A Total Waste of Time | The West Wing
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 8 มิ.ย. 2024
- “Crackpot day.”
Season 1 Episode 5: The Crackpots And These Women
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It was with this experience that Ron Swanson developed his true hatred of the government, and decided instead to join the government so that he could destroy it from the inside.
Eventually he was elected President, the people caught on that he was trying to destroy the government and started a civil war.
yes. very much yes. i'm watching this right now thinking "oh so this is Ron's backstory", iChuckle.
And Chris is a clone or twin of Sam.
HOw did that go? ended with him being executed in the oval office a totalitarian coward. how the mighty fall ;(
@@Crlarl It would've been a lot more interesting if Sam was the one in the meeting with Ron Swanson.
The best part of big block of cheese day is the cartographers for social equality. That scene makes a great explanation of map projections.
I really loved that one. It actually does exist!
And it was freakin' CJ out... though I'm with her on that one. 😆
CJ "You're freaking me out!"
And the y actually had a point, at least as far as the projection was concerned. Mercator gives a distorted image of the world. Of course, so does the Gall-Peters that they advocate for, but there are definitely better options.
That was in the season 2 episode, "Somebody's Going to Emergency, Somebody's Going to Jail." One of my favorites.
Reading the comments, I'm comforted to know thatI'm not to only one who wants this to be the villain-origin story for Ron Swanson.
He is a villain? How?
*Hero
@@slyguythreeonetwonine3172 Probably better to say villain arc since by the end of the show he accepts that the government does do helpful things and continues working for them in a position he personally agrees with more, abandoning his prior "libertarian anarchism" stance.
The actors they could find for this little scenes elevated the whole series even more.
When most people change their name they're rather unpleasantly surprised to discover that they are, in fact, still the same person they were before, not Ted Buckland.
Big Block of Cheese Day was my favourite time of every season
Huh!
I like to believe that Josh kept it going during the Santos Adminstration.
Me too!
didnt they only do like 2 of them?
@@CT_Taylor I'm sure Leo kept it going, but in season 3 the focus of the show shifted much more toward global issues post-9/11, when it was already dealing with the fallout of Bartlet's MS, so they probably didn't see as much room for Big Block of Cheese episodes.
1:33 Cut off one of the best parts of this scene. As Leo is assuring everyone that Margaret gave careful consideration to who got what assignment, Margaret is standing behind Leo, shaking her head no. As Leo turns around, she quickly changes to nodding her head yes😂.
I think that was the other Big Block of Cheese day.
I love the Leo vs Margaret relationship!
That was from season 2, this clip was season 1.
"Mandy isn't going on the list?"... No Leo had a much more nefarious plan for her, shortly afterwards she was posted down the memory hole, never to be heard from again
Yeah and after re-watching the entire series over 7 times I’ve come to the conclusion ‘I’m ok with that’. Her series intro on the phone speeding in her Beamer was too over the top and I found her annoying and that never went away. Loved her in Cutting Edge though.
@@Jason-bo-Bason Toe Pick!
She went off to Mandy-land.
The UFOs picked up Mandy.
Nerdy NASA guy eventually went on to work with the XCOM project.
Nerdy NASA guy is Sam Lloyd (Christopher Lloyd’s nephew) most famous for playing the lawyer Ted on Scrubs. He died sadly during the pandemic (I believe it was a heart problem)
I'm impressed with this clip because, the US Government has since confirmed the existence of UFO's, and has built over/under passes for wildlife to travel more safely.
Not gotta lie. That was a pretty impressive PowerPoint presentation for the time. Remember. 1999. That was not even Windows XP.
You should have seen what we could do with Windows 3.11 and Word 4.0
Anc tplud now has bridges
I always liked Windows 98. Hell of a lot better than Windows 2000/Millennium.
@@JB-xl2jconly 98se though.
Can we appreciate that lady in third part who has an A+ death stare?
Yeah, the cartographers had a much better sense of humor.
I recognized her from her small role in Fight Club. Very distinct face. Her name is Rachel Singer.
I love when they revisit Leo's tradition in a later season and it turns out one of the special interest groups is actually 100% worth their time and blows CJ's mind with the fact that all of our maps are wrong.
One of my biggest issues with The West Wing was the obvious disdain and lack of interest Aaron Sorkin had for anybody who wasn't a lawyer and an Ivy League graduate. This was one of those episodes that really highlighted it.
I don't think that was the point of these episodes. I think it was his way of bringing things like this to people's attention. CJ may have been dismissive at the beginning of the meeting, but at the end of the episode, she was seriously talking about it with other people.
Rewatching this show with my wife we've definitely picked up on that a lot more compared to the first time I was watching this show. Unfortunately there's a lot of east coast elitism and sexism throughout the whole show too, it's a bit of a bummer. Still one of my favorite shows, but I have to watch it with a bit of a nostalgia filter now.
@@kidfantastic93
And yet that is true to politics in Washington.
Lighten up Francis
Especially considering wildlife corridors with highway overpasses are an important reality in the west, now.
I think Leo, like Barlet, knows that Sam will run for president one day. He purposefully makes it harder on him to prepare for him for the challenges of the presidency.
When are we going to get that series?
@@alecsoutham2028 Rob Lowe is the exact same age Sheen was when the series started so now would be great.
rip john spencer this was a fr iconic episode
And dozens of these have been built in the US since Stealth Ron Swanson subliminally told us to do so.
The writers did their research. I spent a summer tracking Pluie in Canada after she returned from her trip to the USA.
Ted Buckland was also very disillusioned with the government
Ok, but there’s also Ted from Scrubs?! I love this episode!
The wolves only road way is done often where wildlife try to cross interstates. Wolves only is silly. Just make it nature.
The wolves will get curious and see it is a good way to cross
If the clip had continued we would learn that “Pluie” was shot and killed by a farmer the week before.
@@michaelhayden725 No he doesn't, he lives on a big farm with lovely people caring for him ! He lives there with all the dogs who magically left homes at an old age.
it already has been done successfully all over the world. google wildlife bridges.
CJ is a Breakout Comedian just waiting to be discovered!
Interesting that we do now have a Space Force that does take UAPs more seriously. And we now recognize the importance of making wildlife corridors.
This is a piece of fiction, just because the made up character Sam Seaborne doesn’t take UFOs seriously doesn’t tell us anything about what the pentagon in the 1990s actually thinks about UFOs.
It's one of my favorite episodes . I had forgotten.
I have never seen such an interesting and well written show shot SO boringly. Holy moly.
I like to think this ties in Ron Swanson as a park ranger
"Im Umpredictable" this is one of the phrases I use in my day to day quoting WW
They left out the best part when they say the wolves only road costs like a billion dollars or something. Also the wrap up later in the episode by bartlett is great
Never go to the White House, especially to a senior counselor to the president, with "we're working on a plan". *Have* a plan ready *before* you go.
I love the Block of Cheese story.
Now the White House releases footage of UFO's. How times have changed.
This is funny because @ParksandRecreation went on to feature a very similar episode where Nick Offerman as Ron Swanson was on the government side meeting with all comers from the public due to April Ludgate's (the incomparable Aubrey Plaza) misunderstanding that March 31 in fact exists.
The UFO thing was kind of an interesting prognostication of what’s going on these days…
3:29 Ron Swanson for President!
I heard that led to a Civil War...
I think he is the President in "Civil War," I think there it was an alternate universe where Ron Swanson did not meet Diane, ended up with Tammy 2 and went insane.
@@leokim2998 That didn't work out too well in Civil War.
@@cheezymcwang8431 not for Ron though... but Tammy 2 was never good for him.
Thought you were going to do the maps one.
Ahh, can't beat Cartographers for Social Equality!
Huh, I could have sworn I watched Scrubs before I watched The West Wing: how on earth did I miss Sam Lloyd, a.k.a. Ted as the UFO guy?
He's the awkward equivalent of the Mayhem guy in terms of being typecast to a very specific personality.
To be fair it took me a few years to realize that myself. He’s… a different flavor of pathetic in this show.
The most outrageous part was the budget surplus
Future National Park Ranger Ron Swanson advocating for the animals. 🐺
Hey CJ. I object to that comment about Buckingham Palace!
How do you measure the distance a wolf travels in square miles?
and here we are in 2024 and Canada has wildlife bridges for animals to safely cross over highways
No Peters Projection??
That’s season’s 2 big block of cheese day (s2e16). This was season’s 1 big block of cheese day. (s1e5)
It was “Gall-Peters.” 😉
The wolves' only roadway does make a lot of sense, we have bridges now in some places for wildlife to cross freeways and other things like that. Once you remove yourself from a purely human-centric worldview, it is kind of crazy that humans just reshaped their entire landscapes for purely their own convenience, with little to no thought to all the other animals and plants that need to share the same space. We surrounded patches of forest with roads and houses on all sides, turning nature into a bunch of tiny pockets too small to support most animals, and very dangerous to cross between at the same time.
They redid this episode on Parks and Rec with Ron on the other side
After working for the government, Ted Buckland went to go work at Sacred Heart Hospital. Where he was a semi-compent lawyer and part of an a cappella group.
The US Space Command scientist scene made me cringe. First there's Sam comparing a UFO sighting to a Ouija board, then the scientist himself refers to it as a extraterrestrial sighting, then Sam refers to it as a "flying saucer".
UFO doesn't mean "alien spacecraft". It means Unidentified Flying Object. If you look up and see a flying saucer and it's behaving in a way that makes it identifiable as an alien spacecraft, it isn't a UFO. You've identified it. It's no longer unidentified. A UFO, by definition, is something that has not been identified.
Of course the US government should be paying close attention to UFOs because they are a potential threat. A UFO might be a missile, or a stray aircraft, or a satellite whose orbit has begun to decay, or a meteor or any number of potentially dangerous things. No UFO has ever been confirmed to be an alien spacecraft, and this is because the likelihood that aliens have visited our planet is virtually zero.
This scene just makes both Sam and the Space Command guy both look like idiots right up until the end when the Space Command guy talks about a UFO that is in the air going from Hawaii to the west coast. This is something that should be looked into. An unidentified aircraft that has slipped off radar and is headed towards the US needs to be found and identified. That the Space Command guy didn't push back on Sam's idiotic comparison (note I'm not calling Sam or anyone else who interprets the term UFO an idiot; I'm saying that the comparison itself is idiotic; Sam is extremely smart, but is also uninformed here) makes him look bad and then weakens his point regarding the unidentified object heading for US airspace.
Didn't Parks and Rec have this exact premise when Chris took away Ron's office and its many walls?
Is not only Ron Swanson but also Ted from scrubs villain origin.
Ron Swanson wouldn't give a damn about Pluie.
THIS IS CALLED PREDICTIVE PROGRAMMING
Wonder if the UFO guy has a twin who works as a lawyer of a hospital...he seems better off than the lawyer I must say. Also, why is Ron Swanson working WITH the government?
I was wondering what season this was and then i saw Moira Kelly.
Why do I feel that such "important" issues like these are the only thins the GOP has to offer the USA.
They ended up doing this recently.
I said out loud at least 3 times during UFO guy's talk That is not stupid. Plus I said How about the Chinese and their balloons? So what about these UFOs? When will we know the truth? Pretty good noncrazy crazy topic. What won't be crazy that is today in 2050? 6/9/24
Ron Swanson AND Ted!!!!
RON SWANSOOOOOOON
That UFO segment aged poorly….
"In a nutshell?"
"So to speak"
Taken me 10 years to understand how savage that subtle line is
Who ever has been naming the clips for the west wing channel has been doing a terrible job. Why is this not called “big block of cheese day”
Whenever I watch old TWW episode I bypass the Mindy episodes because they did a horrible job writing for Moira.
Ron Swanson tracking wolves before Parks and Rec
They ruined Sam's character
So, basically this clip shows the White House senior staff to be rude, dismissive intellectual snobs.
What the clip doesn't show is that they are open minded. By the end of the episode, Sam is researching the UFO, and CJ is sold on the freeway. Bartlett has a good scene at the end of the episode. "You all start out so cynical, but it never fails, by the end of the day, there's always one or two converts, and today was no exception." th-cam.com/video/0ByU35CMv2Y/w-d-xo.html
So much of this is simply bad writing to make environmentalists look like idiots. No one who studies wolves has every made such a ridiculous proposal.
As great as this show was it completely glossed over serious things:
1. Glorifying Andrew Jackson and not mentioning his ‘Trail of tears’ legacy.
2. Determining India-Pakistan with the help of a smug British pain in the ass and not even bothering to have any ambassadors from either of the nations in question.
3. Sam losing it on the idea that someone can be a traitor to such a great nation that he almost storms off to reprimand the granddaughter of a traitor showing complete lack of nuance and understanding of US history. Slavery, Jim Crow, trail of tears, Mount Rushmore etc.
4. Ainsley Hayes going off on a rant/monologue about the equal rights amendment being absolutely tone deaf about her privilege and how she doesn’t represent women of color and other cultures.
Given how awesome many of the values espoused in the show was, it is downright painful to watch these scenes with such massive misssteps.
Just like the white house the show doesn't have to address everyone's issues and grievances.
1. that's a pity, no question, it would have been nice to delve a bit deeper in Native American issues - perhaps with a Matthew Santos on the campaign trail episode
2. ambassadors from India and Pakistan wouldn't have contributed a lot, they're too busy hating each other
3. Sam can be a bit naive and overly-rethoric, it's part of his character I think
4. well she's a republican after all, even though these days she would be called a "democrat witch" by the enlightened minds that populate her party : )
@@TWFydGlu If you read carefully, you will notice that I am not complaining about solving the issues or even addressing them. Instead, I am pointing out that since they decided to raise those issues by themselves, they could have done a far better job considering the gravitas of the rest of the series.
@@samuelecavana
1. To be clear, I wasn't asking to delve deeper into native american issues but the lack of nuance on Leo's part when invoking Andrew Jackson and his wheel of cheese once a year every year. I mean why not even state that "despite his glaring shortcomings towards indigenous population, he did have a good idea with the wheel of cheese".
2. They would have contributed a whole lot better than a smug Brit who has a superficial understanding of the problem. And in reality, both countries have diplomatic presence in each other's capitals so no they do work together.
3. I guess.
4. I guess you do have a point there. I was disappointed they didn't think of including Toby in the scene to put her in her place because of her ignorance.
The pilot episode does a fantastic job of putting funamentalist christians in their place. Keeping that in mind, the deficiencies I noted could have been easily handled better in the script. Its feels like Sorkin didn't mind the ignorance at that point of the series.
I loved Ainsley, but yeah, bad take on her part.
Wow, Sorkin really thinks he can write comedy.
Painfully unfunny.
I'm sorry you're in pain. I don't think Sorkin intended for that to happen. Get well soon.
Have you watched “fat lady falls down hole”? It could be the remedy you require
@@kickedinthecalfbyacow7549 funnier than this shit.
@@DavidHeffron78 glad you liked it! Something told me it would be your kind of thing
@@kickedinthecalfbyacow7549 yeah, much better than this dreck.