{"id":10861,"date":"2013-04-04T13:50:30","date_gmt":"2013-04-04T03:50:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=10861"},"modified":"2013-04-04T13:55:48","modified_gmt":"2013-04-04T03:55:48","slug":"tv-show-round-up-the-west-wing-season-four-survivor-fans-versus-favourites-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=10861","title":{"rendered":"TV Show Round Up:  The West Wing Season Four, Survivor: Fans Versus Favourites II"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>The West Wing Season Four<\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?attachment_id=10862\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-10862\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-10862\" alt=\"westwing4\" src=\"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/westwing4.jpg\" width=\"630\" height=\"311\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/westwing4.jpg 630w, http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/westwing4-300x148.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">The fourth season of <em>The West Wing<\/em> sees the show continue on as strong as ever.\u00a0 It is however, notable for bringing a close to the Aaron Sorkin years on the show as he left at the end of the season due to disagreements with Warner Bros.\u00a0 The show also loses Rob Lowe midway through the season.\u00a0 As I understand it, Lowe was first brought onto <em>The West Wing<\/em> with the intention of using him as its lead actor.\u00a0 His actual role as Sam Seaborne ended up being significantly marginalized and so he opted to leave to pursue other work.\u00a0 He gets replaced by Joshua Malina as Will Bailey in a role that initially is written almost as a facsimile of the Sam Seaborne character.\u00a0 Thankfully, he goes on to become his own person later on.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">The season starts off very strongly with the double feature <em>20 Hours In America<\/em>.\u00a0 It&#8217;s a fun start to the season that sees Donna, Josh and Toby out of the office and stuck in Indiana at a campaign stop.\u00a0 While Leo tries to contain the news breaking out of an American assassination of a Qumari official, the rest of the episode is focused on the Bartlet Administration developing their &#8216;bigger picture&#8217; ideas for their potential second term.\u00a0 The episode finishes with one of those awesome Martin Sheen moments as he gives a stirring speech in response to the bombing of a college swim meet.\u00a0 The writing is classic Sorkin and has that wonderful &#8216;the streets of heaven are too crowded with angels tonight&#8217; line that I love.\u00a0 And Sheen just delivers the speech like a total champion.\u00a0 There&#8217;s a reason why people want a real life Jed Bartlett for president.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/XQWxgnFc1fk\" height=\"473\" width=\"630\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>I think the best parts of Season Four are the heated and passionate exchanges between the staff in the administration when they debate policy and attempt to overcome a crisis.\u00a0 By now, the actors have really fleshed out the nuances of their characters so there is a sense of understanding and expectation from the viewer on who takes which side.\u00a0 In general, Toby and Josh remain shrewd and astute policymakers who understand what is required to pass a bill and take a pragmatic approach to accomplishing &#8216;the greater good&#8217;, even if it means making some concessions to the Republicans along the way.\u00a0 By comparison, CJ Cregg, the administration&#8217;s social conscience, is increasingly uncomfortable with some of the decisions that Jed and Leo make, whether it is related to the Qumari assassination or the inaction taken by the administration during an African genocide.\u00a0 In most Western countries, I believe that there is typically a broad uniform consensus on what it means to be a conservative which is why they typically comprise a powerful voting block.\u00a0 The political spectrum for being a liberal is much wider and so its fascinating to see the cases put forth internally from the Bartlett Administration.\u00a0 And of course individual characters will have their own policies that they are particularly passionate about.\u00a0 Women&#8217;s rights for Amy Gardner, gun crime for Charlie, mental health for CJ and so on.<\/p>\n<p>The weaker aspect of Season Four and I would say this probably applies to most of the series, is the haphazard and sloppy way that the love interests are handled.\u00a0 I don&#8217;t think there is a single person in the world who watches <em>The West Wing<\/em> primarily for its romantic content but they still comprise a large part of Season Four and they remain typically abrupt in nature and frustratingly directionless.\u00a0 In this season, Donna Moss hooks up with Christian Slater (?!), Josh Lyman has a dalliance with Amy Gardner and Zoe starts dating a French aristocrat.\u00a0 The problem with most of the love interests in <em>The West Wing<\/em> is that the characters are almost entirely defined by their relationship to someone else.\u00a0 Only Amy Gardner and Danny Concannon serve a purpose beyond who they&#8217;re sleeping with.<\/p>\n<p>Overall though, this is another great season with plenty of solid episodes.\u00a0 There are plenty of emotional scenes with a heavy sense of gravitas but the show also delivers its moments of humour and levity.\u00a0 Who can forget Jed Bartlett bemoaning the loss of his lucky tie only for Abby to respond &#8216;tough&#8217; and cut the tie he is wearing in half.<\/p>\n<p>One last nit-picky criticism.\u00a0 After 20 solid episodes, mostly shot in the traditional format of the show, the fourth season of <em>The West Wing<\/em> finishes with an episode that is more like something out of <em>24<\/em>.\u00a0 My favourite closer is from the third season when Bartlett addresses the media after disclosing his MS.\u00a0 It feels like a suitably climatic ending <em>in the style of the show<\/em>.\u00a0 Most of the other seasons unfortunately opt to do something very uncharacteristic and not particularly fitting with the tone of the series.\u00a0 Sadly,\u00a0Season Four is like this and ends with the dramatic kidnapping of the president&#8217;s daughter.\u00a0 Sigh.<\/p>\n<h2>Survivor:\u00a0 Fans Versus Favourites II<\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?attachment_id=10863\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-10863\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-10863\" alt=\"survivorfvf2\" src=\"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/survivorfvf2.jpg\" width=\"630\" height=\"347\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/survivorfvf2.jpg 630w, http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/survivorfvf2-300x165.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">The pre-merge episodes of <em>Survivor Caramoan:\u00a0 Fans Versus Favourites II<\/em> concluded last week.\u00a0 It&#8217;s been a reasonable season so far that&#8217;s seen its share of dumb alliances, some typical\u00a0<em>Survivor<\/em> inexperience from the fans and a memorable meltdown from Brandon Hantz.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">The Fans tribe was struggling from day one as they found themselves splitting into factions immediately.\u00a0 The four most attractive fans formed a self anointed &#8216;Beautiful People&#8217; alliance in one of the stupider moves I&#8217;ve seen in recent seasons.\u00a0 Who the hell decides to form a minority alliance of four people in a ten person tribe?\u00a0 They even seemed to be shocked when they were decimated at tribal council.\u00a0 The most memorably strange person in the Beautiful People alliance is Eddie.\u00a0 It may be partly down to the edit but his constant self-aggrandizing and evaluation of who he would socialize with, based on looks alone, is rather bizarre.\u00a0 He seems to have a pathological disorder on par with Patrick Bateman where he views other people as commodities and objects that help shape how attractive he looks.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Meanwhile in the Favourites camp, Phillip was back up to his usual tricks, giving everyone code names to be in his secret agent &#8216;clubhouse.&#8217;\u00a0 Everyone seems to patiently humouring him, although Cochrane in particular seems to enjoy making fun of him in the confessionals.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">The first half of the season however will definitely remembered for Brandon Hantz&#8217;s meltdown in episode five where he decides to destroy the Favourite&#8217;s camp.\u00a0 It&#8217;s one of those &#8216;what if&#8217; moments on <em>Survivor<\/em> that finally unfolded.\u00a0 What would happen if someone snapped and just decided to completely destroy their own camp?\u00a0 Now we know I guess.\u00a0 The immunity challenge wasn&#8217;t even completed and an impromptu tribal council was held on the obstacle course while Jeff Probst tried to calm down Brandon by giving him a back rub.\u00a0 It was certainly one for the books.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Now that we&#8217;re heading into the merge, it&#8217;ll be game on.\u00a0 At this stage, I&#8217;d like to see Cochrane win the series but surely the front runner will be Malcolm who seems to be playing a very astute game and is looking to form his own Beefcake alliance.\u00a0 Let&#8217;s see what happens.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Lastly, any major fan of <em>Survivor<\/em> would do well to check out <a href=\"http:\/\/espn.go.com\/espnradio\/grantland\/player?id=8963425\">this interview<\/a> Jeff Probst did with Chuck Closterman on ESPN.\u00a0 Probst talka about what goes on behind the scenes on the show and is asked some very good questions.\u00a0 The casting process, memorable moments, lessons learned, the evolution of the show etc.\u00a0 I think one of the most interesting things he mentions is that in a recent season, they hired two people &#8216;of low IQ&#8217; who broke the suspense and tension in that season because they were too easily manipulated as pawns.\u00a0 My guess is that he is referring to Leif and Christina from <em>Survivor: One World<\/em>.\u00a0 It was one of the worst seasons of the show in recent memory and part of the problem was that the two of them allowed themselves to be used for votes and then didn&#8217;t make <em>any<\/em> attempt to scramble and save themselves when they outlived their usefulness.\u00a0 The basic concept of the social game seemed completely lost on both of them.\u00a0 Anyway, Probst says that hiring people too slow for the social game was a mistake that they hope to avoid in future.\u00a0 The interview is full of interesting comments including what would happen if someone died on the show, as unfortunately was the case in France recently.\u00a0 Check it out!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The West Wing Season Four The fourth season of The West Wing sees the show continue on as strong as ever.\u00a0 It is however, notable for bringing a close to the Aaron Sorkin years on the show as he left at the end of the season due to disagreements with Warner Bros.\u00a0 The show also &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,4],"tags":[158,1356],"class_list":["post-10861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-tv","tag-survivor","tag-the-west-wing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10861"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10861\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10865,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10861\/revisions\/10865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}