(no subject)

[seekingferret]

I was mesmerized by this John Hoynes (West Wing Vice President) fanvid that was created for the holiday exchange festivids. Hoynes's narrative is kind of tricky to pluck out of the show, because it's generally on the periphery until it pops up out of nowhere. The basic pleasure of this video is that it shows that yes, there is a narrative, that TWW is such a well-crafted show that minor, tangential characters have clear and meaningful story arcs. But there are deeper pleasures, too.

There's Hoynes the statesman, carefully toeing a middle ground between the Republicans and the Democrats. A man who was demonstrably a great senator and a great public servant. He asks Josh if he could have been President if he'd listened to Josh's advice and Josh tells him he's sure of it. He's Presidential in all the ways that matter- brilliant, politically unrivalled in terms of having his pulse on the heartbeat of America, telegenic, able to put a coalition together on any terms, able to make promises that have meaning. We see that Hoynes in the video, the Hoynes who could have been.

And there's Hoynes the creep. Serial sexual harasser who ruins his political career in the most publicly humiliating possible way for an American politician. That story is centered in brilliantly subtle ways. In many ways, the middle around which all revolves in this video is Hoynes's conversation with CJ, the one where she thanks him without hiding one bit of the revulsion she feels for him.

And along with that, there's Hoynes's rebirth, a story that is eerily plausible, and in the final shots the video shows Hoynes fighting for his political life in the Season 6 finale, with America having forgiven if not forgotten his past implosion. In the wake of having so immediately watched that decline, the vid challenges you the viewer: How could you have forgiven so quickly?

And there's the story of Josh and Hoynes, which the show wants you to read as the story of a brilliant young man who bailed before it was too late... but which the vid wants you to read as the story of two intertwined lives. In principle, Josh cut ties with Hoynes, but the vid compromises that narrative, shows you how even after they parted ways, Hoynes was a dominant figure in Josh's life. Makes you wonder how complicit Josh was in Hoynes's descent. Makes you say, "You know, Josh is also a creep who mistreats women. How much of that comes from Hoynes's legacy?"

And there's that great shot of Toby and Hoynes staring at each other, which reminds me of an unrelated Toby and Hoynes moment, when Toby tells Leo "I think he may be the only one around here who’s acting responsibly." How Hoynes's preparation in the face of Bartlet's MS showed the man who was both the supremely gifted politician and the thoughtful, moral political leader, even when the two came into conflict. How Toby mistrusts Hoynes, knows he's pure bastard, yet respects him anyway and knows there are times he can be relied upon when no one else can. Oh, I love so much about what this video says.

And the motion... This is a grimy, high-tension video. It has motion all over the place, people walking through the West Wing purposefully at all times. It's built on the show's sense of meaningful movement, so that there are echoes of my other favorite West Wing fanvid, "Circles", and yet this motion is not playful or joyful or whatever word you want to apply to "Circles". The walk-and-talk here becomes a story about people trying to avoid something, running around so that you can't get caught. "Circles", I see, is tagged with the summary "The White House is no place for secrets." Yet somehow this vid shows a White House that manages to hold secrets, sinister secrets.

How do you cram all of that into 3 minutes of music and video and make it look beautiful and make it look like all of Schlamme's directorial fiat has been scrapped in favor of something infinitely hipper? I think you need to be a brilliant artist to pull that off.

Comments

[starlady]

Those final shots of Josh, oh man. And the interaction with Toby, too; I think the show ultimately exacted a very high price from Toby for that kind of pragmatism that his dealings with and views of Hoynes embodied.

Thanks for the rec!

ETA: You know what, this vid is just so brilliant at depicting the flow of information, it's great.

[seekingferret]

Ultimately my feelings about Toby are so complicated and personal that the shuttle plot feels like a betrayal of me specifically as a viewer, and I refuse to accept that storyline. I read somewhere that Richard Schiff says he believes Toby was covering for someone, and I am reluctantly willing to accept that to be plausible (it's certainly preferable to believing Toby would actually sell out the President), but very little about that storyline makes sense to me. But I've written before about how Toby earned my neverending love about twenty minutes into the pilot by pointing out that New York humor is the kind of covert dig at Jews that bigoted Christians think they can get away with. I'm irrational when it comes to my love of Toby.

I love reading post-WW Toby fic, especially Toby/CJ or Toby&CJ, no matter how shmaltzy it is. He deserves a better ending than he was given. But I think it's an interesting suggestion that it was something about Toby's willingness to play in the shadows that ultimately doomed him.

[starlady]

I have always believed that Toby was covering for someone--for me it's the only interpretation that makes sense and doesn't destroy my impressions of the characters, especially Toby.

But, yeah. I think Toby, of all of them, is willing to go the farthest from the brightness of the Bartlett vision--in service of that vision, unquestionably, but farthest all the same, and in the end the show can't take that.