center of this world that he’s supposed to be and to not make his personal hurt anyone else’s problem. When Mrs. (Dr.) Bartlet tells him it’s time to wrap things up, it’s not just her watchdogging his MS. She’s telling him it’s time to stop, to drop the façade he’s trying so hard to keep up, to face the difficult feelings he can avoid so long as he’s maintaining the act.
Because Leo was often the one telling the President to make the hard choices. Leo was the one who told him they don’t always know how it’s going to work out. He was to President Bartlet what Josh is to Santos, not just a Chief of Staff, but a man who would speak truth to power and give his honest opinion when he thinks the most powerful man in the world is making a mistake. “Requiem” gives us the beginning and the end of that relationship for a President: the arguments and frustration we see between Josh and Santos as they navigate the difficulties of wanting to move in different directions, and the sorrow and masked hurt of President Bartlet, who realizes that as he reaches the end of his journey, the man who walked with him down that path, who spoke up when he thought they weren’t headed in the right direction, is no longer beside him.