I think I’ve mentioned before that I’ve been rewatching The West Wing, that liberal fantasy show from the late 1990s and early 2000s that was, during its run, one of the shows that defined “prestige network television” in an era where that definition also included both Friends and Will and Grace, so… well, you know. I think that says it all. I was a big fan of The West Wing when it first ran — those more innocent days! — and it left an oversize, unreasonable fondness for the works of Aaron Sorkin that have seen me watching both The Newsroom and, worse, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip on more than one occasion. (Yes, I am that person who has watched Studio 60 more than once.)
I dove into this West Wing rewatch with no small level of cynicism because, bluntly, history has not been kind to politics or the kind of “People are just goshdarn good deep down” fantasizing that the show is ultimately rooted in; I was lured in by watching Martin Sheen and Dule Hill talk about the show in March for work, and the fact that it was available on HBO Max and, honestly, I didn’t think I’d last more than a couple episodes. As I write this, I’m just starting the fifth season, so you can tell how that worked out.
A lot of what kept me around was the writing, of course. Yes, The West Wing has not aged well in many respects — not least of which is its unerring optimism in “America” as a concept, and Aaron Sorkin’s tendency to scold anyone who doesn’t live up to his stated ideals as expressed through whatever mouthpiece he’s writing at the moment — but the first couple of seasons still crackle with a writer realizing the freedom and scope a television show gives him to follow whims, and a sense of humor (and, bluntly, lots of I’d-forgotten-how-fun writer jokes, too) that are hard to resist. The show is sillier in its early days, and that’s a pretty good way for me to fall back in love with it.
What’s also got me this go around is seeing the show in its historical perspective. What changes between seasons 2 and 3 is, simply, 9/11 happens and you can feel that throughout the second half of Sorkin’s run as writer; he’s visibly knocked off course by it and the show changes in all these fascinating ways as a result, some of which were, I suspect, not even entirely intentional on his part. It becomes way more centrist in its outlook and there’s a lot more emphasis on “good Republicans” showing up, for one thing; it becomes more self-serious and far preachier, with more stories about terrorism, domestic and otherwise. You can see Sorkin get thrown off his game and struggle to find a new rhythm, and it’s neither graceful nor subtle, but all the more fascinating for that.
Things only get worse from here, of course: after Sorkin was fired, the writing plummets in quality and characters start acting wildly out-of-character. Will I bail before that happens, or stay the course? It depends how emotionally masochistic I’m feeling over the next few weeks, I guess — although the true test of that last point will come if I decide to follow up The West Wing with yet another Studio 60 run-through. Surely not. And… yet…?