Letters to the Editor
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one day it sorta all bled together
I loved WW's intelligence and I watched obsessively. But one day, I just felt like this episode was not discernably different from the last, and cold turkey, with no transition, i was no longer interested.
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After Sorkin left . . .
You still had that fantastic cast. A cast who could make the dialog absolutely believeable. Lesser actors joined the cast in later years and things began to bog down a bit -- but only a bit.
And yes, The West Wing was the White House of our dreams, with Sheen's Clinton-with-propriety, Truman-with-genius, even Wilson-with-a-clue.
However, it's time for the show to be over, anyway. While Alda would be interesting to watch (and so would Smits), not within a light year of Sheen's Bartlet. And poor Martin Sheen is doomed. He'll never be anything but Bartlet. And even sadder, when you see him as Sheen, it's uncomfortable to note that he's really just a second-rank TV actor, with very little of Bartlet at all about him.
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Bye Bye WW
I will miss The West Wing - both the fabulous version and what some of us still watch now. I've hung in there for the characters and the moments of former spledor quality. I had a little fantasy going on that the newly elected "president" would demand high caliber writing and the show would morph into something else - just as wonderful as the first three seasons, but new, different.
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Intellectuals in office, but only on TV
I didn't get hooked on The West Wing until a couple of years ago, when I was in Spain. My Spanish friend explained that she loved the show because the wit seemed terribly American to her. Also, as she did not draw a line between personal and political positions, she found it refreshing to watch people in government portrayed as fallible, even fragile, as opposed to omnicient, better than the citizenry.
The fantasy of having a government made of people who see themselves as public servants rather than simply power brokers, keeps me watching. Mostly I enjoy - or enjoyed - the emphasis on intellectual merit as much as political savvy. The race for Bartlett's sucessor pitted candidates of intellectual and moral stature against each other and against a system that knocks the values right out of you. The characters in the WW are smart, flawed people who fail as often as they succeed. Even success is mitigated by trade-offs and concessions. In that there is no fantasy.
In an time when many of us want "none of the above" as a selection on our voting forms, when our leaders are not so much leading as dragging us into a maze of terrors, when public dialogue is pumped up hyperbole and intentional misdirection, the language of hope is not spoken by our politicians or journalists, but by fictional, television characters. Alas! My voter registration card for a president who understands mathematics, knows history, speaks Latin, yet doubts his own capacity for understanding even as he questions the existence of God.
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Harsh
I'm a little taken aback by all the desire for more intelligence and nerdiness in the most intelligent and nerdy show on TV today (Battlestar Galactica might trump it for nerdiness).
I've followed the show, not since the beginning, but I've wasted a couple of weekends watching marathons. There has been a noticeable decline, but even today I am amazed such a rich and thought provoking show made it this far on network television. The campaign season, a little jarring at first, became incredibly addictive even trying its hand at showing a Republican in Bartlet's golden aura(though Alan Alda could only be a seriously watered down Republican).
Perhaps my coming in late saved me from disillusionment, but when the other options are the OC or God forbid, another season of Sopranos, the critiques hear seem unbearably harsh.
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There's always Netflix
I only started watching WW a few years ago when the realization that we were stuck with Bush really set in. For one hour a week, I get to pretend that the Bartlett Administration is in charge.
I'm still hanging in there. In fact, I'm still working my way through DVDs of the first few seasons.
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josh and donna
My girlfriend and I have watched the show from the beginning, and continued to watch it as it fell into the abyss of mediocrity. We know it sucks. We complain about how it sucks, and yet we still watch.
Why?
Because we really want to see Josh and Donna get it on before the show ends.
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They lost me early on
The first season was magnificent; in particular I loved the way that these idealists had to give away *some* of what they wanted in order to achieve the rest. That FELT real.
After that first season, I think the writers read their own press clippings: the amount of "walk & talk" increased exponentially and the characters seemed to win every ideological battle. I hung in there for a number of years, but it didn't feel real any more.
Did I read somewhere that West Wing was "Clinton without the sex scandal"? I agree with that assessment: the show had something to prove in the real world. I loved them for that ambition, but I think it corrupted the show's ability to appear true.
I loved the show when it presented a gray world. After they went to black-and-white, they lost me. I stopped watching regularly the season that Bartlett ran for re-election.
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But I only just found it two years ago!!!
Two years ago, I "found" The West Wing on BRAVO; the first episode kind of ticked me off - all that fast-paced politicalese, legalese, yadda yadda. But, to my surprise, I found myself absolutely HOOKED on the damn thing, after viewing only another couple of episodes - all reruns, all on BRAVO. Now, imagine this - I found to my great surprise that I came in at the middle of what appeared to be the FOURTH Season!! I'd never heard of the show - I didn't know anyone else who had - and I'd been missing Martin Sheen for years!! That was unbelievable to me, and I questioned how it could ever have happened. All at once, it came to me - I have not watched Network TV for years and years. NBC??? Are you KIDDING?!?! Listen, I could barely stand to admit that I watched Cable TV - it's not so hot, either, even with a million channels to surf. But the Broadcast Networks? No way. I told my husband, and ONLY my husband - I still didn't trust that this thing could hold up for much longer. Well, after three weeks or so, I knew I had to see ALL the episodes - I had to figure out all the story lines, all the characters - and I found myself at Ebay's front door. I now own all of the five seasons that are available, and of course, I will be purchasing seasons six and seven, just as soon as they're available. Sure I'm still "hanging in there"...I don't abandon MY ideals so quickly! Imagine a world without The West Wing - how very sad, how very unimaginative, how very hollow...Reality, what a concept.