S01E02: Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc

"Do you know when we lost Texas?" "When you learnt to speak Latin?" I was a real fan of the little intellectual discussions they'd just randomly throw in to episodes, and this was no exception. Nothing says high brow like a Latin lesson five minutes in.

You may have gathered from the last review, I liked the pilot, and I mean I really liked the pilot. All too often though the subsequent series fails to deliver on the initial promise because the writers put so much creativity into the pilot in a deperate attempt to get the show picked up that they have nothing left for what comes afterwards (it even happens with great series, like The Shield. Good as that show was they took about four years to do anything as shocking as we saw in the pilot). Thankfully, this episode lays the concerns to rest. If anything this episode has even more rapid-fire dialogue than the first.

Tim Matheson does a really good job of making Hoynes competent but smarmy. It also highlights that CoS is in reality a far more influential position than VP, rightly or wrongly.

This is really more of a consolidating episode than anything else. We get to learn a little more about some of the main players, especially Jed and Sam, and we're given a proper introduction to Mandy. Of course, all that makes the final scene all the more shocking because it really comes from nowhere, and having the scene with Jed and Maurice adds further weight to it. One thing's for sure; we definitely want to see how this plays out.

Random observations:

Is "whomped" a real word?

Celebrity spotting: Maurice was the original chief from Castle.

How can people on White House staff money afford $100 a week for a sports pool?

Does anyone else think the poster behind Toby in his office looks like a caricature of him? If so, very nice work from the props department.

No one with Josh's political brains expects anything other than Mandy getting hired. He was talking her up in the previous episode - after Josh, Mandy was the go-to person for Lloyd Russell.

Episode grade: B-

So what did you all think?

Spoilers for the future follow. Caveat lector (see what I did there?):

"I worked with these people for two and a half years..." yet amazingly never appear in any of the flashbacks to the campaign. I was never Mandy's biggest fan but the way they wrote her out was just really poorly handled.

Did Maurice know about Bartlet's MS?