Sorry about the sporadic posting, guys. I have no excuse really aside from a sudden lack of inspiration and the fact that school’s back, that I’m working in the weekends and that I have seven cute puppies that desperately need cuddling (when they’re not trying to hamstring me with their newly-discovered appetite for human flesh). I’ll try to get things up to at least two post a week before long; I just need to find a workable routine.

But to make up for my negligence, I’ve decided to throw you a bone and review all of the seven seasons of the West Wing. I am perfectly aware that I’ve already done the two first here, and still stand for what I’ve said earlier, but the thought of just doing season 3 to season 7 seems more than a little silly to me when I could write one massive one instead. It is, after all, what I do best, isn’t it?

I’ll try to keep things as spoiler-free as possible and give you proper notice if I’m nearing a major plot point. So, let’s jump down below the picture and see why the West Wing is such a great show that it’s ended up high on my all-star list.

The West Wing is basically about what happens in the White House and the general American political process. It features characters mainly from the senior staff to the President, as well as some secretaries, senators, advisers et cetera, et cetera. It was originally conceived of by master-writer Aaron Sorkin, who wrote a lot of episodes up until the third season, when he had to drop out because “personal problems” (i.e. drug abuse if I’m not mistaken). John Wells took over as executive producer and the show suffered a steady decline in quality that ended in highly mediocre and sometimes outright boring fifth season before things took a giant leap upwards in the final two seasons of the show. The best season is without doubt season 1, closely followed by nr. 2, but season 6 & 7 (both Sorkin-free) could give season 3 a run for its money any time of the year. Overall though, it’s a show that managed to retain a very high quality through a long and vital run that culminated in something that, if not a completely, then an adequately satisfactory ending. Which is nice, but it begs the question why the show was as good as I claim.

Well, that one’s easy, really. Ask yourself what you want from a drama series, and chances are that the West Wing has it in abundance. Good dialog? Hell, it’s got the best dialog any show has had, bar none.

Good characters, then, that are hopefully played by good actors? Ehrm, yes, I do believe that the West Wing qualifies on that criteria, too. Toby Ziegler (Richard Schiff) is probably one of them most filled out and believable people ever portrayed on television. No, I’m not kidding. Schiff plays Ziegler so well that all talk about characters seem superfluous, because Ziegler isn’t just that; he’s as real a man as you’re likely to see. He’s bitter, but with a unwavering sense of ethics. He’s brilliant, but very fallible. He’s not the most lovable character on the show (that would probably be Josh Lyman - a favorite of mine, too), but dammit if he didn’t steal nearly every scene he was in. And if he didn’t steal it, it was just because the other actors were so damned good that (I mean, Martin Sheen as president of the USA!) Hugh Laurie would’ve had major problems holding his own.

One of the obvious pitfalls of a show like this is that it’s hard to keep things new and fresh. At the start of the show it wasn’t very hard because they had a vast amounts of scenarios to take from, but by the end of season 3 you could see that they began struggling to shake things up. They switched around the cast and brought in fresh faces (did they ever explain what happened to Sam before season 7? If so, I didn’t catch it), they set up big - and sometimes a little unbelievable, but mostly disturbingly relevant - international conflicts, but it lost it’s spark somewhere along there and it didn’t get rekindled before the second campaign of the show started up.

And while we’re on the that track, I’d just like to note the similarities between what went down in season 7 of the West Wing and what’s going on with Obama and McCain now. It’s pretty fucking weird if you ask me, because somehow the writers wrote a near-perfect blue-sheet for the next democratic campaign. It’s freaky if you ask me.

The biggest flaw of the show, however, is the lack of stones it showed when it came to the interpersonal drama. Not that there wasn’t more than enough of it or that what there was didn’t hold up to the rest of show; no, that’s not what I’m saying. There was a lot of potential for great drama between the characters, but when the chips were down and time had come for something to actually happen between some of them, it just… sort of vaporized or wasn’t featured much ’till we’d all hopefully forgotten about it. One could claim that the West Wing had a more realistic approach to these things than your regular American show -and you’d be right - but every so often I found myself wishing that they’d throw me a bone. Any bone would’ve done, really, I just want to see some resolution! It did sew up several of this lines in the last season, but not to the extent I’d hoped.

I could probably go on and on and on about this show. I could mention that my favorite episode the one at the end of season 3 and that one of the worst ones was the documentary style episode they did on C.J. in (I think) season 5. I could also mention that I’ve gotten A LOT MORE interested in politics after I watched this show and that I feel now that I actually learned a lot from this series. Which is, you know, nice if you’re going to put down the amount of time I did on this.

But none of this actually matters. This is easily one of the best and most watchable drama series ever made. Most of you have already watched it and are just reading this to check whether I’ve gone nutter butters or not, and those of you who haven’t gotten around it yet probably have a set of good excuses, like being low on money or spare time to throw away at stuff like this.

No, petting puppies doesn’t count as a good excuse, no matter how cute they are. Why do you ask?

Season 1: 10/10

Season 2: 9.0/10

Season 3: 8.5/10

Season 4: 8.0/10

Season 5: 7.5/10 (weak)

Season 6: 8.5/10 (weak)

Season 7: 9.0/10 (weak)