I completely agree. I listened to the entire West Wing Weekly podcast and apparently a lot of his work and especially WW is being perceived this way by a decent amount of people.
making a woman the audience stand in doesn't really refute any criticism and might support it tbh i find the critiques of his ability to write women much flimsier in the WW world than his other works though
I think some of the criticism is warranted. That said, I think Donna is a device for exposition as well as to demonstrate the fact Josh is a douche. I think there's a turning point in Donna's story and things resolve relatively well.
Those walk and talks are the equivalent of Adam McKay throwing celebrities into The Big Short to explain finance/stock market ideas, only way more subtle.
I get the critique with WW and Donna, but he used Charlie in a similar way a number of times with Bartlett. The difference was that Charlie was made to be a perfect human being while Donna had a bunch of flaky moments where it's understandable that some in the audience might think she was stupid. I think that was the bigger issue with Donna than just her being the audience stand in.
Good to see him moving around so well without the cane. We've made a lot of strides against MS over the last 14 years.
That was the first scene of the west wing that I ever saw. I was just flipping channels and it was on, and I was hooked. Turned out to be a different show than I expected but still obviously great.
Stage performance/reading of Hartsfield's Landing. Part of Michelle Obama's voting awareness non-profit.
Am curious what the relationship is like now between Sorkin and Lowe. Saw an interview with John Wells from a few years ago where he talks about Sorkin's issues in season four were mostly centered around (or at least started with) "wanting to fire one actor who was unhappy with his contract and got to the point that he just stopped writing for him," and later said that actor did not stick around. Lowe is the only person who fits that description.
According to the west wing weekly podcast, they seem to be on good terms now and have been for a while, but there certainly was some contention between them back during season 4
The way Wells told the story, it sounded like pretty much everyone on the cast was done with Lowe by the end of his run because of the contract thing. I imagine a lot of that was because he was already making the most of everyone, if I'm not mistaken.
isn't it that Lowe was hired under the impression he was the star then the show quickly became about all the characters relatively equally? I imagine his contract negotiations reflected that reality when it came time to negotiate going from star to a piece of an ensemble
I have no clue what Lowe originally thought, but everything I've ever seen/read has suggested it was always about the ensemble. Only thing that seemed different was the president got a much bigger part once they brought Sheen in. Lowe's always seemed to jump from one thing to the next, though.
Yeah, it was something like that. After the show became a hit, the rest of the cast got a big raise. When Lowe asked about his, the network pretty much said you’ve had your raise since the beginning
He got mad when he found out Sheen was making nearly 3 times as much as he was per episode, while the rest of the cast got their salaries boosted to match Lowe basically. Rob wanted a bump and didn’t get it.
I get the reason. And I love Sterling Brown. The only weirdness for me will be that he's so much younger than pretty much everyone in the cast. Considering Leo is probably close to, if not older than, Bartlett in the series; him having the same air of respect from the rest of the staff is a little lost. I mean, he's younger than Dule Hill.
I didn’t realize it was remake, thought it was a new episode. I saw him listed in the tweet and saw he was playing Leo and found it odd. I think he’s great, but will be odd to see a younger Leo. Regardless excited to watch.
My wife doesn't know that Leo's actor(name escapes me and I'm not going to look it up) died. And she definitely doesn't know that he dies during the series(we're right around the special's episode in season 3 right now).
Sorkin has said the original intention was for the show to be centered around the Seaborn character and the president was going to be an unseen or very minor character.
I remember Lowe and Whitford having small Twitter arguments during these recent heightened political times (very liberal whitford and either conservative or indifferent Lowe). I guess they just leave it in the twitterverse.
Whitford and Josh Malina’s twitter burn sessions have gotten stale. It was funny at first but come on
Sorkin was just on Lowe’s podcast this past week and says he will come back on soon. They seemed pretty close to me.