The Jackal
Last week I promised you an intro based on the 'CJ Does the Jackal' scene from the West Wing.
No doubt you have all been on tenterhooks in anticipation of this, so I will delay no further...
A bit of background, AKA:
Intro to the Intro
The West Wing is a TV show about a fictional Presidential administration. In this particular episode, they have finally managed to secure the nomination of their preferred candidate to the Supreme Court.
This was a multi-episode struggle, so understandably everyone is pretty pleased, and they are having a bit of a party in The West Wing (ooh, it's the name of the show!).
Everyone is spread around different rooms, chatting and drinking and revelling in their political success, but whispers of an upcoming event start drawing them all together.
CJ is going to do the Jackal...
CJ's doing the Jackal...
The Jackal...
The Jackal...
As viewers, we are led to wonder what this could possibly be - is she going to impersonate a Jackal? Is it code for something even more outrageous? Why are they all so excited and converging on her like they're about to witness something as scandalously titillating as The Entertainment from Infinite Jest?
No, instead we see her lip-syncing with almost zero energy to The Jackal, by Ronny Jordan feat. Dana Bryant.
I really do urge you to watch this in its entirety
If this had been on Ru Paul's Drag Race the Internet would have broken from the sheer lack of slay. Cries of 'Noooo, Queen!', would abound. The level of charisma is almost purposefully non-existent, but all the other characters are losing their minds over it.
'Don't talk to me during the Jackal', says Toby, sanctifying the experience further.
Usually, when a piece of media teases something as monumentally mind-blowing as The Jackal, they don't show it to you. They instead show restraint and maintain the mystery, because whatever they could show would never be able to live up to the hype they have built for it.
Joe
There is a reason that Infinite Jest never tells us what happens in The Entertainment (a film so engrossing that anyone who watches it dies of addictive bliss), or that Gavin and Stacey never explicates what happened on the Fishing Trip (an ill-fated excursion into a storm).
Trying to explain them removes the intrigue - when these things exist in the realm of speculation they are far more compelling.
The Jackal demonstrates why it is sometimes best to go against the 'show, don't tell' maxim of storytelling.
Onto the episode, which was between Cardiff and St Andrews.
This is me showing and telling, because I've given you a picture below too. I'm not sure what the conventional wisdom on writing advice thinks about that, but I've never really been one for following it.
Here's your first starter for ten.
Buffet-Mogel kicks things off with a rapid buzz of the Count of Monte Cristo, winning a bonus set on island-based animals. They are perhaps harshly penalised for saying Tasman devil instead of Tasmanian devil.
Rosas extends St Andrews' lead with Gibraltar, before Tarsala gets Cardiff off the mark with masala. She stumbles a little over the word, as if realising in the moment how similar it is to her own name when Tilling announces her.
Gilbert closes the gap further with the picture starter, and gives Cardiff the lead with Japan on the next buzzer question.
Holm extends this with Rossini, and the Welsh side are on a roll now. Boyling becomes the fourth member of their team to take a starter with Gamma.
Buffet-Mogel stops the rot for St Andrews with epistemology, before the music starter is dropped by both teams. Tarsala comes closest - giving Booker T rather than Booker T and the MGs. The song, Green Onions, is something we used to play all the time in jazz bands and has a relatively easy chord structure over which to improvise.
Skerrett wins the music bonuses for St Andrews with mahjong on the replacement starter. They don't know any of them, and Rajan chides them as if listening to any music not from this era makes them culturally vacuous.
Capell goes for the obvious guess of The Turner Prize on a question about an art prize won by someone British, winning St Andrews a bonus set on countries which have a different starting letter in English and German.
They dilly-dally a little on the second of these, prompting Rajan to say, 'Hurry up and give yourselves a chance of a high score.' However, at this point, they are a mere 15 points behind, with more than 5 minutes left in the episode, and indeed they took the lead on the very next question.
They don't hold it for long though, because Holm and Cardiff tied them with base on the following starter, before Tarsala stole the lead with Inuit.
Skerrett managed to bring St Andrews back level, but Cardiff didn't give them another opening, claiming the last three starters and romping to a misleadingly comfortable win.
St Andrews 145 - 200 Cardiff
St Andrews will most likely return as a high-scoring loser as Rajan had encouraged, as all three losing teams from the final three episodes would need to beat their score to push them out.
Cardiff enter the second round as a very well-rounded team, their eleven starters being almost equally distributed among all four team members.
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