Go West (Wing)

TV "For a show that had once not merely conceived of but made a thrilling virtue out of the idea of treating a suite of offices as a de facto racetrack, both dialogue and visuals careering round corridors, up and down staircases, even - for a time - in and out of boiler cupboards, it was depressingly astonishing to realise how little of such genius invention survived through to the final episode. [...] In fact, this might well have been the most boring installment of The West Wing ever. For much of the time the experience was akin to watching a politely-staged, everso-earnest documentary on the procedures behind the appointment of a new US President, such was the absence of, well, anything much in the way of pace, imagination, and even a decent plot.' -- Ian Jones

Ian careful lists many of the issues that dogged the programme right through to the final moment when the plane flew into the distance. I keep thinking about that final shot. Surely those final moments should have been about Bartlett and us saying goodbye to the White House for the last time rather than some stock footage from a British Airways commercial? I keep wondering if Sorkin had been working on these last episodes if they would have had a similar flashback structure to those shows which looked at the campaign for the White House (which incidentally said much more about the subject than the whole of the seventh season), instead looking at the first faltering days in office demonstrating how much the administration had changed. But then in Sorkin's version Toby would have actually been in the final episode (what was that about?) and there might have been an explanation for where all the characters who disappeared into the woodwork went -- particularly Mandy -- I'm sure we still don't know if she was shot at the end of season one.