TOM FRANCIS
REGRETS THIS ALREADY

The West Wing

Despite being utterly unlike anything else I like in theme or type (it’s a White House drama (you might think that’s obvious from the title, but if so you’re probably American – I’ve still never heard of the West Wing outside of this series)), it’s absolutely brilliant. One thing about it goes some way to explaining the anomaly, though – it’s a fantasy. I imagine people who keep up with politics could have a nasty experience trying to swallow its picture of a government in which a near-perfect tension between pure democracy and educated liberalism decides policy, and the people in power are all heartbreakingly good-willed and astonishingly talented. To call it arrogant for that is like accusing Star Trek of exaggerating our space-travel capabilities. Not a documentary! Fiction is where they tell you a story and, while knowing the story isn’t true, you follow the plot and maybe enjoy it. Where did we get this idea that art’s supposed to just record what things are like? That’s a talentless, menial task (says a journalist); art should be fantasy, it should use imagination to show how things could be and get people excited at the idea. Beyond entertainment, that’s its only task, and it’s a much loftier and more important calling than commenting on how things really are.

The thing that sticks with me from The West Wing is the culture of highly qualified people working incredibly hard out of dedication to what they do – not why they’re doing it. Sam and Toby are relentlessly perfectionist about their own and each other’s writing because they love writing and couldn’t bear to see bad writing used, not because of a sense of duty to their country. Writer Aaron Sorkin clearly models them on himself, and the fact that he works in entertainment while they run the country implies no difference in their passion and determination. He wrote virtually every episode of the show himself, right up to the end of series four (when it mysteriously lost all its wit and heart), and – let’s be honest here – frequently took drugs to do it. I’m not the same at all, of course, but occasionally I catch myself thinking like this – using my spare time to rework something sub-par even though I’m sure it would have been accepted. The profound thing about the West Wing is that it paints a fantasy so admirable it actually inspires you to improve yourself. It ingrains you with the idea that a thing is worth doing well at virtually any cost.

The characters talk as fast as air-traffic controllers, only the jargon is not so much jargon as a mix of brilliantly argued moral points and hilarious stupidity. The political situations are eerily like recent real ones, and the action taken is a compelling compromise between liberal and what people actually believe in: the Democrats are in power, and president Bartlett (played by Martin Sheen, incidentally) is a particularly left wing (and underlyingly geeky) one. Every issue is discussed with a thoroughness and fairness (not to mention articulacy and, an unavoidably recurring word, intelligence) that impresses even me, a sceptic philosopher derisive of the attempts of any other discipline to even argue coherently, let alone exhibit any kind of rational intelligence. The arguments for the ‘other side’ are alarmingly persuasive, and a couple of times it’s genuinely changed my stance on things.

But the issues are very much secondary to the characters, for me – there are perhaps five who aren’t fantastic and compelling and vividly human, so to do the others full justice, I will list ten of them by first name in descending order of greatness: Toby, Josh, Will, Sam, Donna, Margaret, Leo, CJ, Charlie. Detailing what I like so much about each of them would be a mammoth (though strangely tempting) task, so I’ll just skip over some highlights: Toby is just fantastic all the time – grouchy, brilliant, and absurdly restrained when he’s happy; Josh and Donna’s relationship is a horribly touching combination of superficial spite masking genuine affection; Margaret’s perfect deadpan conversations with her perpetually frowning boss Leo.

Series Notes: the first two series are relentlessly brilliant, with several of the best ever episodes in the second; but then the third starts off with three or four… not bad episodes as such, just a bit grim. It’s all struggle and hostility, whereas no other episodes before that had ever lost their good humour and multi-facetedness. Shortly into the series, though, it gets great again, and stays at the old stellar standard. Then the fourth series… wow. It’s like The West Wing Plus: everything about it is even better, and the energy and pace of it is completely exhilerating. As for the finalés, the first series’ was fantastic, the next two weren’t really cliff-hangers or even very interesting, but the fourth is another explosive one, taking four long-running plot-lines to breaking point and leaving them there, and also featuring two remarkable firsts: one of the characters running (it’s not usually a very athletic programme); and a white ending screen (every other episode has a black one).

Or, it would be if that was actually the last episode. I later discovered that the fourth series, inexplicably, has a twenty-third episode, which utterly breaks the cliffhanger and leaves the series at a boring stalemate, and doesn’t have the fade to white. After that, Sorkin no longer writes the show, and while it seems superficially similar, the heart is gone from it. Series five, as far as I could muster the interest to watch, focused on dramatic global events, turning it into a political thriller rather than a personal drama set within the political arena. I haven’t watched much of series six, again because I dislike what little I have: my problem with that one stemming from the characters. They were delicate things as Sorkin crafted them, more human and believable than we’re used to on TV, and in other writers’ comparitively clumsy hands they break. Their subtle internal logic has gone, and their actions become inconsistent – just slightly, way less than on any other show, but it ruins the illusion nonetheless.

Series seven really perks up. Nothing like as good as a Sorkin series, but because it’s mostly new characters, and in a new environment, starting something new rather than trying to continue what was started in Sorkin’s episodes, it feels like a different show with a few familiar faces, and the mere-mortal writing is easier to swallow. It never got terribly exciting, and there were only a few touching or funny moments, but it was a nice way to go out.

Quotes:

(Donna is pressing Leo for official word on the news that the president crashed his* bicycle)
Leo: He was swerving to avoid a tree.
Donna: And what happened?
Leo: He was unsuccessful.**

Senator At Alcoholics Anonymous Meeting: Okay, I haven’t chaired in a while; what do we do next?
Agency Director At Alcoholics Anonymous Meeting: Now’s when we usually start drinking.
Other Senator At Alcoholics Anonymous Meeting: Actually there is one thing I’d like to talk about before we start.
Senator At Alcoholics Anonymous Meeting: If you’re going to try and get me to fund that idiot-ass airplane that can’t fly…
Other Senator At Alcoholics Anonymous Meeting: It can fly.
Senator At Alcoholics Anonymous Meeting: Yeah, it can fly, it just can’t land.
Federal Judge At Alcoholics Anonymous Meeting: That’s a small price to pay for being able to fly.

Clips: hammer.avi (15MB) cat.avi (5MB)