Our Television Heritage: The West Wing Preface
Coming Wednesdays this spring!
I’m looking over my copy of The West Wing’s first season set, and I have to say that it’s pretty daunting just on one of the inside’s sleeves, which lists the awards won in only its first season. Nine Emmys, a record for a single season of television, including Outstanding Drama. The Peabody Award. A Humanitas Prize. Three TCA Awards, including Program of the Year AND Drama of the Year (it’s rare to win both in the same year). And plenty more where that came from. Not to mention how there’s an entire disc dedicated to bonus features.
People loved The West Wing from the get-go, most of all critics and the industry itself. Although to be fair, the show was a hit, making it to a solid twenty-seventh place in the ratings and nearly maintaining as many viewers as The Simpsons and Buffy the Vampire Slayer in their concurrent seasons (the 10th and 4th, respectively) combined, although it still trailed future OTH series ER and Friends. This is a series that viewers liked to watch to make themselves feel smart for understanding politics, and hopeful that we can have a president as fair and intelligent as Martin Sheen’s Jed Bartlet.
An out-the-gate juggernaut tends to not stay fresh for long. Some works that start big stay that way, like The Simpsons or Friends, but something like ER, which had incomparable numbers from its pilot and for years on, only to run well past its expiration date, are more common. Look at Glee for an example of something that felt revolutionary at the time and quickly petered out from everything it stood for. And rest assured, there is a point where many tend to sour on The West Wing (some sooner than others, but there’s a definitive line in the sand that we’ll cross when we get there), but clearly there was still enough good will reserved for the series to win the Heritage Award after its seventh season wrapped in 2006.
Although the question I have is a little different- is The West Wing still good today, in a post-Trump society where any attempt to meet across the aisles results in scorn at best and death threats at worse? Aaron Sorkin’s political nature aspires for a world where we can all get along, the left always wins and is always right, but the right can be beaten down with an earnest speech and unpretentious eyes. Or that’s the take away that many come from it, myself included since the last time I watched the whole thing on Netflix a decade ago. Truth be told, this isn’t my most anticipated OTH series, but there’s some stuff here that I’m really looking forward to. An incredible cast, both main and with plenty of notable guest stars or recurring roles, solid direction, and at its best, unforgettable writing. I don’t think Sorkin’s writing always lands (don’t talk to me about The Newsroom), but his best work (ie, The Social Network and a few scripts here) really is that damn good.
Also worth questioning, how relevant is The West Wing today as a series? The Simpsons still continues to inspire fervor over its jokes today, while Buffy’s formula has never stopped being analyzed, and upcoming OTH series like The Sopranos and The Wire aren’t very far removed from what is now considered “prestige TV”. The West Wing may have matched The Sopranos in terms of critical reception, but its structure more closely resembled ER (never mind the fact that it shared producer and eventually showrunner John Wells), and while the networks have never stopped making political or medical dramas, these hardly control the zeitgeist the same way a Succession or Yellowjackets does.
I look forward to answering these questions, as well as refamiliarize myself with the Jackal.
Unlike The Simpsons and Buffy, there’s little supplementary material to cover here. Sorkin and John Wells have discussed a reboot in the past, but nothing’s come of that. There are no (official) comics or video games, and the only reunions have been the odd political commercial or a script reading of a classic episode with as much of the cast as could return. There is one work of Sorkin’s that can qualify as a precursor, however, and expect a review of The American President to be released next week.
And on Wednesday the 26th, we’ll cover the first two episodes of the show, where a bicycle accident causes a serious concern for the White House, and President Bartlet butts heads with his VP. I don’t care who you voted for, be there.