Now, stay with me on this, it rambles a bit.

The other day, I got a new set of shelves. Well, scratch the new. I got a set of shelves, which I’ve been meaning to do since I moved in. Seventeen months ago. Anyway, this new set of shelves has allowed me to move somethings around, and to get all my DVDs out of nooks and crannies and different houses, etc, etc. And it has enable me to discover some things, like the fact that I seem to have lost my Battlestar Galactica season 1 boxset. And that got me thinking about TV shows for which I have the DVD boxsets and yet haven’t watched for some time.

Can you see where this is going, yet?

Now, the only show for which I own the whole run (thus far) is The West Wing. And, following on from this random chain of thoughts, I decided to sit down and watch an early episode or two. And the episode I chose was one of my all time favourites: In The Shadow Of Two Gunmen (Parts 1 & 2). This two parter was the opening for the second season, and had a lot of flashback scenes, dealing with the team that got Bartlet elected and how they came together.

And the opening of tonight’s show was, basicially, a direct translation of some of those flashbacks into the new administration. In some cases, it was a direct copy, same scenes, same players, same intros. And, thusly, it was good. If somewhat freaky because of the whole coincidence of me randomly selecting the original episode less that a week ago.

The Sam/Josh banter, while brief in this episode, is something that I’d missed, but I didn’t realise that I missed it until it came back into the show. And the way that Sam can actually tell Josh to wise up bodes well for the future. As does the shape of the team that’s comming together. Except, of course, for yon Garofalo woman getting any kind of job in the place, for she has immense annoyance potential.

There are now three episodes of the show left for me to see. Which means that it should be getting into the tying up of loose ends. Since there are only some 2.5 hours left, they can’t sort them all, but there are some I’d like to see tackled.

• Will Santos be able to fit into the role of President before he has to? Bartlet took the better part of a season before he could learn that there are limits to the power of POTUS, but maybe Santos is a quicker learner.
• How long will Toby have to spend in jail, and will anyone else get dragged down with him?
• Who from the current administration will fit into the next one?
• Will any solution to the Kazak problem be found before Santos takes over?
• What happens to the relationships? CJ/Danny is preordained by the farking flashforward, but what about Charlie/Zoe, Donna/Josh, Kate/Will, Toby/exMrsToby?
• Will Josh ever chill the feck out? I know that he couldn’t run the place exactly the way Leo did, but how many times did Leo lose his temper? How many times did he randomly pick on a staffer for no good reason? Learn from the old boss.

There we go. That’s more than enough for now, I think.