There Will Be Spoilers
Since sometime in December, we've been rewatching The West Wing. My original plan was to live out the dying months of the Bush administration among that of Bartlet's vibrancy - the first 4 years anyway. The terminus of the 4th season marked Aaron Sorkin's departure as the show's tyrant, and a marked downturn in the show's quality. I didn't feel like slogging thru the season-and-a-half that follows wherein everyone is unreasonable - wrong, angry, and different, but mostly angry and different. But Obama wasn't in yet, and, what the hell, we watched the rest.
The only other time I watched the latter 3 seasons, I felt that the show improved a great deal at around the halfway point, and glided nicely into its finish. But I see now that that isn't entirely so. The show does improve - it can't help but, really - but it never gets especially good again.
It starts to pick up beginning near the midpoint of season 6, but doesn't really improve until the Santos (Congressman, D-TX) character is wrestled into the mix. But it never gets great, for two reasons: the election drags, because they tried to make the show realistic, for over an entire season, and for none of which is its outcome ever really in doubt - despite the words from those involved around the time of air that they hadn't decided who would win. But also because they never really make the Santos character seem like that great a deal.
Sorkin spent 4 seasons making Bartlet the smartest, most capable, inspiring, and politically astute person for the job - indeed, Bartlet's reelection campaign becomes primarily about Governor Robert Ritchie's (R-FL) intellectual inferiority and general unpreparedness, while Bartlet is repeatedly referred to as the politician of his generation*. Santos is notedly never presented as an idiot, but we're also never shown how bright he might be - aside from hearing that he graduated top of his class at Annapolis, which is no mean feat. He might be capable and inspiring as well, but we're never really shown that either. And, weirdest of all, he seems to have almost no political wits. Repeatedly his campaign chief, Josh Lymon, has to force him to do the right thing (politically, not morally; Santos is grounded in decency - oh, so grounded). Twice - and by my count only twice - does the congressman do anything on his own to show he has a political pulse. After he has the nomination, he gives a church speech that eases a racial divide. And, earlier, he gives a speech to the convention - a speech that defies the wishes of Party and President - that encourages party faithful to go ahead with the many ballots, to do their job choosing who should be the nominee.
At no other time does he have any control, really, of that happens. I understand that's true, mainly - that candidates are mostly at sea among events well outside their control - but the extent to which they made Santos tempest-tossed by the winds of fate, generally impotent, is kind of weird.
Santos ends up with the nomination almost entirely without his doing - that convention speech notwithstanding. Governor Baker (D-PA) steps out of the race, to spend more time with his family (a weirdly selfless act subsequently buried by his overt selfishness at the convention). Later, the former VP has to step out of the race because of a burgeoning scandal, essentially giving Santos the California primary (over the sitting VP, who is seemingly the most inept blowhard in the party).
And it doesn't stop at the primary. After his ticket gets stuck down 7-9 points, depending on the poll, in the general-campaign, Santos manages only to tie the debates (we see one of them, a well-performed, live episode that goes on entirely too long, but only hear of the others in passing, after-the-fact), and has the campaign finally turn around, nearly for good, because of a near nuclear meltdown in his opponent's (Arnold Vinick, R-CA) state. And still, he only wins in a crawl, barely edging out Vinick by a mere 6 electoral votes.
What's weirdest about it, I guess, the part that leaves me mostly puzzled, is that we spent a lot of time with Santos and his people - easily twice the amount we spend with Vinick and his - but I'm still not sure the correct candidate wins - and lord knows I agree far more with Santos's ideology than I do with Vinick's. They had the chance to inspire on TV in a way that our inept, idiotic, real-life president never could; the chance to show what could be as a contrast to what was; or merely to really entertain. Instead we get a sort of half-assed candidate, well-meaning, to be sure, but largely
blah.
I guess, what it comes down to, essentially, is there's only one Sorkin. Those first 4 seasons were pretty special, and that cast does entertain, even when the other writers left them out in the cold, naked and wanting.
----
* It perhaps works as a quick proof to point out that Sorkin made Bartlet a Nobel Laureate; the writers who followed took half of it away in order to see a "some would say, contradictory" economic philosophy co-honored. It shits a bit on Bartlet's intellectual esteem to find the Swedes were apparently willing to award anything that year, so long as it was sufficiently oppositional.
Posts
