Review of 100,000 Airplanes

Written by Toniann

Hey folks. Even after giving it a good night's sleep, I can't honestly say that this was one of my favorite episodes. A couple of nice moments, but for me, a failure to really gel.

  • Clearly we are not done dealing with the MS and the censure. It certainly had a profound effect on the events of tonight's episode.

  • I did kind of like the explanation of dial groups, and what all those lines and colors meant. Hey, I want to be one of those people. Is there a little apparatus with a knob or something? Cool.

  • They have great parties for the State of the Union, I've always noticed. And the whole bit with staff members being announced as they walk into a room, and then applause, that's kind of neat too. I'm thinking this is something they should institute at my office.

  • No love lost between Sam's ex and Josh, is there?

  • Not that Josh can really throw stones in the romance department, though by the end of this episode he may have dug himself out of the hole with Amy a little bit by possibly being right. A photo-op, indeed. Still, you know, you've got to allow the woman some pride. Not too many people would be jazzed at being told that someone's dating them for reasons aside from personal charm.

  • I need to rewatch that little montage with everyone working on the State of the Union (while Sam's voiceover plays) again. Think I missed some bits.

  • Best running joke of this episode: Ed and Larry. I wonder what gave the writers that idea, but it's perfect. At this point, I tend to agree: it doesn't really matter which is which. But I still like watching everyone screw it up.

  • Second funniest: Josh complaining to Donna that the piano player at Wilson's only plays one song, the one about "little things with fur better hurry", and that later, when he and Amy were there, the guy actually was playing "Surrey With A Fringe On Top".

  • Lisa Sherborne Seaborn actually has something of a nice ring to it, if you ask me. Otherwise, though, I personally was kind of disappointed by that storyline. I never got a better answer for why they broke up than "She didn't like me much." Sam claims she didn't think he was cool enough for her; she says he left her to work for Bartlet. Really? You can't work there and be with someone? I know it didn't work for Leo's marriage, but I'm not accepting that as an absolute law.

  • The major disappointment for me, though, came at the moment that Sam deleted what he'd written about curing cancer. So that's it? We give up? Listen, I understood and agreed with the rest of the staff that it didn't belong in the State of the Union, for all the reasons given. And I thought Sam did the right thing when he told the president as much. It's just... so since we can't fit it into the speech, we don't do it at all? One minute we give it the full weight of the Federal Government's resources, and the next we delete it from our hard drive?

  • Other things I liked, though: that Toby knows how many words are in the Gettysburg address and the Ten Commandments off the top of his head; Charlie talking to Joey about how important this speech was for the president; Bartlet's numbers going up and the whole staff celebrating.

  • Though I'm still feeling gypped that we didn't get to see CJ and Toby dance. Those two are the best. As I was just saying to another fan, the great thing about them is that they're such great friends and that they work together. I have friends like that (I consider myself lucky to say), but I don't get to work with them every day.

  • Boy, though, CJ sure was feeling peppy. "Get on that couch, I'm going to do you right now?" Followed by "I was still talking to Carol?" Whew. She was on fire that night. Who knows, maybe The Jackal even made an appearance.

    "I still got my lunch money."

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