#Danny and Ellie absolutely are causing problems on purpose

[tanglepelt]

Dp x dc 148

Reveal gone wrong ends with Vlad realizing how toxic his obsession was. He cuts out contact with jack and Maddie. Because if they denied there own flesh and blood so much. There is no way maddie would except him.

She couldn’t even accept Danny as a halfa.

Then takes in Danny and Jazz. He does it all legally makes it in the news. Danny and jazz aren’t exactly pleased at first. Vlad has a lot to me up for

Ellie eventually joins at the he pays her pack pay in child supports and fully realizes he was a fruitloop.

When vlad gets an invite to a Wayne gala. All three of his new wards attend. Needless to say it’s an gala no one will ever forget.

Fist fights. Chandeliers breaking. Jazz causing breakdowns. Who let Tim and Danny discuss inventions?!? Vlad will never recover.

[elliebartlets]

4.11 Holy Night

Episode:

• It’s funny, I remember pretty much everything that happens in this episode, and I think it’s cause it was the last episode I watched with my mom. and I think that might be why I want to skip it. but I won’t.

• I don’t mind the flashback, but it feels very out of place for a couple reasons: it’s the very first scene, it doesn’t focus on one of the main characters/staff, it’s from the 50s, and there’s no other flashbacks in the episode, which is how flashbacks have been employed in previous episodes.

Also I never understood if Zev, the one guy that doesn’t from the alley, was killed accidentally or on purpose

• It’s weird hearing Carol call CJ ma’am.

• Wow they brought back the same actor for Claypool, the interrogator who questioned Josh about drug use in the White House and is now questioning Toby about Andy

• I absolutely love CJ’s “awww ya see!” when “Santa” walks in. She’s so happy!

• also hello Danny, nice to see you again

• ok I forgot that Stanley was in this episode. I think it’s interesting that Bartlet still sees him. Does he still have sleeping problems? Or does he just see him to vent about his political/health problems?

• ugh JEAN PAUL. 😒🤮 just seeing him makes me so angry. and then thinking about what’s coming? goddd

• “She talks about you so much I think sometimes I want to kill her.” like WTF man

• I like the camera work when Danny’s telling his story to CJ.

• how was Toby’s dad even allowed in the White House when he’s a convicted felon???

• oh I just caught that the song Charlie suggests to The Wiffenpoofs to sing to Donna is the same song they just sang to her

• ugh Donna looks dissapointed knowing she’ll need to stay late but still doesn’t take off! She decides to work late on Christmas Eve Eve cause Josh needs her

• lmao Will finding out Toby won’t be there for the meeting with Bartlet and getting flustered and running away from the Oval Office is a big mood

“Do you want to come in?”

“Oh no no, uh no no no.”

———

“Thank you, Mr. Justice.”

Alsksksj

• it’s too coincidental that the lady on the phone wanted to know when Anastasia was killed on the day that Toby’s dad happens to be there

• Donna in the Christmas sweater with the blurry Christmas lights in the background is an aesthetic

• “Danny thinks we got a gulfstream to land in Bermuda, assassinated Shareef then disassembled the plane and distributed the pieces throughout the Bermuda Triangle?”

Yes Josh cause that’s exactly what happened.

• honestly where did Zoey even meet Jean Paul? Was he some foreign exchange student at Georgetown?

• the line Bartlet says to Zoey about trying to get her to like him never made sense to me cause wouldn’t that be more towards Ellie instead?

• I still don’t know why Bartlet almost told her about Shareef...like...was he feeling that much guilt over it still that he had to tell his college daughter and therefore put the burden on her shoulders?

• “Go back to the residence and make sure your mom hasn’t killed your boyfriend.”

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, I wish Abbey killed John Paul while they were both up there in the residence.

• I don’t know, I still feel like Josh had no right to butt into Toby’s personal life and bring his father into the White House without his permission.

Podcast:

• guest star: The Wiffenpoofs (they’re real?!)

• Murder Inc. was exposed in the 1940s, but the flashback is set in 1954.

• The Wiffenpoofs were flown out to LA over their thanksgiving break to film the scenes.

• One of them may be misremembering this, but though that Aaron said if they didn’t accept he’d get the Harvard Krokodiloes as a backup, but have them perform as the Wiffenpoofs.

• They didn’t have an arrangement for Holy Night, so the pitch pipe worked on it on the flight to LA. When they arrived, they recorded right away in an empty spot in one of the rooms.

• Bye, Bye Blackbird and Girl from Ipanema, the two other songs the Wiffenpoofs sing, are traditional songs they sing all the time.

• “Martin Sheen was particularly friendly and generous and I think he and Dulé Hill, or one of the other cast members got in a fake brawl behind a doorway so we’d see them kind of look like a headlock, and I think either Martin was in a headlock or Dulé Hill was in a headlock and they were kind of running back and forth behind a doorway just totally goofing off.”

• “I remember we didn’t get to meet Bradley Whitford because I think his wife had just had a baby or something.

“You dodged a bullet.”

Joshhh

• Allison kept forgetting her lines and Dulè kept mispronouncing Girl from Ipanema. He kept saying it as I-pa-no-be-ma.

• The guy who said the one line to Donna “well put our heads together ma’am” still gets royalties in the mail for like a quarter 😂

• “It’s just a horny CJ in this episode.” 😂

• Both Toby’s father and Bartlet are dealing with dark things they’ve done in the past: Toby’s father being part of Murder Inc. and Bartlet assassinating Shareef.

• Stanley says airplanes signify death, and there are many deaths linked to airplanes on this show.

In Nöel, (another Christmas episode that also features Stanley) a pilot flies his plane into the side of a mountain, and President Bartlet arranges for a plane to fly Sharif to his death.

Two other examples I thought of was Bartlet’s doctor, Morris Tolliver, dying in the plane explosion in episode 2 and Leo’s friend flying back to Israel only for his plane to be attacked in retaliation to the Shareef assassination.

• Ah there’s a mistake in the subtitles. When Jean Paul says to Charlie, “She talks about you so much I think sometimes I want to kill you.” the subtitles say “kill her.”

• Hrishi pointed out that Zoey took French at Georgetown, which obviously came in handy with Jean Paul. I honestly didn’t even think of that.

• glad I’m not the only one who thought Bartlet saying he tried to get Zoey to like him goes against what we’ve learned about his relationship with Ellie.

• ahh more Richard Schiff!

• “Holy Night was a pitch that I had given to Aaron. It opens in Yiddish in Brooklyn in 1954, and it’s in Yiddish. I went to Aaron and pitched an idea which was that Toby got a visit from his father at the White House and that his father was someone was Toby was very much ashamed of and I had it in my mind that I was thinking more like a Roy Cohen type. Someone that I would be politically ashamed of, and he came back to me a week or so later and said “you once told me the story of your grandfather being a member of Murder Incorporated” and I went “yes” and he says “I would like to use that story as your father.” And I said to him “that’s cutting really close to the bone, but if you go close to the bone then I’m in,” meaning go for it. He wrote that episode and I remember being very upset that he didn’t really get close to the bone and that what he did was kind of just wrote a story about a guy waiting for me in my office because we never really got to it. And then watching it, because this is the first time I watched that episode, I realized he had used that story as another kind of metaphor or example of the connectedness of people and forgiveness and he was using the story of my fictional father being a member of Murder Inc. who assassinated people and in the cold open, he was in the car waiting while an assassination happened and they were talking about the assassination in that episode. Bartlet and Leo get information, C.J.: gets them information that someone, Danny, comes back and has information about the assassination that they perpetrated and it’s connecting my father and my need to forgive with some sense that they need to forgive themselves, and comparing mafia hits with US government hits.”