History Headscratchers / TheWestWing

If I'm just not getting the context then could someone explain it to me? Because what it comes off as is Joe calling out Josh for...whatever about Josh's PTSD episode in ''Noel''. First of all, how the hell would Joe evening know about that? It would be confidential information; and second, what the hell business is it of Joe Quincy's that Josh has PTSD anyway?! His tone and the words he use just bother me. It comes across as out of nowhere victim blaming and it steps way over the line of things you say to anyone, much less to someone you hope will hire you, and all it serves to do is, (IMO) paint Joe as an ignorant {{Jerkass}} offering an unwarranted opinion.
** I think you got the quote a little wrong. According to IMDB, the line is, "You know, not for nothing, but the people I talk to don't believe that story, and the people you'd like don't care." "The people I talk to" should probably be read as code for "conservative Republicans." The point is merely to re-assure Josh that his enemies don't believe the story enough to use it for ammo, and his friends don't think any less of him for it. And, not coincidentally, it doesn't make Joe think any less of him. As for how it got out...eh, maybe a hundred ways. By this conversation Josh seems to be using it as a punchline, and there's a chance he's mentioned it similarly to other people as well. The story makes the rounds in the usual Washington DC cocktail party fashion and eventually gets to Joe.

** If we want to get Wild-Mass-Guessy with it, it's possible that in the universe of ''The West Wing'' the National Minimum Drinking Age Act 1984 was never passed, meaning that the legal drinking age of the District of Columbia is 18.

* Am I missing something, or are the laws different in DC that a 19 year old is allowed into a bar?

* Am I missing something, or are the laws different in DC that the drinking age is under 21, thus allowing Zoey to go to a bar at 19 (or 17 for that matter after the retcon) in Season 1? I assume by Season 4, she's actually 21 when she goes out with Jean-Paul.

** Why ''wouldn't'' he think that? Leo's not that old, neither's his wife, and Sam and Leo aren't exactly people who spend a lot of time with their ''own'' families, let alone the families of their co-workers. Political campaigns and working in the White House aren't generally family environments (so the occasions for Sam to meet Mallory before then would be slim), Leo and Sam don't exactly hang out a lot personally or share a lot of personal information, and Leo's whole character is that he's a complete workaholic who has separated his work and family lives to such a degree that he gets divorced about four episodes into Season One. Since it's established that Sam barely knows Leo's wife, there's a equally good chance that he's never met Leo's daughter and knows only what little scraps of information Leo has revealed about her, which probably isn't that much beyond the fact of her existence. So when he hears that his boss's daughter's fourth-grade class is coming to the White House, he makes the assumption that many reasonable people might make about someone they've never met and know hardly anything about when given that information -- that Leo's daughter is a student in the class rather than the teacher.

** After MIR suffered a docking collision, few of its sections were permanently depressurized, but the station went on fine for many more years until it was decommissioned for fairly unrelated reasons. A malfunction that threatened the entire station and disabled the aforementioned lifeboats should have been described less as an "oxygen leak" and more as a "prolonged encounter with a meteor shower".

** Why ''wouldn't'' he think that? Leo's not that old, neither's his wife, and Sam and Leo aren't exactly people who spend a lot of time with their ''own'' families, let alone the families of their co-workers. Political campaigns and working in the White House aren't generally family environments (so the occasions for Sam to meet Mallory before then would be slim), Leo and Sam don't exactly hang out a lot personally or share a lot of personal information, and Leo's whole character is that he's a complete workaholic who has separated his work and family lives to such a degree that he gets divorced about four episodes into Season One. Since it's established that Sam barely knows Leo's wife, there's a equally good chance that he's never met Leo's daughter and knows only what little scraps of information Leo has revealed about her, which probably isn't that much beyond the fact of her existence. So when he hears that his boss's daughter's fourth-grade class is coming to the White House, he makes the assumption that many reasonable people might make about someone they've never met and know hardly anything about -- that Leo's daughter is a student in the class rather than the teacher.

* The whole character of Josh Lyman. More often than not, he's causing trouble for the Bartlet Administration, is overly confidant of how good he is, and doesn't ever seem capable at his job. If he didn't have his support staff helping him, he would keep on ruining things. And to top it all off, he acts as if he's some god among men, able to do things and get things done, when it's someone else who saves his bacon or calls in a favor to get the job done.
** Josh may make a lot of mistakes, but at the end of the day, his primary jobs are to staff the president, organise the white house staff's activities (Leo's job was more about handling the higher-level people, like Cabinet members, Senior Staff, etc), and beyond that, to liaise with congress. He was outstanding in the first two roles, and did a good job most of the time with the liaising (the primary exception being when he screwed up early in Season 5). Furthermore, Josh has shown himself to be incredibly politically astute... just as long as you never let him be seen in public. Most of his screwups were in side efforts (like meeting with certain people), and the real question isn't why he was kept on, but why he wasn't kept from those particular sorts of efforts. It's not like there weren't alternatives within the West Wing for those sorts of jobs.
** OP here:I remember this bit with this rich kid intern in season 5 or 6 who Josh Lyman constantly berated, and thought he was teaching things, but it ended up that the kid was the one doing Josh's job behind his back, and Josh Lyman just praises himself to the kid about how he, Josh Lyman, did that. It seems that talking to anyone he disagreed with, at all, whether in private or in public, would end badly, and someone else would have to do the dirty work for him. As for staffing, remember the Star Trek fan? And Josh Lyman's mistake about Star Trek with the moral speech on not bringing your personal affiliations, even non-political ones to the White House? And how in the same episode someone else in the staff was proud of their sports baseball cap? So that's two out of the three, I guess he at least organized the White House's activities.
*** This troper agrees with the OP: Josh was just way too smug for someone who causes so many mistakes. And his badgering that intern who was wearing the Franchise/StarTrek pin while he constantly talks about his love of the Mets just made him look petty and hypocritical. He's my least favorite character on the show (well, him and Will).
**** Josh was good at HIS job specifically. He tended to massively screw up given any job outside of the ones he was comfortable doing on a daily basis. There's a reason why he, the heir apparent, was NOT promoted into Leo's position as Chief of Staff. He's a great sidekick. A good person to have a few rungs down on the ladder; but not someone who has the capability to roll with a high pressure gig/shifting responsibilities. God help Santos...I almost wanted another season just to see Josh screw up massively as Chief of Staff without Donna to do half the work for him (plus a group of capable people working WITH him and not FOR him).
***** The fact that he wasn't promoted to Chief of Staff, though, seemed to be more so that he could go off and help with the Santos campaign (which he wouldn't have been able to do if he were tied down in such an important job with the administration) - Leo was trying to set him up to lead Santos's campaign/be Chief of Staff in the Santos administration, not snub him for any perceived incompetence.
****** Plus, maybe Leo thought that Josh wasn't ready for his job at the time of his heart attack while CJ was. Or, alternatively, he didn't think Josh should be Bartlet's chief of staff--he needed to establish a different relationship with another politician. Most of the reason that Bartlet and Leo work so well together is because of their past together--Josh needed to establish that kind of experience through a campaign with someone else (Santos.)
****** And yet, Santos does better each time he ignores Josh's advice. After a while, it seemed like he was hired so that Santos knew what course of action NOT to take.

** As for why we didn't see a scar... well, we probably have to chalk this one up to real life pressures of production; considering how rare it was to see either Josh or Donna outside of anything but a smart suit (or, indeed, anything that would reveal scars on their chests), they probably either forgot all about it over time or decided that trying to remember exactly where Josh or Donna should have a scar on a consistent basis for what would only amount to a handful of shots that weren't expressly intended to show the character's injuries for plot reasons anyway (which in turn would have meant more time for the actors in make-up, which in turn would snowball into how much time they had to shoot the scene(s) in question) just meant more effort with little to show for it; in the latter case, they gambled that most people wouldn't notice anyway and the ones who did just shrug and let it go without it affecting their overall enjoyment. [See also: why Kate Beckett in ''{{Castle}}'' seems to have a magically reappearing/disappearing scar as well.]

* They failed Political Science forever. The last non-incumbent Democrat to succeed to the office of President of the United States was James Buchanan. In that same period of time, four non-incumbent Republicans became POTUS, Hayes, Garfield, Taft (formerly Secretary of War), and Hoover (formerly Secretary of Commerce). \\
As far as incumbents, two Democrats (Truman and LBJ) were Vice President or President before they succeeded to the office of President through national election, while 2 Republicans (Coolidge and H. Bush) did the same feat. Health problems prevented Arthur from running for a second term, TR at first decided not to run for a second term, but then changed his mind, tried, and lost, and Ford failed to secure a second term.
** 1. The West Wing operates on a pretty clear alternate timeline, since there are at least 4 presidents that don't exist in our world going back a couple decades. I'm pretty sure Lassiter was a Democrat, too, which makes the succession like Democrat Republican Democrat Democrat -- the political trends are very different. 2. Santos was originally going to ''lose'' the election. Then John Spencer died and the producers/writers decided it'd be way too depressing for show fans if Leo died ''and'' Santos lost the election; it would have been a complete DownerEnding. 3. The only reason in-show that Santos won, as cited time and time again, is because of the San Andreo accident and the fact that Vinick supported the building of the plant way the hell back in the 70's. Many, many characters on both sides say that without that one-in-a-million freak accident, Vinick would've won the election pretty well. So, it's less hubris and more the laws of making your audience not want to kill themselves.
** Actually, I did do my research. Originally Aaron Sorkin wanted the series centered on the Presidents Staff, not the President. The only time we should see the President is coming and going, and ideally without even seeing his face. However, over time, Martin Sheen’s part got bigger and bigger. Yes, the West Wing was an alternate timeline, starting right after the Nixon administration.
** The earliest president depicted in the series was D. Wire Newman, a one term liberal democrat who was prone to criticizing other presidents, specifically Walken. In the real world you have Jimmy Carter, a one term liberal democrat who was prone to criticizing other presidents, nobody specifically but all in general. He was defeated by a two term Republican. They didn’t come out and say that Republican Lassiter, but with the exception of Walken, he is the only Republican President mentioned. In series timeline Owen Lassiter is a Republican from California who towards the end of his life was infirm and tended to make rambling phone calls to the sitting President, in real life Ronald Reagan was a Republican from California who suffered from Alzheimer’s in his final years. In series time line we have Josiah Bartlett a middle path Democrat who served two terms, in real life we have Bill Clinton a middle path Democrat who served two terms. Yes that last is thin, but backed up by admissions from Aaron Sorkin, John Wells, and Martin Sheen that Bartlett was based on a revisionist version of Bill Clinton. Yes, John Spencer did pass away with his death written into the series with Leo McGary passing away under similar circumstances. How much this effected the Santos vs Vinick election is both debatable and subjective. But more importantly it was also irrelevant, because that was in the planning stage. In the planning stages of Raiders of the Lost Ark, Tom Selleck was suppose to play Indiana Jones, but that didn’t happen either. In the end, Democratic President Bartlett was succeeded by Democratic Texas Congressman Matt Santos, who according to Producer Eli Attie was based on Barack Obama; or like I stated in my previous posting, a Democrat succeeded by a non-incumbent Democrat, which had not happened since Buchanan. Yes, it was supposed to be an alternate timeline, but not a vacuum as well.
*** And there hasn't been two consecutive two term presidents since 1824, but we just had two terms of Clinton and two terms of Bush. Just because a trend exists doesn't mean it can't be broken.
*** Also, none of them said that Bartlett was based on a "revisionist version of Bill Clinton". What they said was that Bartlett was what people ''wanted'' Clinton to be. In other words, Bartlett is intended to demonstrate what, in the writers' opinions, a president ''should'' be like, and none of the American presidents in recent history have lived up to that standard. And it is my opinion that they attempted to do something similar with Walken with his short stay, and would have done something similar with Vinick had he won (as they had intended).
*** Just adding to the above, as well as Reagan Lassiter appears to have a bit of a Nixon parallel going on as well (shady dealings while in office, obsessed with being seen as an elder statesman after leaving the Oval Office) and his funeral shares some similarities to Nixon's funeral if memory serves. They probably wanted to 'do' Nixon without using the real Nixon.
** There's a missing 2 years (between the Lassiter/Reagan and Bartlet/Clinton parallels), since the timeline of ''TheWestWing'' had elections in 2002 and 2006, and Bartlet's first election would have been in 1998 (real-world presidential elections are in '96, 2000, '04, and '08). So there's basically no analogue to the first president Bush, at least not one mentioned in the show.

***** The fact that he wasn't promoted to Chief of Staff, though, seemed to be more so that he could go off and help with the Santos campaign (which he wouldn't have been able to do if he were tied down in such an important job with the administration) - Leo was trying to set him up to lead Santos's campaign/be Chief of Staff in the Santos administration, not snub him for any perceived incompetence.

** With reference to the Headscratcher involving Joe Quincy above - the entire staff of the West Wing use the phrase "not for nothing" sporadically. It's an unusual phrase, and while it could easily have spread round the senior staff in a close-knit group, Joe Quincy uses it - and at this point he's never worked in the White House at all. Obviously the Fourth Wall reason is that Aaron Sorkin likes the phrase - but what in-show reason can there be for the phrase to be in common use?

If I'm just not getting the context then could someone explain it to me? Because what it comes off as is Joe calling out Josh for...whatever about Josh's PTSD episode in ''Noel''. First of all, how the hell would Joe evening know about that? It would be confidential information; and second, what the hell business is it of Joe Quincy's that Josh has PTSD anyway?! His tone and the words he use just bother me. It comes across as out of nowhere victim blaming and it steps way over the line of things you say to anyone, much less to someone you hope will hire you, and all it serves to do is, (IMO) paint Joe as an ignorant {{Jerkass}} offering an unwarranted opinion.

*** Adding to that theory: IIRC, Josh mentions having a scar in a later episode - so it seems as though it's just dropping the ball on make-up continuity, here, as opposed to actual continuity.

* This actually fits in with the above: The sexual harassment subplot in "Night Five." A temp worker named Celia witnesses some unreciprocated mock-flirting from Sam to Ainsley and tells him he's being sexist; Sam plays the role of "hurt, hapless Y-chromosome who can't imagine what he did wrong"; Ainsley appears at the end to explain that she finds it empowering to use her sexuality in her work relationships (which is fine, until it starts making your coworkers uncomfortable), that men teasing her about it is "an inadvertant show of respect that I'm on the team" (...yeah, okay), that the whole thing is a "nonsense issue" and not to be confused with "honest-to-God sexual harassment" (which would consist of what, exactly? Ass-grabbing or it didn't happen?), and that Celia was wrong to object (she should have psychically known that Ainsley felt this way and let her own feelings about listening to innuendo-laden conversations in her workplace go unexpressed, apparently). And throughout, there are unaddressed moments that seem like they were purposely put in to [[BrokenAesop break the aesop]]: Sam claims that Ainsley "started it" when all she did was walk through the door wearing a little black dress (in fact, not only did she not start the flirting, she didn't even participate in it); Sam defends himself by saying, "I was complimenting her!" (the oldest response in the book, for Christ's sake -- it's like trying to assure the audience that your character isn't a racist by having him say, "I have black friends!"); Charlie contributes comic relief in the form of DoubleStandard cliches such as saying that he's fine with Sam's behavior in theory but if it had been his little sister he'd beat him up ([[SarcasmMode helpful]]); and [[WallBanger most irritatingly of all]], in the course of telling Celia off, Ainsley says, "If somebody says something that offends you, tell them, but all women don't have to think alike," to which Celia ''totally correctly'' replies, "I didn't say they did, and when somebody said something that offended me, I did say so" -- and Ainsley just plows right on ahead with her TheReasonYouSuckSpeech as if that wasn't [[StrawmanHasAPoint the most reasonable thing anybody had said in the whole damn episode]]. God almighty.
** Well, what Celia actually said to Sam wasn't "What you said offended me," it was more "What you're saying is offensive," period. And it isn't like Celia didn't apply her own worldview to Ainsley. "I'm surprised you're willing to allow your sexuality diminish your power," she said. She took how she felt on the subject and decided Ainsley was behaving in a certain, wrong way. It's pretty clear from the context, and from the way Sam and Ainsley interact with each other in general, that Sam ''was'' complimenting her. If it had been some random guy, sure, it'd have been something to look at, but we know Sam and Ainsley knows Sam. Celia doesn't know Sam. She reacted in a natural way, because it does sound bad if you're an outsider, but when Ainsley said it didn't bother her Celia protested that it ''should have''. That's what got Ainsley riled up. And Celia keeps going, saying that Sam wouldn't have been able to interact with a woman in any other way than to be sexual, which is just applying her mental view of men onto Sam. I think "honest to God sexual harassment" would mean, you know, harassment, instead of merely playing around, which is clearly how Ainsley views it (because she says as much).
** Furthermore, Celia's unaware of the pre-existing social relationship between Ainsley and Sam. Without this information, she cannot claim to interpret the interaction accurately, or have the authority to continue intervening even after both primary parties have told her it's a personal matter.
** The initial criticism that Celia put forward wasn't a problem. Had she simply stopped there, or quietly taken one of them aside to further discuss it, that would have been fine, too. What she did, instead, was continue to berate both of them over it, when clearly neither one considered it a problem. I'd suggest that Celia is actually representing second-wave feminism, while Ainsley is representing third-wave feminism (of which the term "Lipstick feminism", a form found within the third wave, is specifically mentioned). One says "women shouldn't allow themselves to be treated that way", the other says "women should be able to choose for themselves how they are treated".
*** It's been a while since I saw it, so maybe I'm misremembering, but this doesn't seem entirely accurate or fair to Celia; I seem to remember that Celia only brought it up unprovoked once, at the beginning of the subplot, and she did essentially take Sam aside and raise her objections with him privately (there was no one else in the room when they discussed it) -- if my memory is accurate it's actually ''Sam'' who keeps bringing it up with her and Ainsley because he's getting a bit over-defensive and worrying over it. If I'm right, she doesn't continually berate them at all, and even if she still disapproves is more-or-less happy to just drop it and get back to work; she only really continues the debate because Sam keeps ''insisting'' they continue the debate about it, and Ainsley only intervenes to shut Celia down because she's sick of Sam constantly derailing the topic of the conversation she's trying to have with him throughout the episode by obsessing over it -- at which point Celia is only responding to Ainsley's challenge to her views, which she has a perfect right to do.

* The whole character of Josh Lyman. More often than not, he's causing trouble for the Bartlet Administration, is overly confidant of how good he is, and doesn't ever seem capable at his job. If he didn't have his support staff helping him, he would keep on ruining things. And to top it all off, he acts as if he's some god among men, able to do things and get things done, when it's someone else who saves his bacon or calls in a favor to get the job done.
** Josh may make a lot of mistakes, but at the end of the day, his primary jobs are to staff the president, organise the white house staff's activities (Leo's job was more about handling the higher-level people, like Cabinet members, Senior Staff, etc), and beyond that, to liaise with congress. He was outstanding in the first two roles, and did a good job most of the time with the liaising (the primary exception being when he screwed up early in Season 5). Furthermore, Josh has shown himself to be incredibly politically astute... just as long as you never let him be seen in public. Most of his screwups were in side efforts (like meeting with certain people), and the real question isn't why he was kept on, but why he wasn't kept from those particular sorts of efforts. It's not like there weren't alternatives within the West Wing for those sorts of jobs.
** OP here:I remember this bit with this rich kid intern in season 5 or 6 who Josh Lyman constantly berated, and thought he was teaching things, but it ended up that the kid was the one doing Josh's job behind his back, and Josh Lyman just praises himself to the kid about how he, Josh Lyman, did that. It seems that talking to anyone he disagreed with, at all, whether in private or in public, would end badly, and someone else would have to do the dirty work for him. As for staffing, remember the Star Trek fan? And Josh Lyman's mistake about Star Trek with the moral speech on not bringing your personal affiliations, even non-political ones to the White House? And how in the same episode someone else in the staff was proud of their sports baseball cap? So that's two out of the three, I guess he at least organized the White House's activities.
*** This troper agrees with the OP: Josh was just way too smug for someone who causes so many mistakes. And his badgering that intern who was wearing the Franchise/StarTrek pin while he constantly talks about his love of the Mets just made him look petty and hypocritical. He's my least favorite character on the show (well, him and Will).
**** Josh was good at HIS job specifically. He tended to massively screw up given any job outside of the ones he was comfortable doing on a daily basis. There's a reason why he, the heir apparent, was NOT promoted into Leo's position as Chief of Staff. He's a great sidekick. A good person to have a few rungs down on the ladder; but not someone who has the capability to roll with a high pressure gig/shifting responsibilities. God help Santos...I almost wanted another season just to see Josh screw up massively as Chief of Staff without Donna to do half the work for him (plus a group of capable people working WITH him and not FOR him).
***** The fact that he wasn't promoted to Chief of Staff, though, seemed to be more so that he could go off and help with the Santos campaign (which he wouldn't have been able to do if he were tied down in such an important job with the administration) - Leo was trying to set him up to lead Santos's campaign/be Chief of Staff in the Santos administration, not snub him for any perceived incompetence.

** This is TruthInTelevision with a lot of organisations, though; even in the West Wing of the White House, some people will be liked more than others, some people will have a happier time working there than others, and bullies and jackasses will still turn up somehow.