Letters to the Editor
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Who the fuck cares?
This article is a perfect example of why I will not be renewing my subscription to Salon this year. If I wanted to know if people were still watching "The West Wing" and why, I could have checked in on any number of free Internet forums. What the hell happened to the pre-Bush re-election Salon that thought it could make a difference? Now you're just a more New York version of TV Guide's Watercooler.
--Gothra
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small thing...
I enjoyed the great dialogue and the smart characters from the beginning, but one episode had the mustachioed secret-service honcho saying with a straight face how some terrorist or criminal had slipped over the Canadian border into the U.S. by crossing from Ontario into Vermont; and nobody from the writing staff, the production crew or the seemingly-learned cast had pointed out that that was geographically impossible to do. Now, I know that most Americans wouldn't catch such an error, or indeed wouldn't care that it had been made, but for me it spoiled the fiction. It made me wonder how much else Sorkin and company got wrong about their own country and the world and caused me to bristle even more at the insufferable "God Bless America" moments. From then on, it ceased being a parallel-universe administration and entered the realm of science-fiction White House.
Harry C.
Montreal, Quebec
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Re: "Chewy Dialog"
I'll second that assessment. Watching "The West Wing" has always felt like watching a typical Barbra Streisand film: Her characters are always super-intelligent, witty, feisty, and strong-willed, and she demonstrates these qualities through rapid-fire dialog, talking circles around every other character. I don't exactly HATE this sort of thing, but it's rather exhausting to try to follow it closely.
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West Wing
I stopped watching a couple years ago for two reasons:
1) Like Cary Tennis, the Bush White House made the Bartlett
White House impossible to watch. It's hard to watch a fake
administration make you feel so much better as an American
than the real one.
2) I liked Rob Lowe's character and he was never replaced successfully.
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My Escape from Reality
I own the first three seasons on DVD, I plan to buy all of them. I absolutely love The West Wing. My husband says it is my escape from reality. Never has a TV show impacted me as emotionally as the West Wing. I am a public policy Grad Student and this show makes me want to work in government, even though I know it is fiction. This season has been the hardest for me to watch, due to it airing on Sunday and I don't own a DVR, but I still look forward to new episodes and watch reruns on BRAVO. It is compelling and the actors do a great job. I will miss this show, especially since it is the only show I watch religiously.
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Son of Sam
The West Wing influenced me more than any television show I've ever watched. There are many I've liked more -- Buffy, The Wire, MASH -- but WW literally made me who I am today. I had a great, fun job in the most beautiful city in the country, but I packed up my things and moved myself and my fiancee across the country to DC with one goal in mind: Become Sam Seaborn. (I'm still working on it.)
But after the Sorkin years, the show just stopped being entertaining. There were ridiculous stretches like the episode where the president appointed an extreme liberal and an extreme conservative to the Supreme Court because it would foster an atmosphere of debate. And CJ becoming CoS was absurd -- they essentially threw out the years of character development and pretended she was a completely different person.
So we stopped watching it. There were other better shows in the timeslot, and it just wasn't worth the effort anymore. I wish they had cancelled it years ago.
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A single, beautiful show with Yo Yo Ma
I will miss the time that I saw what television could do at its best, even with regular commercial breaks. The episode, "Gloria" featured Adam Arkin as a psychologist working with Josh for PTSD after he had been shot. It featured Yo-Yo Ma and had a beautiful side story about the return of a White House painting to a Jewish woman whose father had lost the painting in the Holocaust.
The dialogue, the pacing, the panic that Josh feels are all reasons that television can soar. It's what I loved about "Sports Night" - you can be emotionally connected for an hour without schlock, without fear mongering, and learn something about humankind. It reminded me that making good television is an art; something easily forgotten with American Idol, Cops and The World According to Jim.
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All Good Things Must Come To An End
I am a college political science professor who has been unabashedly addicted to "The West Wing" since its beginning. I have used "WW" in my course on the American presidency with great success, as my students have enjoyed making both comparisons and contrasts between the presidency as depicted on the show versus the presidency as operationalized in real life. Despite its fictional license (e.g., consistently quick-witted dialogue, the collapse of complex world events into a 1-hour television show, etc.), "WW" regularly managed to do something that the vast majority of television shows today do not: it provided a vehicle for civic engagement. Whether its audience agreed or disagreed with the show's politics, the larger point for which, as a political science professor, I am inordinately grateful, is that "WW" stimulated political discourse among the mass population, many of whom are largely disconnected from politics. As a result of the show, some people found a reason to reengage in civic life, which for me constitutes a major way in which the show has contributed so tremendously both to our popular and political cultures.
While I will deeply miss "WW" because I think that no other politically-oriented television show will ever hold a candle to its outstanding content and writing, I share the views of others on this list who feel that the show has come to an organic conclusion. Even before the recent death of John Spencer, I felt that it was time for the show to end because I do not think that its transition from the Bartlett administration to either a Santos or a Vinick administration would have retained its core audience, and I would rather see the show end on a critical high note than disintegrate into television oblivion. Even though it means losing one of my dearest television shows, I always liked the idea that the show would end with the Bartlett administration's two terms because this is what the Constitution requires; alluding to the future, as this season's premiere episode aptly did, is enough to let those of us who love the show as much as I do know that all of its central characters move on and succeed.
Thank you to all of the cast and crew of "The West Wing" for providing a television experience that has been unequivocally educational, enlightening, and uplifting while also marvelously entertaining. Though your absence will be marked, television history is forever bettered by your presence.