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eloriekamI'm not happy with the post-ep; I just ran out of my something.
Leo slowly stepped back into the hallway, catching Josh's worried eye before he caught hold of the glossy handle that was one of the doors to the Roosevelt Room.
'I'm going to blow them off the face of the earth with the fury of God's own thunder...'
Such astounding determination, and it was going to be stymied, and it was pointed in the wrong direction anyway. Sure, Tolliver was a loss. The others were a loss. They were sisters and brothers and mothers and fathers and sons and daughters and husbands and wives... but they could not respond with such self-righteous fury. Not against Syria; probably not against anyone.
He just wished now that he hadn't looked at the picture of Tolliver's little girl. What was her name? Corey? And Angela, with whom the President was almost certainly speaking now.
"Leo?" Josh voiced the question in that single word, and Sam and Toby turned their focus away from discussing the inevitable statement and to him.
"We're here to work, not talk about the President's mood," he tried to evade.
"He knew one of them, Leo," Sam observed. "The President had a physical from this guy, and now he's dead."
"Yeah. You're working on a statement?"
Sam, still in the same suit he'd been wearing at the staff meeting twenty hours earlier, tugged his tie a little bit looser and glanced at Toby. "We're going to work on it, yeah."
"Sam..."
"This is the first time," Toby cut in. "The first time... it'll be done." He swiveled his own eyes in the direction of the Oval Office. "My only question is whether it will in any way reflect the President's stand on having a plane carrying U.S. military personnel shot down by Syria."
"He feels strongly about it," Leo answered. That was an understatement, but he wasn't going to repeat any variation of the President's words. That first, unguarded, terrible reaction stayed between them; a confidence between two old friends, between the President and his Chief of Staff. I am not frightened...
Josh's casual attire did nothing to disguise the way he straightened in alarm. "What's he going to do?"
"He's speaking to the widow, and then he's going to talk to some guys, and probably go down to the Situation Room, Josh."
"I meant to Syria."
"He's going to respond in accordance with previous retaliations against these kinds of attacks."
Josh's eyebrows quirked in dismay, and he leveled a skeptical expression at Leo. Toby and Sam leaned against the other side of the table a little bit, watching too. The same qualities that enabled the President to joke around with his staff so freely were right now acting against his ability to lead, in ways they hadn't thought of earlier.
Suddenly, the Ryder Cup thing and A3C3 and Hoynes looked awfully small against this issue that would test this President's international capabilities. Was he capable of the same reasoning to restraint as his predecessors?
Finally, Leo rubbed his eyes and looked at Toby. "You're going to make sure CJ's prepped for the briefing?"
"Yeah. She'll know what to answer, what not to answer, and what to pass off to State and Defense."
With that, they decisively moved on, but some little prickle hinted that they were about to see their President more furious than they had ever seen him.
Mandy can be what I think is frequently called a bitch. But she just sounds that way because she's a woman who is also a political player; what sounds forceful and logical coming from a man sounds not quite as serious, somehow, coming from a woman, and she's gotten extra-forceful to compensate for that, I suppose.
Josh/Donna--she's heard keg of glory before. If she hadn't, she wouldn't have said 'It's gonna be an unbearable day'. We see something about Josh here, that he needs to take a bow and be 'da man' and strut a little bit, especially for something that could have been tough. In any case, if you really wanted to stretch it, you could make this a Josh/Donna moment, because she knows him well enough to realize when he's going to be drinking from the keg of glory the whole day. Not that CJ's expression when Donna says that in the outer Oval isn't priceless, but Donna just *knows*.
Credits-let me meta Sam being at the start, right after the POTUS seal. I know it's because of Rob Lowe, but the![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
seabornforprez in me says, oh, that means something. Then the moving shot of Sam is one we never see, but it's a different expression than we ever really see from him. The thoughtful gaze at the desk. Mandy is head-up, assertive, fiesty and determined. There's something inherently quiet about CJ, even though the podium shot is just as assertive as the one of Mandy leaning against Josh's office door. Toby isn't going to stop for anything, and as the series goes on, we find out just what he's not going to stop for... and what he's not going to stand for. He is a man of complex body language, and in those two shots there is what could be called discomfort. Leo is older, studious, and focused. The staff is kinetic; Leo's sitting there looking at things. Josh is a doer; he's in motion and assertive, but differently than the others. The President is older, tired, determined, and that shot at the desk shows the fire in his eyes to do something, one that he can infuse his staff with when he chooses. Then the shot of him at the podium, with CJ, Toby, and Leo looking on. Leo and Toby always came off as surprised to me; Leo's looking at the President, and Toby's looking at whatever poor sap asked the question that's making the President smile like that. CJ's watching the President, but differently than Leo; Leo looks a little freaked out, as he does in the Nashua town hall, like he's not sure about all this, and CJ's watching like she expects something. Then there's a shot of them all in the Oval, doing that teamwork thing. This is also the only episode with the balloons shot, and while I don't really notice it now, I did the first time, as though it were something beautiful. The music is different these first few as well; it's stately, and a little more quiet, but it's still Snuffy Walden's theme, and there have been some episodes where I've wished we still had it. It makes me cry even more than the other theme does sometimes.
Leo is absolutely hilarious when Josh is trying to translate the Latin in the Oval. Go watch. Then they're both funny after Leo translates it.
During the senior staff meeting, it almost seems as though the President doesn't really care about some things. He's sort of flippant, even though he randomly descends into geekiness and zings CJ about why they lost Texas. The President is a contradiction here, and we see that later during his conversation with Tolliver about the Joint Chiefs. Such intelligence with such humor, and while it's not out of a disrespect for the office, it seems like he's treating being President like just another thing. I can't quite put my finger on it, though. Any thoughts?
They're stumbling a little with focus and what they should be doing, as Toby and Josh discuss with regard to getting a media director. It's visible that these people want to do something, and they're frustrated by their leader as much as they love him. This is something we really see develop over the first season; as I noted with regard to the opening credits, the staff is very kinetic, and yet sometimes I get the feeling watching them that I'm looking at people running in place.
'Sam, did you maybe want to close the door?' Hee. Hehehe. Beautiful. This tells us that Sam is a man of ideals, high-flown and wanting a world where they work, and already living in that world himself to some extent.
Hoynes is a jerk... and, you know, when I watched reruns on Bravo, before I ever met John Hoynes, I thought Leo was the Vice President. The conflict is visible and it's almost as though Leo's standing in front of the President and making Hoynes focus the conflict on him instead. But he's really well and truly stronger, and the President is one of the few people for whom he will unleash that strength--'I'll win, and you'll spend the rest of your life playing celebrity golf.'
Well, at least I got further than I did for the Pilot before I ran out of words, or forgot part of the episode. I think I really did forget some words, because the way the President's expression changes when Leo tells him about Tolliver is absolutely fascinating, right down to the way the golden light keeps reflecting off his eyes, and yet I can't quite name the expressions. Leo, however, seems almost overwhelmed, even frightened, by the President's vehemence; a vehemence that is ironic given his statement to Tolliver earlier about not feeling violent towards their enemies.
Leo slowly stepped back into the hallway, catching Josh's worried eye before he caught hold of the glossy handle that was one of the doors to the Roosevelt Room.
'I'm going to blow them off the face of the earth with the fury of God's own thunder...'
Such astounding determination, and it was going to be stymied, and it was pointed in the wrong direction anyway. Sure, Tolliver was a loss. The others were a loss. They were sisters and brothers and mothers and fathers and sons and daughters and husbands and wives... but they could not respond with such self-righteous fury. Not against Syria; probably not against anyone.
He just wished now that he hadn't looked at the picture of Tolliver's little girl. What was her name? Corey? And Angela, with whom the President was almost certainly speaking now.
"Leo?" Josh voiced the question in that single word, and Sam and Toby turned their focus away from discussing the inevitable statement and to him.
"We're here to work, not talk about the President's mood," he tried to evade.
"He knew one of them, Leo," Sam observed. "The President had a physical from this guy, and now he's dead."
"Yeah. You're working on a statement?"
Sam, still in the same suit he'd been wearing at the staff meeting twenty hours earlier, tugged his tie a little bit looser and glanced at Toby. "We're going to work on it, yeah."
"Sam..."
"This is the first time," Toby cut in. "The first time... it'll be done." He swiveled his own eyes in the direction of the Oval Office. "My only question is whether it will in any way reflect the President's stand on having a plane carrying U.S. military personnel shot down by Syria."
"He feels strongly about it," Leo answered. That was an understatement, but he wasn't going to repeat any variation of the President's words. That first, unguarded, terrible reaction stayed between them; a confidence between two old friends, between the President and his Chief of Staff. I am not frightened...
Josh's casual attire did nothing to disguise the way he straightened in alarm. "What's he going to do?"
"He's speaking to the widow, and then he's going to talk to some guys, and probably go down to the Situation Room, Josh."
"I meant to Syria."
"He's going to respond in accordance with previous retaliations against these kinds of attacks."
Josh's eyebrows quirked in dismay, and he leveled a skeptical expression at Leo. Toby and Sam leaned against the other side of the table a little bit, watching too. The same qualities that enabled the President to joke around with his staff so freely were right now acting against his ability to lead, in ways they hadn't thought of earlier.
Suddenly, the Ryder Cup thing and A3C3 and Hoynes looked awfully small against this issue that would test this President's international capabilities. Was he capable of the same reasoning to restraint as his predecessors?
Finally, Leo rubbed his eyes and looked at Toby. "You're going to make sure CJ's prepped for the briefing?"
"Yeah. She'll know what to answer, what not to answer, and what to pass off to State and Defense."
With that, they decisively moved on, but some little prickle hinted that they were about to see their President more furious than they had ever seen him.
Mandy can be what I think is frequently called a bitch. But she just sounds that way because she's a woman who is also a political player; what sounds forceful and logical coming from a man sounds not quite as serious, somehow, coming from a woman, and she's gotten extra-forceful to compensate for that, I suppose.
Josh/Donna--she's heard keg of glory before. If she hadn't, she wouldn't have said 'It's gonna be an unbearable day'. We see something about Josh here, that he needs to take a bow and be 'da man' and strut a little bit, especially for something that could have been tough. In any case, if you really wanted to stretch it, you could make this a Josh/Donna moment, because she knows him well enough to realize when he's going to be drinking from the keg of glory the whole day. Not that CJ's expression when Donna says that in the outer Oval isn't priceless, but Donna just *knows*.
Credits-let me meta Sam being at the start, right after the POTUS seal. I know it's because of Rob Lowe, but the
seabornforprez in me says, oh, that means something. Then the moving shot of Sam is one we never see, but it's a different expression than we ever really see from him. The thoughtful gaze at the desk. Mandy is head-up, assertive, fiesty and determined. There's something inherently quiet about CJ, even though the podium shot is just as assertive as the one of Mandy leaning against Josh's office door. Toby isn't going to stop for anything, and as the series goes on, we find out just what he's not going to stop for... and what he's not going to stand for. He is a man of complex body language, and in those two shots there is what could be called discomfort. Leo is older, studious, and focused. The staff is kinetic; Leo's sitting there looking at things. Josh is a doer; he's in motion and assertive, but differently than the others. The President is older, tired, determined, and that shot at the desk shows the fire in his eyes to do something, one that he can infuse his staff with when he chooses. Then the shot of him at the podium, with CJ, Toby, and Leo looking on. Leo and Toby always came off as surprised to me; Leo's looking at the President, and Toby's looking at whatever poor sap asked the question that's making the President smile like that. CJ's watching the President, but differently than Leo; Leo looks a little freaked out, as he does in the Nashua town hall, like he's not sure about all this, and CJ's watching like she expects something. Then there's a shot of them all in the Oval, doing that teamwork thing. This is also the only episode with the balloons shot, and while I don't really notice it now, I did the first time, as though it were something beautiful. The music is different these first few as well; it's stately, and a little more quiet, but it's still Snuffy Walden's theme, and there have been some episodes where I've wished we still had it. It makes me cry even more than the other theme does sometimes.Leo is absolutely hilarious when Josh is trying to translate the Latin in the Oval. Go watch. Then they're both funny after Leo translates it.
During the senior staff meeting, it almost seems as though the President doesn't really care about some things. He's sort of flippant, even though he randomly descends into geekiness and zings CJ about why they lost Texas. The President is a contradiction here, and we see that later during his conversation with Tolliver about the Joint Chiefs. Such intelligence with such humor, and while it's not out of a disrespect for the office, it seems like he's treating being President like just another thing. I can't quite put my finger on it, though. Any thoughts?
They're stumbling a little with focus and what they should be doing, as Toby and Josh discuss with regard to getting a media director. It's visible that these people want to do something, and they're frustrated by their leader as much as they love him. This is something we really see develop over the first season; as I noted with regard to the opening credits, the staff is very kinetic, and yet sometimes I get the feeling watching them that I'm looking at people running in place.
'Sam, did you maybe want to close the door?' Hee. Hehehe. Beautiful. This tells us that Sam is a man of ideals, high-flown and wanting a world where they work, and already living in that world himself to some extent.
Hoynes is a jerk... and, you know, when I watched reruns on Bravo, before I ever met John Hoynes, I thought Leo was the Vice President. The conflict is visible and it's almost as though Leo's standing in front of the President and making Hoynes focus the conflict on him instead. But he's really well and truly stronger, and the President is one of the few people for whom he will unleash that strength--'I'll win, and you'll spend the rest of your life playing celebrity golf.'
Well, at least I got further than I did for the Pilot before I ran out of words, or forgot part of the episode. I think I really did forget some words, because the way the President's expression changes when Leo tells him about Tolliver is absolutely fascinating, right down to the way the golden light keeps reflecting off his eyes, and yet I can't quite name the expressions. Leo, however, seems almost overwhelmed, even frightened, by the President's vehemence; a vehemence that is ironic given his statement to Tolliver earlier about not feeling violent towards their enemies.
