That Wing on the Left Side of the Building

So I've started watching the West Wing. This was always one of those shows that I knew was good, and had heard was good, but for whatever reason I never watched it.

One of the fascinating things about West Wing as a show is that, unlike most TV shows, the head writer was really THE writer for much of the series' run. Aaron Sorkin is one of those writers whose voice is pretty clear in whatever he writes, and the West Wing is kind of the greatest vault of Sorkin available.

Even if I wind up a successful writer, I doubt I'll be able to do what Sorkin did, churning out entire seasons of intricate and snappy scripts (yes, I know there were other writers, but at the very least every episode is credited as "written by Aaron Sorkin.")

Part of the appeal of the West Wing, even though it began in 1999, with a full season and a half before George W. Bush took office, was that it portrayed a White House run by intelligent, thoughtful people who you could actually get behind.

I realize that this is a polarized nation, and that the current President turns quite a few people off, but by the end of Bush's administration, most Americans were sick of his "I'm just a dumb guy like you" antics and the duplicitous bullshit coming out of the White House. If you're a conservative, you probably didn't come to this realization until the second term, but for us liberals, the fact that Bush was an awful President became clear once he started pushing things like the Patriot Act and rattling the saber at Iraq while we were just figuring out the lay of the land in Afghanistan.

So, much as Jon Stewart's brilliant mocking on the Daily Show articulated many of the problems with Bush, the West Wing provided a kind of alternate reality where we actually had a good President.

I don't really want to make this a political blog, nor do I want to alienate any conservative readers who like my thoughts on science fiction and fantasy, but in the age of Obama, I don't really feel the need for a better President. Or rather, I would like a version of Obama who could kick the Republican Party in the correct area of the balls to convince them it was time to start compromising.

So watching the West Wing during the administration of a President I voted for in both elections, and for whom I was happy to do so, there's not the kind of wistful "oh, if only..." feeling that I imagine a lot of West Wing's audience felt at the time.

But the show continues to hold up, if you ask me. I've just finished the first season and the opening two-parter at the beginning of the second.

Part of it is due, of course, to Sorkin's mile-a-minute dialogue. West Wing was infamous for its "Walk and Talks," a sort of cheap trick to make scenes that were really nothing more than talking heads into something that felt like action.

There's a scene where Josh and Sam are doing one of these. Sam asks where they're going, Josh replies "I don't know, I was following you." Later, 30 Rock would spoof Sorkin (whose Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip began the same time as 30 Rock and just about everyone predicted it would be Sorkin's show that would succeed and Fey's that would tank immediately) by having Liz and Peter do a Walk and Talk that actually wound up doing exactly the same joke that Sorkin had on his own show.

The thing that strikes me about West Wing is that you could almost call it a sitcom. Every character is flinging witticisms around all the time, and those who aren't tend to be fairly ridiculous as well (such as Leo's secretary Margaret, who makes you wonder why the Chief of Staff, who's supposed to pick everyone who works for the President, got stuck with the most space-cadet-like PA.)

But of course, it's not really a comedy, because this is the White House, where serious stuff happens, and the show never tries to soften that fact. Really, the main thing that the show conveys is that working in the White House must be insanely stressful. Martin Sheen's Jed Bartlet makes it look easy, partially because he's a walking encyclopedia and partially because he (Bartlet, as opposed to Sheen) is capable of playing the part of a man who always knows exactly what he's doing, even if he can confess with no hesitation to his trusted staff that he's really just improvising.

And as if the normal stress of making sure that you convey the message you want to convey without any room for misinterpretation or misrepresentation isn't enough, we also get the added stress of a fictional setting where writers are free to be cruel to their characters, like having a couple of white supremacists shoot the President and Josh. That's not to say that this sort of thing doesn't happen ever, but it is a thankfully rare event in this country (the last President to be shot was Reagan.)

The show is still in its early seasons, and this is a show that came out of the gate well. At the beginning of the second season, I imagine I'm currently watching the show's golden age, so we'll see how it does as it goes on. Still, given that people still seemed to care about the show when Bartlet's second term was coming to an end, I'm fairly confident that this will continue to be a good watch.

I'm also watching Enterprise. Once you get past the crappy theme song, it's actually pretty good. More on that later, but for now enjoy the break from Star Trek.