Interesting that the attack here is on Jim Harper, while for the entire run of the series Sorkin has been criticized about the Maggie character. Now that she has been transformed into a self-absorbed, vengeful bore, the critique has stopped — this article doesn’t even mention her existence. Jim’s entertaining relationship with Grace Gummer went south and Gummer gets no interesting lines.

The problem? Season 2 ended by wrapping up all loose ends tighter than any final episode ever did. Thus, Season 3 is in every possible way a sequel like the recent miniseries on Pride and Prejudice after Mr. Darcy and Lizzie are married with a kid.

So the show goes on because Sorkin had more worthy issues he wanted to dramatically present, but no more relationships to develop among the players. Even Sloan and Don are just playing out their characters like the Thin Man couple — no development possible because of the HR snoop and the “tests” involving Don’s parents’ anniversary and Sloan’s “I love you.”

Westbrook is Deputy Assistant Administrator of the EPA. Not Acting Administrator. Yes it’s complicated in that the title has a lot of words in it, but not complicated concerning whether he’s Acting Administrator; he’s not.

You’re right about the Jim Harper character, I’ll give you that.