Review of The Drop-In
Written by Rachel
Ah, sarcasm...the grumpy man's wish.
I'm afraid that I'm losing perspective on this show. With the real life alternatives a bit hard to take, I find it easy to fall under the spell of the Bartlet White House. Part of that spell is I'm finding it harder and harder to find fault. This is not a good thing for a reviewer. Perhaps Aaron Sorkin will begin to disappoint me more as time goes on, but right now this show is hitting the marks and it's hard to disagree with that.
Just a few comments:
I love how President Bartlet was able to chat with each of the new ambassadors. I realize that he was briefed before they arrived, but he is able to have this very personal interaction, accept the credentials, take a couple pictures and go on to the next guy.
Leo really shines tonight. His exchange with Mrs. Landingham is a classic. I do have to wonder how Leo has managed to avoid Peanuts this long, though. I hate comics and I know about Lucy and the football...
It's great to see Lord John Marbury again. While the character serves as a great comedic tool, but there's more to him than that. He was originally introduced to assist the president in dealing with nuclear proliferation in India and Pakistan. Again we see that he has a great deal of knowledge when Bartlet talks to him about the anti-missile program. He is very effective in affirming Bartlet's feelings about the program despite Leo's strong support.
At the beginning of the season I was delighted to see Janel Maloney upgraded to a regular cast member, but not if this is how they are going to keep using her. Donna is a very strong character and should not function as a running joke. NYPD Blue often runs into this with the Greg Medavoy character. I hate to see The West Wing going down that path with Donna.
I love CJ! I love how she is always trying to keep ahead of the press corps and I love that she knows what the chief crops of Burkina Faso are.
Tobey gets the bigs thumbs down this week. His micromanagement of Sam was horrible. What was great about this was it finally created a situation where we see the staff pitted against each other instead of being like a happy-go-lucky summer camp staff. These are people working under great pressure and they would not stay this tight all the time. I really didn't get the feeling that Sam meant to go over Tobey when he scheduled the GDC talk but clearly Tobey did. He "gets back" at Sam by royally screwing him. It pissed Sam off as it should. Tobey would not have scheduled the speech so instead of using it to launch their environmental plan, he uses it to spank the environmental lobby. It broke my heart when Tobey asked Sam how the speech went and Sam said they didn't stand. They didn't for good reason, but it sure as heck wasn't Sam's fault!
I wonder what part of getting smacked in the face by a door Josh's doctor thought would relax him. It's good to see just a little bit of follow through with the after affects of "Noel" here.
The Cornelius Sykes story line reminded me of the early days of the Clinton administration. I get the feeling that the Bartlet administration had as hard a time getting their act together as the Clinton White House did. They royally screwed up their response to Sykes' show and now they can't be seen with this man who has raised money for them and registered voters. It's not the comedian's fault, it was the inexperience of the Barlet people.
We're headed into sweeps and I doubt that Sorkin and company are going to disappoint. But then again, I've lost perspective.
©2001 by Rachel Vagts. All rights reserved.
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