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TV I’ve just watched the entirety of
The West Wing in about two months, probably about one season a week. I haven’t had time for much else other than
the usual and my Lovefilm picks. There’s been a rash of similar statements in some of the blogs I read regularly, mostly I’m guessing because the boxset has been reduced to about fifty pounds everywhere and with the election and a renewed interest in US politics, it’s fun to watch the idealised version which offered so much hope during the darker moments of the past eight years. The show began at the tail end of the Clinton years and perhaps if you squint you can almost pretend the Democrats didn’t leave the White House.
Regularly readers will know that previously I’ve been very harsh on the John Wells era, usually holding it up as an example of what can go wrong when the producer and creator of a show leaves and the remaining production team have to deal with the fall out, desperately trying to recreate the special ingredient that their previous boss took with them. I also usually throw Aaron Sorkin’s name into the list along with Joss Whedon, Steven Moffat and sometimes Amy Sherman-Palladino of
Gilmore Girls as peerless writers that much of the rubbish we have to endure can’t be compared to. What I’ve discovered in the past couple of weeks rewatching the Sorkinless years is that the distinction isn’t entirely clear cut. In other words, much to my surprise, I come to praise the Wells era rather to bury it.
I should say before offering this defense of sorts that
The West Wing became a different show in those later seasons.
I’ve already spoken haphazardly about the shocking difference between the cliffhanger ending of Season Four, in which Barlett’s daughter Zoe is kidnapped then rescued. The first few Wells episodes have more in common with
24 than the show I adored, lacking the poetry, humour and lyricism I'd come to expect. In fact, much of the first half of season five is horrible with episodes such as
Constituency of One during which the characters essentially argue for forty minutes and
Disaster Relief or the one were Josh notoriously shouts at a building (Congress) as he feels himself being politically sidelined pointing to were many of us might have fallen out of love with the series.
Yet seeing the season in about five days without a week in between to become disgruntled, it’s possible to see that there’s still some gold here.
The Supremes about the search and negotiations to fill a spot on the supreme court is amazing and wouldn’t have felt out of place in earlier seasons, with the ultimate plan of action being inspired by Donna’s cats and a string of guest stars including Glenn Close and William Fichtner as judges whose beliefs neatly complement and cancel each other out.
Talking Points and CJ’s solution to making the press room interested in a story about the buy out of local news by major corporations and the heartwrenching Gaza or Danna Discovers the Middle Eastern problem.
It’s worth noting that these episodes are written by Deborah Cahn, Eli Attie and Peter Noah who along with a number of others would form a writers room that would cover the bulk of the episodes in the next two seasons. When he took over the role, Wells said he had no intention of even attempting to capture Sorkin’s voice and that’s true – the structure of the episodes is closer to
e.r. than in previous years with immigration issues instead of emergency heart surgery with the knock on effect that there’s less stories simply foregrounding character over ongoing story arcs, fewer shows in which characters simply sit around in rooms working their way through a talking point of the week.
To an extent plotting becomes more obviously mechanical with Toby’s leaking of classified information about a secret military space shuttle seeming particularly out of character considering how he railed against Bartlett in earlier years about his own indiscretions. Richard Schiff said that he suspected his character was being sidelined because of his political views and them not fitting in this version of the show (he walked this back a bit later) but it’s probably symptomatic of the show’s change in attitude to political discourse, from being a central plank of the series in the Sorkin years to being a kind of prop to whatever was being discussed that week, the negotiation itself becoming important rather than what’s being negotiated for. That said, the episode in which he’s fired,
Here Today, it meticulously written and directed recalling the earlier episode when the MS is finally revealed to the staff.
Yet, the series really becomes sprightly again in the closing two series. It essentially become two programmes, as though someone is running alternate episodes of tv remakes of
The American President and
The Candidate though there’s more cross-pollinating than I remember with stories in the west wing and on the campaign trail appearing in the same episode. There are also just as many episodes set in the White House as on the road including the really interesting
Internal Displacement written by Bradley Whitford (who plays Josh) with CJ negotiating to trying to solve the crisis in Darfur. If there’s one problem with the closing two series its that CJ becomes less fun, more of an exposition machine than she was even as press secretary (something Alison Janney herself identified) but this really plays to the strengths of the character.
A particular weakness in these later series
is the new characters. Most of them don’t really have a life outside of their respective stories, we know little of their families, and though that allows for that lovely scene in the first episode set on election night in which Josh realises that he didn’t know that the rest of his staff were boinking one another or that Ronna was gay it’s probably the reason why we’re still so attached to Sorkin’s original creations – though Will is very poorly treated I think, with his sister removed and largely becoming either an adversary for Josh during the primaries or CJ’s whipping boy later on. That said, Kate Harper firmly took over from Ainsley Hayes as the object of my affection, actress Mary McCormack achieving much the same feat she did in
Murder One of fleshing out her character, though in the writing there’s the suggestion, in that boozy flashback in the bizarre episode were Leo meets Castro,
Ninety Miles Away, that the pre-White House Harper had a very interesting
Alias-style undercover career. I don’t think any of the back story for any of the other characters is quite that vivid.
The main problem I had with the ’06 election first time around was just, um, probably that it broke up the original ensemble and was telling a story which fans weren’t expecting. With some distance though, it’s a very good fictionalisation of a presidential campaign and the knowledge that the Democrat Santos was based on the new US presidents adds a whole new texture. Throughout there are scary moments in which life imitates art, and you have to wonder if Obama’s advisors had the series in mind when the financial crisis happened; Barack went to ground and let McCain make a fool of himself just as Santos goes quiet during a nuclear exposition and its Vinick who blinks first. The bravest episodes are probably those which foreground Vinick, whose politics run so counter to what the show is about that sometimes it can be compared to watching a version of
Star Wars were Darth Vader is the hero (and I don’t mean
The Phantom Menace).
If you’re still an undecided, I’d at the very least watch everything from Election Day onwards. They’re closest to the spirit of the Sorkin years as original characters return for cameos and more in the wake of Leo’s death and a general feeling of the series being put to rest. The exception being
The Last Hoorah, that that is still exceptional, one of the few explorations I’ve seen of what happens to the other candidate after a presidential election as Vinick becomes yesterday’s man and goes from having packed schedule to nothing at all. It’s brilliantly carried by Alan Alda, whose mournful gate can’t quite digest that the election is over.
Institutional Memory is the best of the bunch as CJ has to decide what happens next and if Danny figures in any of it, with Xander Berkley appearing as a kind of philanthropic Bill Gates.
I said originally of the last episode that it had “the odd nice character moment but no drama” but I’ve now decided that’s probably about right since in reality that’s exactly how final days anywhere turn out to be. And there is drama, in Bartlett’s decision to pardon Toby. This time around, far from being frustrated by the lack of call backs to earlier times, I sobbed, real tears, more than that became disappointed that we wouldn’t get to see the first year of the Santos administration with Josh in Leo’s job and Sam working Josh’s beat. The show didn’t really recreate the magic of those early years, yet it was still miles ahead of many tv dramas, wasn’t afraid to take risks now and then and though it probably failed as much as it succeeded, it could have been much, much worse.
