Manchester: Part I

What, we couldn't have had another terrorist attack, to put off this season-opening clunker for another couple weeks? Sorry if that was in bad taste, but you know what they say the difference between tragedy and comedy is. Anyway, nothing gels in this one. Nothing snaps. Sorkin wasn't proud of his writing...and for good reason. As the campaign for re-election gets going, three political strategists join the inner circle, led by Bruno Gianelli (the inestimable Ron Silver - REVERSAL OF FORTUNE, RHODA), who would do eighteen episodes over the rest of the run. Silver had some brilliant moments, but overall he never quite popped. His lieutenants are played by Evan Handler (STUDIO 60, CALIFORNICATION) and Connie Britton (SPIN CITY). Fine performers, but probably due to their guilt-by-association with this two-parter, they were dropped after a few episodes. Connie had some potential chemistry with Sam, but again the producers avoid that road for Mr. Seaborn. C.J. makes a huge press room gaffe, and offers her resignation. Joey Lucas and Oliver Babish and the regulars have some decent moments, but this episode never rises out of the muck it calls home.

There are not a lot of people who can get away with leaving someone hanging with such a cliffhanger like Aaron Sorkin. He did it in the first season but made up for it by immediately going in strong the next season, while here, he decided to start it off with an episode about 9/11. I understand that, especially for the time, but it was so removed from anything of value that it felt wrong. However, now we're right back in the ball game again. And this episode, while definitely having some pacing issues, gave a good insight into the immediate aftermath of Bartlet's announcement.

The opening scene of this episode reveals what we knew all along: Bartlet is gonna run for re-election. With that, a whole new set of issues start coming up and a lot of this episode was filled with different people wanting Bartlet to focus on different things to get the public back on his side. The whole present-day storyline (which is set four weeks after the announcement) came across as such a weird decision, that I wasn't invested in a lot of what was happening. I was much more interested in the immediate aftermath and the reactions of the people closest to Bartlet. Seeing what's going on inside the heads of his staff is a needed focus, especially given the fact that most of the people who learned about Bartlet's health seemed fine by the realization. It makes sense that some of them don't. I also think the growing issues with Haiti provided a nice countermeasure for Bartlet as he now had a chance to use the adrenaline he had build up during the press conference, and it may have resulted in some rushed decisions that could be lethal for his presidency down the line, but I'm not sure about that. All of that formed a lot of intrigues that I was onboard with, but the present-day storyline gave a lot of thought for the audience that I'm not sure we needed this soon in the season. I'm excited to see where they're going and maybe I'll see this differently after I've seen the second part.

"Manchester (Part 1)" was a good opening episode that misses the focus a little bit, but still uses its time to really affect the characters. The present-day storyline was very weirdly constructed and put a lot of stuff on the table a little soon, but the overall episode provided a satisfying return to this world.

I really have to straighten out another reviewer who complains that this was a poor season opener - that we should have had an antiterrorist based episode instead. This was not the season opener - that honour goes to "Isaac and Ishmael", and this can be seen as a relaxed recovery back into the main storyline after the tensions of that episode. Over the last two seasons parallels have become obvious between Jed Bartlet and Franklin Roosevelt. Aided by the communications of the time, FDR successfully kept quiet the fact that he had been smitten by polio or Guillaume-Barré Syndrome in the 1920s. Many Americans to this day are unaware that he was confined to a wheelchair. All his famous wartime photographs show him seated. Like Bartlet, he won on the basis of his immense personal charm and popular support. It was because of his 4th-term re-election, shortly before his death, that it was felt necessary, by the 22nd Amendment, to amend the Constitution to limit Presidents to two terms.