I am not really a TV watcher. Apart from some sports, a bit of news, and Jeopardy, there is little on the dozens of channels offered by satellite service that interests me; besides, I detest the (mostly) moronic commercials that are repeated two and three times in the same half-hour time slot. I zone out when friends or family members talk about Seinfeld or Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or The X Factor because I’ve never watched even one episode of any of those shows.
On the Friday evenings we are free, however, we can usually be found at home watching a couple of episodes of a TV drama series on DVD that has been critically acclaimed or recommended by a trusted source. Over the past several years we have watched Queer as Folk, The West Wing, Six Feet Under, The Sopranos, NYPD Blue, The Wire, Mad Men, Damages, The Tudors, and The Borgias. On my own I also watched five seasons of Oz (much too violent for my series-watching partner). Some of these series we have abandoned after a few seasons, one or two after a single season or even a few episodes.
We tend to look for a series in which we expect that the writing will be consistently good—with smart dialogue, multi-dimensional characters, unpredictable yet believable plot developments—although we can be faithful if the weakness of one element is counterbalanced by the particular strength of another. In the first three seasons of Damages, for example, the dialogue is often wooden and predictable, but the labyrinthine plot, which is played out over an entire season, is so intriguing one is compelled to watch episode after episode.
The series that, in my estimation, hit the mark in every season of its entire five-season run was The Wire. Smart, complex, grittily realistic, touching, funny, this series explores the dark side of Baltimore (I am sure there is a bright side too—isn’t there?) in which the good guys can be very, very bad and the bad guys can be complicated, self-aware, intelligent human beings in a tough spot. The character Omar Little, for example, is one bad dude: he is a stick-up artist with an ugly scar on his forehead, a mean crook who wears a big scary overcoat and carries a big scary gun, a weapon he is not afraid to use on those who get in his way or do him wrong. Omar specializes in stealing drugs and money from other criminals. He also happens to be gay, and when his partner, whom he truly loves, is tortured and murdered on the orders of a gang leader, Omar’s grief is no less real than that of the respectable English professor, in the film A Single Man, who loses his partner in a tragic car accident.
Yet there is only one series that has moved me to such a degree that I have been compelled to watch individual episodes numerous times. That series is The West Wing.
The West Wing apparently hatched from a lunch meeting in 1996 between screenwriter (and playwright) Aaron Sorkin (A Few Good Men) and heavyweight executive producer John Wells (Third Watch, China Beach). Sorkin thought that he and Wells were just going to “schmooze,” but he says, “As I walked into Ca’ del Sole…I immediately saw that I was screwed. There were three agents at the table. John hadn’t come to schmooze.” When Wells asked him, “What’s your idea?” Sorkin had to think very fast. It just so happened that the night before, the writer Akiva Goldsman (A Beautiful Mind) had been a dinner guest at Sorkin’s home, and during a smoke break from the World Series game had suggested that Sorkin could turn the material from his movie The American President into a great TV series if he concentrated just on the White House staffers. Sorkin pitched the idea to Wells who immediately bought it. It took NBC another two years to decide to buy it.
In its first season The West Wing won a record nine Emmy awards.
Photo Credits:
“Oval Office from Rose Garden” by Tuaussi
“Dignitary Entrance to West Wing” by Tuaussi
Recent Ross Lonergan Articles:
- The Film-School Student Who Never Graduates: A Profile of Ang Lee, Part Four
- The Film-School Student Who Never Graduates: A Profile of Ang Lee, Part Three
- The Film-School Student Who Never Graduates: A Profile of Ang Lee, Part Two
- The Film-School Student Who Never Graduates: A Profile of Ang Lee, Part One
- Bullying, Fear, And The Full Moon (Part Four)
When writer Aaron Sorkin left the series after four seasons I felt that the quality of The West Wing suffered considerably. To my mind, it lost the snappy intelligence that was an essential ingredient of its success. While I have watched episodes from those first four years over and over and found them equally compelling each time, there is not one episode I can think of from the last three seasons that I would care to see again. This is not to say that I think everything Sorkin wrote was brilliant, but he did establish a benchmark in numerous episodes that his successors could not reach.
Very interesting! I’ll have to watch again with that in mind – I hadn’t picked up on the difference in writing, or the departure of Sorkin. I do remember thinking something shifted, but thought maybe I was just losing interest in the show – that it wasn’t holding my attention as much. But never knew why! Great insight, Ross!
I agree completely Ross – The West Wing is something special, and hits on all levels.
The scene where the President is playing chess with Sam Seaborn, and teaches him lessons about world politics and missile standoffs in the middle the game, was one of my favorites. At the end, he tells Sam “When you run for President, and I know you will, I’ll be there to support you.” Then as I remember he checkmates, and leaves a stunned Sam contemplating how his world has just expanded.
Just brilliant!
Dan
Hey Dan: I remember that scene; it was brilliant indeed. And there are so many more like that in the first four years of the series.
Interesting distinction, Ross. Why do you specify brilliant episodes in the first four years? As I remember, the last season was about the election of a new president, and seemed pretty compelling to me as well. Did you have another perspective on those episodes that I missed? 🙂