With a whimper, The West Wing ended Sunday night. For three, maybe three and a half seasons, it was the best-written show on television. The White House staffers on the show were flawed, smart people who cared deeply about doing the right thing during the time they had stewardship of the nation.
In other words, it was a fantasy.
In a TV rarity, the show wasn’t afraid to engage in lengthy, talky debates about issues. And the show had style, specifically the innovative Walk ‘n’ Talk shots pioneered on Sports Night by writer-producer Aaron Sorkin and director Thomas Schlamme.
After Sorkin quit or was forced out or was abducted by Venusians, it stopped being a smart show and turned into a typical TV dama, with an excellent cast reciting words that were beneath them. It was like watching beloved friends who had all suffered some sort of unexplained head trauma.
But when it was good, The West Wing was magic, and never better than the second season episode “Shibboleth”, better known as The Thanksgiving Episode. It has everything: humor (C.J.’s choice of turkey to pardon, followed by the second pardon when she finds out the loser is set to be cooked), drama (does President Bartlet let the Chinese Christian refugees stay?) And the patented Sorkin reach-for-the-tissues moment when Bartlett gives Charlie a carving knife with an interesting pedigree.
It also wraps up – as most early episodes did – with a nice piece of writing, as President Barltet has just admitted that he arranged for the refugees to stay:
Josh: So the guy passed the test, huh?
Bartlet: You think I would’ve sent him back if he’d failed catechism? Let me tell you something. We can be the world’s policeman. We can be the world’s bank, the world’s factory, the world’s farm. What does it mean if we’re not also...
(Pause)
They made it to the New World, Josh.
You know what I get to do now? I get to proclaim a National Day of Thanksgiving. This is a great job.
That’s good stuff. The West Wing was a world where politicians (at least some of them) behaved the way we wished they would.
Now it’s over, but Sorkin will be back in the fall, along with a few West Wingers, with a new show.
Earlier today, YouTube had NBC’s “upfront” presentation of the Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip to advertisers. It’s about six minutes long and, man, it crackled. Now it's been removed, but here's a 30 second promo.
It looks like my Thursdays are gonna be spoken for.
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