• this is when the campaign plot really starts
• Matt Santos be like: I’m not running for Congress...but I’ll run for President
• the white title cards always reminds me of Greys Anatomy
• ah the good ol days before GPS
• how I never noticed Ronna was gay from this episode alone I have no idea
• all the candidates offer to take out people’s recycling?
• the volunteer stopping at the dry cleaners
“Sorry I- my mom asked me to pick up the dry cleaning on our way.” lmao
• oh Liz and Doug are in this?? god this is when Doug’s an ass to Santos at that diner
• the Bob Russell cutout noo
• “Mind if one of my deputies sits in?”
• aw Donna did this little shrug and smile after Josh told her “it’s not a thing.”
• Liz Bartlet be like “I don’t want a life of politics. Wait yes I do. But for my husband. Not me. But I’ll be the brains behind almost everything. But I won’t get the credit.”
• lmao Doug what the hell is Franco American?
• Doug: why don’t you apologize to the voters?
• oh yeah Santos is about to give a speech to old people but the oldest voter dies
• so Will didn’t leak the quote but he’s trying to get Josh to come work for him?
• “Sorry about what happened with Doug. You ever have daughters, Josh, don't let them run off and marry pinheads.”
• damn he burned the numbers
• oh yep I remembered it correctly. Santos doesn’t believe he can become president, that he only has a certain amount of months in the primaries
• I love that that Liz makes a contribution to the Santos campaign knowing it will become public information and will affect Bartlet in some way (I’m assuming Doug knew she did that? eh, screw him)
• the white title card is a comment that this isn’t like most West Wing episodes
• most of the series regulars (Leo CJ Charlie Abbey and Kate) aren’t in this episode. This is the first episode without John Spencer.
• this episode was filmed in Toronto, Canada
• the song playing in the car while Josh and Santos are driving to the headquarters is a just a little moment of some music that’s not motivated by something (an event or background music at a bar) and that’s not usually something we encounter.
• Santos and Josh should’ve had a discussion before going to New Hampshire about what their approach was going to be to avoid all the conflict and fighting.
“To their credit, Santos does say that, he says, you know, “Maybe that's what we should have talked about in Houston.” It makes you think - how short of a conversation was it? Did it...was it really as long as what we saw in the episode? He just comes in and says, “I want you to run for president.” And he's like, “See you later!”
“Right. “Okay, I'll meet you in New Hampshire.”
• The first time we saw Ronna, she was played by a different actress and her name was pronounced Rona (Row-nah)
“I guess it would have been a much bigger deal to suddenly have Janel's character pronounced Doh-nah. They probably figured fewer people will notice if we change Row-nah's name to Ronna.”
• Will brings Donna out when Josh goes to meet with him to show their shared history together, and make it easier to propose a clean campaign.
• Santos seems to think there isn’t a chance of him winning. This is along the same lines of what Bartlet said back in season 3.
I was never supposed to win. I got in it polling in the single digits. Hoynes had it locked up. I got in it to give some speeches and keep him honest.
• “Doug Westin is the worst though.”
Liz is sharp and smart, so why is she with him?
• Both Bartlet and Liz try to help Santos’s campaign. Bartlet by giving Josh numbers on education, saying Santos should hit him on how little he’s done, and Liz publicly donating to the campaign.
Like father, like daughter. Damn now I wanna see a show where Liz is in politics.
• Eli Attie wrote this episode. He said it came across as too heavy for him, and some gags and prop humor from the script were cut by the director because they were hard to execute.
• “Eli said that he had some prop jokes that got cut out, but the best prop jokes are the cutout.” 🤦🏽♀️
That Russell cut out was ridiculous.
