Launching season five, it's the post-Sorkin years! Off to a blazing start as the Evil Bad Red Team takes the driver's seat of the presidency, profaning our sacred Decorum with things like "being honest" and "having a coherent ideology".

I'm gonna be honest if my spouse was contemplating extrajudicial murder as an avenue of international imperial diplomacy I would NOT want to hear about it? But Abby is mad for some reason. OK. 

My gain was a bit messy this week as I reset my microphone so I apologize for the occasional Glen Allen Walken-esque heavy breathing sprinkled throughout.

music is Raconteurs and New Pornographers

S5E1 - 7A WTF 42069

This is a scattered entry in the show's canon that's sort of transitional, even more so than the wrap-up of the cliffhanger from last season. We are introduced to the nominal New Villain, Jeff Haffley. We are shown rather hamhandedly how Zoe is still traumatized and working through her recovery. We have to select a new vice president and Bartlet just fuckin hates the guy.

It's bad folks! There's a lot of technical stuff going on too as it attempts to reinvent itself following Sorkin/Schlamme's departure.

Music from Keys N Krates and Gerry Rafferty. Watch Letterkenny instead of this garbage.

S5E3 - Jefferson Lives

Life imitates art in this episode as we have Tom Skerritt playing an Arlen Specter-alike except switching parties the Bad Way, presaging Specter's move by almost 5 years! A discussion ensues of the relative pros/cons of this party flipflop... and whether it really matters nowadays.

Some other things occur and mostly it's just miserable sacrifices of characters on the altar of convenience depending on the desired narrative. Hard Line Leo comes out punching, CJ gets hit on by an intern, Toby is worried about careerism (lol). Don't watch this one!

S5E5 - A Constituency of One

Ooh a cliffhanger! Know what communicates that to the audience? Overwrought horribly campy sound effects!

We have a ginned up crisis created out of whole cloth by Republican intransigence (surprise!) that is handled by the administration's gumption and willingness to compromise everything they claim to believe in (also surprise!). The chief justice of the supreme court is going gaga as well. This definitely DOES NOT correlate to anything in real life, he says watching three Trump justices tee up the official obliteration of Roe v. Wade.

Abby comes back, we have a new guest star for Horny purposes I think, and this is a real shitty time for the show. 

Music from LCD Soundsystem and Little River Band.

S5E7-8 - Shutdown

Blazing through this season like a wildfire through British Columbia, we're tackling another two episodes in quick succession. Gabby Union makes a spectacular guest appearance not as an East Compton Clover but as a reporter that Charlie screeches from  60 to 0 with for... utterly banal and stupid reasons. It's GABRIELLE. UNION. CHARLIE!

The second episode intones the solemn Fixing of Social Security rite as laid out in the Great Liberal Bargain playbook. Toby gets in trouble FOR EVEN TRYING and then actually succeeds, but we'll never hear about it again because (in the Real World) the grand bargain won't fucking work and is just another pretendo bandaid that the technocrats want to lob back and forth for senior citizen votes.

Music is from Anti-Flag and Bryan Hubert. Happy 4th of July, you should consider planning to stay inside again, COVID's blowing back up and surprise you can catch and carry the infection regardless of your vaccination status! HURRAY

S5E10 Benign News Day

A tremendously JPod-tainted international incident threatens the world stage with a NEW nuclear power! Made up buzzwords like "NuDet" (lmao) sell the drama alongside heavy-handed racist stereotypes of the Islamic world. And then... whoopsy doodle, the Vice President deus ex machinas the entire conceit!

The second episode is about how baby-brained, open-mouth gaping, blinkered and broken, fundamentally NAIVE Leo is about how politics works in this country. Particularly in the defense industry. Particularly with a buddy of his, who he literally used to work WITH in the defense industry. 

Music from Alaclair Ensemble and The Animals today.

S5E11 - Genghis KhAn Khe

We're back to our S5 format: two episodes of... well one episode of utterly puerile naivete regarding the economic orthodoxy that's literally killing your constituency, and one episode of tense as hell cool fuckin thriller-ass bioterrorism interjection. 

In "Talking Points" we have a lot of shit swirling around CJ and Josh with regards to a trade deal. The Prez is captive to Von Mises.

In "No Exit" we have a taut, tight 40 minutes of very good TV which I will unreservedly recommend our listeners watch because it's uncharacteristically poignant. It's about COVID, from 17 years ago, somehow. We get a close-to-Bechdel-passing interaction between CJ and Donna. Wow! 

Music that's incredibly appropriate from Against Me!, Leftumlautover Crack, and The Coup. A little microcosm of 2004 for the heads among us who turned 21 that year. Feeling old, y'all.

S5E15 - Talking Exit

We're bringing season five to a close (finally!) with a bang (literally!). 

A huge mess of orthodox Israel/Palestine takes, with a great guest appearance by Jason Isaacs, hubba hubba woof woof awooooga. Emma, if she listened to our show, would never forgive me for conflating ID4 with Armageddon. 

Fitz dies, Donna does not, and we set ourselves firmly on a track where Leo is losing his grip on the President's foreign policy hawkishness. Frankly... good?

Music from tUne-yaRDs and Malachai on this ep.

S5E16 - Gaza and Finale

Is Delaware even a thing? Has anyone... been to Delaware? Who is Senator Chris "C**ns" Coons? Why are there now TWO government grandpas from there? How??

The reference Stu makes out the gate is to the following tweet:

https://twitter.com/ManuclearBomb/status/1487483303745708040

Anyway this episode is about the fallout of the first American casualties of the fragile peace process that the administration brokered in the I/P conflict. It's also about Matt Santos: Political Wunderkind and then like some shit about Leo that's deeply steeped in a racist, old-man-hates-change type of perspective. 

Music is from clipping. and no Stu doesn't have famous friends.

S6E4 - The Dover Test

When reached for comment, white house communications director Toby Ziegler, recently in hot water for his collar-tuggingly awkward press room flops, just sorta racistly rattled off the following statement:
"China BAD, Asian food WEIRD, politics DUMB, these BROADS AM I RIGHT, protocol CORRECT"

James Taylor is the most bland, tepid, plain icemilk choice for a superstar guest on the show. In classic Democratic Party fashion they put him to bizarre, drop-shipped use coopting a (legitimate, arguably revolutionary) civil rights anthem. Why? Who cares! We're just loading the fuck up on guest stars this week though, blow that budget!

Music from bird and bee covering Van Halen.

S6E5 - A Change Is Gonna Come

Ha ha great descriptor of the administration's COVID protocols in 2022!

Occasionally we see an episode of this show that is just SO alien in even its premises that we have to kinda go "Really?" and this is one of them.

What if... CJ Cregg... were (wait for it, go with me here) a lesbian?

Because she played sports!! DON'T YOU SEE?? SHE'S TALL!

A real artifact of the times, not because of the baseless accusation and needless rumormongering which never stopped infesting the Beltway, but because of the language and the framing deployed around the absolute necessity of denying this claim. We do get to enjoy a brief couple shots of delightful physical comedy, with the desperate camera operators struggling heroically to keep both Annabeth and CJ in frame during a walk n talk. Lmao.

Also like... I dunno some other stuff happens? About what's basically DOMA being attached to the budget proposal, and those damn "queers" yes Leo says that word.

Music is a grainy capture of what is easily Top Ten musical performances ever televised, In Living Color on Arsenio Hall's show. Youtube video of the whole thing is here because it MUST be seen as well as heard (and not compressed/captured/recompressed).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j74mxqvxRDQ

S6E8 - Faith Based Initiative

We're goin on location in New Hampshire, the state that's Important For Some Reason! 

Josh and Matt Santos HIT THE TRAIL, the campaign trail that is! And mill about bouncing their personalities off of one another as they try to get this, heh, "single digit spoiler" campaign off the ground. 

There's an I N C R E D I B L E phone call, a perfect phone call, that me, I made, in the middle of the episode that is absolutely mined as hard as possible for drama. This is extra funny because we've been trying to get my buddy who just had a daughter to name her "12345".

It's The Commodores for music this week because she's mighty mighty. Also I love Rick Moranis so much.

S6E9 - NICE - Opposition Research

Any day now, Iran will do a Bad Thing, and it turns out today was that day in West Wing Universe. Note that of course any response by the international community will only result in Iran doing FURTHER BAD THINGS. 

Always 
Be 
Centrifuging

John Marbury is back and yuck, gross. I'm very tired so I have little further sparkling wit to add to the notes. Music is Ben Britten's War Requiem which might as well be Not-Thatcher's theme song.

S6E12 - The Wake Up Call

Wow, you say that the Colorado River no longer reaches the sea AND Lake Mead is dry? Uh, have you tried No they're not? What if you commissioned a focus group or something?

Cliff Calley is BACK and you can hear Stu develop his opinion on the character as he speaks it to himself aloud lol. Our favorite "Good Republican" is gettin' poached from his cushy corporate job by CJ.

The actual bombshell in this episode is the death of Toby's brother and the subsequent emotional fallout for him.

Music is from Elliott Smith and Benji Hughes

S6E14 - Drought Conditions

This episode marks not only the absolute dregs of fan opinion it's probably, I M H O, the one that actually legitimately represents the show jumping the shark. It's got all the hits: exceptionalism, bad costuming, spontaneous language fluency!

There's rumors that Fidel is dying, just like there's always rumors that Fidel is dying, and so all of a sudden Leo and Kate Harper are like... secret-agent-style operatives doing backchannel diplomacy with Cuba. Hurray! There's an awesome side plot about bugs in the White House, and as a fan of bugs, Stu at least had a brief moment to geek out.

Eliades Ochoa provides the transition music today.

S6E17 - Ninety Miles Away

Fun guest stars abound! Early-00s "atheist" takes mercifully do NOT in this episode, wherein the writers tackle Churchiness and theocrats demanding fealty to both Heavenly and Earthly power in the most kid (literally) gloves fashion possible. 

The ongoing explication of Senator Vinick's Good Republican status must of course include a healthy dose of what was acceptable in 2005 to write about not believing in AR-15 Jesus. The extent of that acceptability is "I used to go to church but then my wife died so I don't now." and this is where we leave it. Naturally President Dad makes an extended appearance to play Punch to this particular Judy and reaffirm handwringing audience members that lol no of course a God-fearing NBC writer wouldn't ACTUALLY criticize the big man upstairs...

Patricia Richardson CAN have it all as a Working Mom! All you need is TWO PHONES and a willingness to never sleep or have a single unproductive moment.

Slayer on the transition again :)

S6E18 - In God We Trust

OMG we're back!!

To finish season 6 FINALLY FUCK YOU SHOW. 

Neither moves nor covid nor laze of brain shall keep us from finishing this accursed project.

Music by Rush

S6E20 - 2162 Votes

We're back baby! We made it... two two-week periods in a row! Fuck yeah.

Wish I had anything even approaching as positive a reaction to the material we consider in the first episode of the 7th season of this show. It's bad, folks! I'm so bored, I do not care about how you think campaigning needs to go or what logistics are where or even really about the damn space shuttle. Americans WILL NOT CARE, I promise!!

RIP to a living legend, Christine McVie passed (not of covid, even) like right after we published our last cast. Tremendous talent, immortalized in classic era Fleetwood Mac easily sharing the stage with other titans.

S7E1 - Da Ticket

No not THAT problem you SICKOS

Another tedious day-in-the-campaign-life episode focusing on Matt Santos checking demographic boxes and generally cleaving to the most anodyne Political Operative Wisdom possible. Thank goodness their team now has both Janeane Garofalo and Marlee Matlin on it I guess, guest star power!!

This is when the absolutely most bizarre "controversy" pops up and oh man is this some literal perverse sickos shit. A physically broken bed that is... scandalous. Because the Santoses just FUCK TOO HARD.

Otherwise uhhhh... some stuff happens? They fight about the campaign and the current administration. 

Don't catch COVID and if you do don't fucking deliberately expose your family. Be the next D: Gain 40 pounds, have an intact endothelial layer in every single one of your blood vessels, and sound EVEN BETTER than when you're singing out!

S7E2 - The Mommy Problem

If you're innocent you have nothing to hide so don't worry about defending yourself or using whatever meager power still remains to you!! Even if that's a Shitload of Power, because you're one of the highest-ranking public officials in the history of the world! Just be cool man, I thought you were cool!

hahahahahaha

Was (Not Was) and George Michael doing a Queen song today.

S7E4 - Mr. Frost

This track includes the episode running in the background of our commentary, if you don't have access to it!

Well, as the West Wing ran out of sauce down the stretch, beset by better television (... marginally better, in the case of Crossing Jordan) on all sides and lacking its initial writers-room oomph, the producers started grasping at straws. This is one of them!!

Dave and I do a live-react listening to the Live Broadcast West Wing episode, filmed in front of a studio audience and broadcast twice in real time, once for the East Coast and again later in the evening for the Hollywood Sickos. 

It sucks equally in both versions! We have film of the 43 minute version, not the 50 minute version, so if you're watching along, make sure you have the correct recording!

S7E7 - The Debate (With Episode Backing)

This track leaves out the episode running in the background, in case you have your copy and want to watch along without duplicating the soundtrack!

Well, as the West Wing ran out of sauce down the stretch, beset by better television (... marginally better, in the case of Crossing Jordan) on all sides and lacking its initial writers-room oomph, the producers started grasping at straws. This is one of them!!

Dave and I do a live-react listening to the Live Broadcast West Wing episode, filmed in front of a studio audience and broadcast twice in real time, once for the East Coast and again later in the evening for the Hollywood Sickos.

It sucks equally in both versions! We have film of the 43 minute version, not the 50 minute version, so if you're watching along, make sure you have the correct recording!

Music from Dream Theater cuz boy howdy doesn't the cyclical succ cycle of liberal ideology just repeat and repeat and repeat

S7E7 - The Debate (Clean No Backing)

These episodes are a slog and a half so we're back to throwing two together at one go, and conveniently, these tidy up the Ellie Bartlet Wedding arc which is tropeish and irritating!

We solve racism with a speech, surprise! 

A nice soothing authoritative President Dad approach to a(nother) World War 3 type situation which is not communicated to the viewer as serious because there is far, FAR too much other garbage going on.

Inching closer to the finish line here.

S7E8 - Undecided The Wedding

Welcome back to more campaign shit that I don't give a fuck about!! With a side helping of "whoa hang on there's still an entire administration in the White House currently?? uh... let's do... World War!"

The first episode starts with a direct-to-camera tribute to John Spencer from Martin Sheen. So, we're closing down the arc of Leo being alive IRL. But... not yet! He's still kicking in the show's world!!

These episodes are dogshit from a butt and don't warrant much more discussion than what we ramble through in the proceeding *checks* too many minutes. Matt Santos goes home and get scandaled. Then Kate and CJ do a major international thing. Danny exists and CJ is a jerk both to him and to a waitress.

I will now sell four copies of The Three EPs by the Beta Band, because I went the kind route with the transition instead of quadrupling down on the Sisqo option.

S7E9 - Running Mates & Something ELse idk whatever

Come bother me about end-to-end emissions and material processing eCO2 incursions if u wanna get wrecked about nuclear power. So sorry there hasn't been a miraculously ~*mArKEt baSeD sOLuTioN*~ to getting perovskites into every PV cell somehow! We coulda been casting containment buildings for gen3 reactors and trebling down on thorium reprocessing technology for the last 20 years instead of using that concrete to pave over swamps and enable more cars to exist or... I dunno fucking turning OTHER ELECTRICITY into BITCOIN. 

Fuck me, but also just turn your brain off and watch this first episode because it's paced and shot well. 

And then don't bother with the second one, it's snooze-worthy to the max. Something about great power cold-warrior-brain conventional warfare? Lol.

Nukes good fuck you eminent domain Yucca Mountain and let me design the mitigation system!! I'll do it for a sixer of PBR and a bowl of ramen.

I've never heard this paul simon song before!

S7E10 - Duck The Cold

I am so ready for this to be over. If only WE were two weeks out, rather than... 7 more episodes so let's call it four more recording sessions that will probably land between now and October for a nice round 5 year experience.

Please, listener, spare yourself and do not watch these episodes.

Music is from Keb Mo

S7E11 - Two Weeks Out You Are

Hi, yeah, first time long time: does Bruno close the deal? 

This one's for the true sickos among us, full of polls Polls POLLS energy and quite a bit of hornt, as the election unfolds over 90 relatively harmless minutes of campaign staff interactions.

Let the careerist jockeying... BEGIN

Music from A.C. Newman.

S7E12 - ELECTION DAY

OK now that the show has wrapped up, congrats to Matt Santos on being the new prez, time to

wait what the fuck there's still 5 goddamn episodes left?? IT'S ALL SO STUPID.

RIP to Sinead O'Connor, this one hit me hard for whatever reason
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbre5Fs9m8I

S7E13 - Requiem for a Transition

As we close the show down, senioritis sets in not only amongst the outgoing administration, but among your intrepid hosts who spent most of the recording session crosstalking and stepping on each other's bits!!

It's a fine thing to try to address the absolutely Kafkaesque disaster of being an incredibly powerful woman navigating a male-dominated industry. It's a bad thing to do so by setting her up with multiple Male Saviors and having her pick one!

By contrast we do get funny glimpses of Helen Santos being pigeonholed into traditionally-female-coded roles at the White House and, if not explicitly pushing back on them, being absolutely bewildered by their necessity.

I am working 11 to 7 and I think Dave's still on nights so we included another Dolly banger this time around.

S7E14 - The Last Hurrah for Memory

It's been a long, slogging trail through this show and so we have The Last Episode for you here (spoiler it's bad). We also spend another 20 minutes or so musing poorly and waxing misunderstood philosophically about the impact of the show on the culture at large, on Aaron Sorkin himself, and on future projects.

We will probably get back together to do an auxiliary ep on Studio 60, and then we might take another tack going forward that's a bit more relaxed and less... awful.

Thank you for listening! It will all come back to you, in the ennnnnd.

S7E15 - Tomorrow Never Dies

Stu and Dave introduce their concept and critique of The West Wing. This episode is the kindest we will be to a show beloved by liberals that, while occasionally entertaining and possibly well-crafted, should not define the political imagination of an entire god damn generation of Americans in the way it currently does.

The Worst Wing Episode 0 - Introduction

Stu and Dave tackle the premier of the seminal television show The West Wing, express solidarity with Lisa Edelstein, and ponder the media tropes of D.C. power brokers.

The Worst Wing Episode 1 - "Pilot"

You're in for a treat this week as we are joined by our very first guest star, a woman who I count as fully half of the inspiration for undertaking this quixotic revisitation of this dumb show in the first place.

The Women of Qumar is an obvious attempt at expiation and atonement by Aaron Sorkin for his consistently gross and patronizing portrayal of women in his show's canon. Because he's an inveterate Xoomer, this attempt falls flat on its face and is infuriating in two respects. One, in that it clearly fails to vest ANY extant female character with agency and capacity to pursue an agenda independent of the administration's line. Two, in that the nominally "powerful" character being introduced is CLEARLY a vector to allow for additional throwaway plot lines centered around Josh Lyman Love Interests that are not Donna Moss. 

Amy Gardner is, frankly, a great character, and probably the character other than Seth Gillette who cleaves most closely to our personal politics in the show. She was an inspiration at the time for  badass women to participate in our disgusting excuse for a democracy. Not the least of whom is my wife Emma, and she joins us today for a fresh look at the show from a die-hard fan. 

The article I mention in our wrap-up can be found at:

https://nplusonemag.com/issue-35/essays/cashconsent/

And it's truly spectacular, please give it a read. 

Music today from Propagandhi, The Distillers, and Dragonette.

S3E8 - The Women of Qumar feat. Emma DT

Another meandering episode capped off with what Aaron Sorkin probably thinks of some sort of deep, meaningful self-critique contained within his art, but that comes across as navelgazing and baseless.

I've been hanging drywall all week and I don't have the energy to put more words here. songs from Nico Vega, Not On Tour, and Tool (come at me haters).

S4E9 - Arctic Radar

Another soporific entry in the stumbling post-first-episode fourth season. More bible-finding, more inexplicable character trait reassignment, and we promise only about 4 minutes of ELECTION TALK because this was recorded before JoeB!'s victory was codified by the media. Thank god we have CNN to let us know when our chief executive officially wins election?

Anyway stay safe and do not stop screaming about how shit the world is. Maybe take a breath until Monday, I guess, let the libs get their jollies. 

This week is the 45th anniversary of the Edmund Fitzgerald sinking with all hands lost in Lake Superior, an event that, growing up in Michigan in the 90s, was basically our 9/11. Music from Gordon Lightfoot and also a throwaway song from Two Door Cinema Club.

S4E13 - Inauguration Part Two

An episode-by-episode breakdown of Aaron Sorkin's seminal work from a modern leftist perspective.

The Worst Wing Podcast

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