Some kind of vestigial work ethic seems to have overtaken me in the last week or two.

West Wing! That was a great season-ender. It speaks volumes for Sorkin's ability to suck me into his world that the entire "ripped from the headlines" cheesiness of the "Zoe gets kidnapped" plot didn't occur to me until three days after I saw the first half of this arc.

I loathe those shows that scream RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES!!!! at you during commercials. I go to television to escape from reality or, in some cases, to get a context for what's happening in the world but I have serious doubts about whether or not a cop show or lawyer show would treat its RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES!!!! material with enough honesty and accuracy to qualify as "educational" in my book.

WW, in spite of being impossibly idealized, is educational. (There's no way they could cover the real, messy details of political life in an hour show. Each plot point would have to cover three episodes.) It's also enthralling, engrossing, and fascinating.

Charlie! Josh! Toby! POTUS! And Leo! "Leo will know what to do."

How can I wait months to see the rest of this? How can the rest of it possibly measure up if it isn't written by Sorkin?

Am I the only one wondering if Sam is biting his nails and wishing he was in the White House now that his friends are having all of this trauma and really need him?

Does he feel out of the loop, lost and alone? Does he lose sleep over these things?

Did he win his election?

I also wonder how Hoynes is taking it, realizing how much POTUS needs him right now and realizing that his own idiocy not only took him him out of his party's running for the next nomination but probably handed the next presidency to the other party into the bargain?

What do they do to members of foreign royalty who thought they were taking, and sharing, illegal drugs but who turn out to be the victims of terrorists? Probably just send them home and never issue them another visa until said royalty wants to come back to the country and has some kind of political or economic clout that someone in the Administration wants to take advantage of. (I know. "Cynical much?")

I've read a lot of people who thought that Frenchie was Part Of the Plot, but I never thought so.

It's a pity they cast John Goodman as the temporary president. Not that I have anything against him except that the only think I know about him is that he was one Roseanne and I used to flip past that show ASAP since I don't find "slob humor" at all humorous.

I suppose if I say the guy needs to drop a couple of hundred pounds before he keels over dead from congestive heart failure I suppose I'll start a huge war about me being bigoted or something, but that guys' size was scary, okay?

Anyhow, I'm sorry they cast him because while it's easy enough to bring on a guy who plays the Hostile Heavy-handed Replacement and who turns out to be an honest man who does the right thing even when it's not his personal choice, I think it would have been a lot more interesting to bring on someone more low-key and then have him either appear to be cooperative and turn out to be two-faced, or have the staff try and walk on him and have the whole "I'm in charge!" outburst come a bit later.

This coming in and laying down the law fast is the right way to take temporary control, don't get me wrong, but dramatically it was predictable.

I'm just saying, okay? Everything they've done with Replacement Guy (I have to learn his name) I predicted the instant we heard what '25' was and that the guy was a Republican. Except for not knowing it was Goodman, I "saw" the whole thing play out in two seconds in my brain.

Without Sorkin, I fear the wrap-up of this plotline won't be subtle enough to surprise and please me.

Spike BtVS!

I've been very good about not boring y'all with this lately, haven't I?