The West Wing — Season 7

After losing track of what made the characters of The West Wing so memorable, John Wells found a way to fix the show: just make as many new characters as possible, and focus on them instead. It was a bold gambit, but one that paid off handsomely, turning a horribly staid program into something that actually approached the old energy that used to roll off it effortlessly. One could see the transition in the quality dips the sixth season took when it returned to the White House after breaking from the campaign trail.

Happily, the writers understood what worked best about the sixth season, and the vast majority of the show's final season excels, ironically, by all but entirely abandoning its previous episodes. The White House where the show made its home for six years suddenly becomes the abstract that we typically view the president's home as: for all the sunny idealism, the other seasons de-romanticized and made concrete 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Now, it exists as the goal for Sen. Arnold Vinick (Alan Alda) and Rep. Matt Santos (Jimmy Smits), the prize for besting the other in the presidential race.

In Vinick and Santos, we have evenly matched -- intellectually and morally -- nominees, an ideal situation for an audience who has only ever known one clear frontrunner (even if that person lost) and a joke of a human being. The West Wing itself already played into this idea by projecting frustrations with George Bush by setting up a caricature of him to go against Bartlet's reelection bid. It was a farcical bit of plotting -- not least because the least offensive aspect of Bush was his intelligence, which took a distant back seat to his corporate cronyism and penchant for declaring war crimes legal -- but it was oddly familiar. Vinick and Santos offer the possibility for a different kind of campaign one that works on rhetoric but actually addresses the issues in a substantive way.

For the first part of the season, Vinick and Santos solidify their positions. With the Vinick the clear frontrunner for having no serious competition for his nomination, he gets the majority of press coverage, but that also brings more scrutiny. His socially liberal views -- pro-choice, hands-off the issue of gay marriage -- win him independents but sorely cost him among the Religious Right that has taken over the Republican Party. Still, with the Democrats disorganized from the tight primary race and Bartlet having proved how successfully a president could cross the aisle without watering down his achievements, Vinick could steal away liberal voters.

With Santos trailing, Josh scrambles to find ways to boost his candidate's profile. Vinick changes the election strategy: his home state is California, making Democrats fight for a major state they typically assume will go to them, and his socially liberal policies allow voters who might have been alienated by religious pandering to consider a conservative. Santos brings in a media consultant, Louise Thorton (Janeane Garofolo), and for all their head-butting, Josh and Lou line up on most issues except the policy of negative ads. The public loves them, but they also hypocritically look down on the first nominee to slam the other. Lou knows that a slash-and-burn policy will give them such gains that the fickle tut-tutting of the electorate will fade quickly, but Josh sticks to conventional wisdom.

But then, nothing about Santos lines up with conventional wisdom. He may have the onus of proving himself, but he actually has it easy compared to Vinick, who makes gains in states that would almost never consider a Republican but also begins slipping in the strong block of Southern voters. Santos, then, has the luxury of making his own image without pressure from a major section of party supporters.

As with Obama, Santos sidesteps the negativity (and the negativity leveled at him) and targets the vein of betrayed optimism the voters always feel. Constantly vexing Josh and Lou by managing to say the least politically nonthreatening thing, Santos then sends their jaws to the floor again when he works his way out of the pit, delivering a speech that clarifies his stance until those most opposed are cowed and those on the fence are turned into wild believers. The biggest issue facing him is a racial one; just as Obama must tiptoe around any racial component to come across his desk, so too must Santos delicately handle the subject of a black teen shot by a Latino cop. But he finds a way to avoid defining himself as just "the Latino nominee" with a speech at the boy's funeral that avoids finger-pointing and finds a way to push for greater understanding without turning a young man's death into an excuse for a "Kumbaya."

Undoubtedly the centerpiece of the campaign storyline is "The Debate," which NBC aired live on the east and west coasts. Half-ingenious, half-unbearably awkward, "The Debate" strives for the feel of a real debate but breaks from the format instantly to let the nominees speak directly to each other and have an actual discussion rather than a regurgitation of talking points. When Alda and Smits get into, they are brilliantly, but everything surrounding them is just a haphazard ratings stunt, and the flimsy construction threatens to undo the episode before the two actors rescue it once more. Besides, the episode does succeed in painting a clear portrait of where the two split on their positions and how they approach each issue.

If Vinick and Santos look like equally valid choices to the show's audience, they also look like that way to the voters in The West Wing's diegesis, and the election comes down to a hair. Vinick manages to talk his way out of a near-meltdown of a nuclear plant he firmly supported by somehow promoting the virtues of nuclear energy when people are in a panic, salvaging an event that should have delivered the presidency to Santos in a hand basket. Santos, on the other hand, continues to prove himself, and he even gets the Republican on national security as he's still a reserve pilot in the Marines.

The rise of Santos makes up for the slow spiral of the Bartlet administration, which features majorly in episodes that suck the life out of the main storyline. Bartlet's middle daughter gets married, leading to a farcical in-White House wedding that fails as levity against the severity of the campaign and only exacerbates the lazy rewriting of most of the original cast into parodies of their former selves. Furthermore, the writers attempt to capitalize on the Valerie Plame scandal by introducing a White House leak of their own. But because this is Bartlet and not that pampered puppet who ceded control of the presidency to Dick Cheney, the leak goes from a petulant burning of a CIA operative as revenge against her anti-Iraq husband to a much more understandable release of information. With a group of astronauts stranded in space with dwindling oxygen, someone in the West Wing leaks knowledge of a secret military space plane that frees it up to be used in a rescue by removing the secret. There are military considerations, sure, but none on the level of blacklisting an intelligence agent and putting her sources in jeopardy. Many would sympathize with the decision, cutting out a great deal of dramatic weight when the person responsible -- or at least the person who confesses -- should be seen as a hero.

When election day nears, The West Wing hits a frenzied note that rivals the chaos of the most bewildering and tense moments of the show's early days. The strain of too many firm handshakes gives Vinick a hairline fracture, while sleep deprivation has Santos so on-edge he nearly snaps at his family with a sea of cameras nearby. The real life death of John Spencer forces the writers to deal with Leo McGarry, and an already tight election night compounds when Annabeth discovers his body in a hotel room before the polls close in Western states. The tension is unbearable, and when the final state pushes one nominee over the top, the results are not so much triumphant but relieving. At last, we can get some sleep, even if the characters can't.

That's the fatalistic humor of the last third of the show's season: after fighting so hard to get the presidency, the Santos crew now has to immediately start planning his first term. This should not come as a surprise, given that we spent years watching people like Josh frantically pace around the White House working for a sitting president, but the election proved so dramatically satisfying after the bloat of the rest of the Wells years (and even the end-run of Sorkin's time on the show) that it's shocking to remember that now the real work begins.

And so, the last days of The West Wing run out in quiet yet tireless terms, with the characters preparing for the next major shift and emotional closure amazingly coming from people who seemingly ran out of dramatic meaning long ago. The writers bring back long-lost characters like Sam Seaborn to show just how far the series has progressed, and without wishing to keep beating this horse, I wondered if the sudden welling of emotion I felt in the last few episodes was what I was supposed to feel with Lost's final hours. Though John Wells and some of his new writers seemingly did everything in their power to ruin the cast we came to know and love, they manage to achieve an elegiac view of the show as a whole. I may not have felt as deeply about Charlie, C.J. or Toby personally as I might had the series ended with its fourths season, but I felt an overall sense of loss leaving the Bartlet White House, and the tinge of desire I had to stick with Santos came with the understanding that it was better to let go. The West Wing allowed us all to imagine a world free of Bush during its run, but by the end, the allegory disappears and I was left mourning the show's loss and its loss alone.

The West Wing — Season 6

After the mediocre (at best) fifth season expanded on the worst aspects of Sorkin's time on the show -- overblown storylines, optimism that verged on reality blindness -- and combined them with a sudden lack of clearly defined direction and an inability to maintain a dramatic arc. The new showrunner, John Wells, fumbled the admittedly ludicrous but dramatically tense finale of the fourth season and he spent the rest of the season trying to recover. Eventually, they found themselves in the same position as the last year, with a finale that sacrificed logic for a desperate grab for suspense.

If the central issue of the fifth season was the sudden upswing in major political problems being wrapped up with stupefying expediency, the sixth season of The West Wing hardly inspires much confidence for a return to the unrealistic but at least vaguely plausible political dealing of the show's early years. Setting a new high for Jed Bartlet's capacity as a groundbreaking leader and a new low for understanding of the complexities of international tensions, the writers use the first two episodes to -- I am not kidding -- solve the bitter struggle between Palestine and Israel. There is some small measure taken to acknowledge how absurd this is and how difficult a peace would be to ensure, but after only a few episodes, even the matter of U.S. peacekeepers sent to monitor the situation cease to rate a mention. It is yet another embarrassing development for a show that seems at this point capable only of making plainly clear the thin line between sharply written off-reality and stilted, cockeyed idealism.

But diffusing one of the world's most dangerous time bombs thankfully does not set a precedent for superhuman achievements on Bartlet's part. Instead, it captures, or at least attempts to capture, the uncertainty of a lame-duck session. After winning reelection despite the massive controversy of lying about his multiple sclerosis and then resigning his post for a brief time to hunt for his daughter without emotionally compromising the position of the most powerful man in the world, Bartlet suddenly finds himself staring down his biggest challenge: retirement.

Unfortunately, the ennui and mounting sense of regret for policies left undone spreads to the pacing of the season. The first half of the season drags so badly I feel as if I could have watched two seasons of the show's early years in the same time span. Compounding Bartlet's feelings of being trapped in the office is the blatant metaphor of a sudden onset of advanced MS symptoms, leaving Bartlet paralyzed for a time and wearied for the rest of the episodes. Had this occurred sooner, the paralysis would have carried weight, impeding his bold plans for bettering America. Instead, it only exacerbates the feelings of aimlessness, miring the series in a loop that works like so: Bartlet discusses fatigue, Abigail begins edging into decision-making in full-on Edith Wilson mode, the staff gently grumbles about not doing anything, and everyone misses Leo, who had a hear attack, because why not?

Whatever shrewdness might have motivated the writers to suddenly scale back the sense of accomplishment and fire to the Bartlet administration, this exaggerated nonsense makes the already struggling series unbearable. One episode, involving Bartlet accidentally accepting the flag of the Taiwanese independence movement mere hours before he must deal with the Chinese on economic and diplomatic issues, manages to rival the badness of the fifth season's gimmick episode "Access" by simply being bad within canon. In some ways, that's even worse than "Access." (And what the hell was with that officious, and nonsensically British, guy down in archives?). Another story of note includes Josh lightly hitting a Prius while test-driving a gas-guzzling SUV, setting off the dumbest media frenzy in the history of Beltway echo-chamber frenzies. This laziness can be seen all over the place, even in minor details such as dragging Lily Tomlin out on location for the Camp David episode and giving her no lines.

Then, something miraculous happens: The West Wing rights itself, and in a wholly unexpected way. Rather than attempt to find that old spark, the writers finally understand that, after five seasons of dramatic arcs and single-episode issues, the show simply has nothing left to say about the Bartlet administration. Instead, Wells and co. turn their attention to the next generation of politics, splitting focus between drudging White House-centric episodes and vibrant, intriguing and rewarding looks at the campaign trail for the Democrats seeking not only to secure the presidential nomination.

Previously, presidential elections on The West Wing were covered primarily through flashbacks of the staffers coming to Bartlet's original campaign. But those episodes concerned what it was about Bartlet that made the characters decide to throw their time and effort behind the then-governor. Here, the writers focus on the nitty-gritty of the campaign trail, treating the mad house that is the election cycle with the same meticulous, if exaggerated, detail with which Aaron Sorkin plotted the inner workings of the White House through the staff, back before most of these decisions were filtered through the broader prism of the president's involvement.

The desire for the staffers to continue working leads to an ideological split: some stay with Bartlet to try and ensure that his last year is as productive and meaningful as his first seven, while others head out to find the next major player. John Hoynes, the disgraced ex-vice president, feels enough time has lapsed from his public scandal to consider a run, especially since his only real competition is Bob Russell, current VP and target for every joke about dumb politicians that people have saved up since Dan Quayle disappeared from the public eye. Will Bailey, who already aligned himself with Russell when he spotted the shrewd politician underneath the bumbling facade, becomes the vice president's primary campaign adviser in addition to being chief of staff. Donna, as fed up with the drawn-out sexual tension with Josh as the show's audience, also jumps onto Russell's campaign.

But the most interesting development is Josh's decision to hunt down a Texan congressman who had been considering retiring from public service while still young to effect more direct change at home. Matt Santos (Jimmy Smits) has no aspirations to run, but Josh's dealings with the representative nag at him until he heads to Texas to convince Santos to run. For the remainder of the season, Josh toils to make his candidate look like more than a joke as more and more come to believe he's running Santos just to split votes from Russell to benefit Hoynes, his boss before Josh jumped onto Bartlet's ship.

The writers based Santos on then-Senator Barack Obama, and it's remarkable how prescient his campaign is: an also-ran against presumptive front-runners, Santos slowly gains ground when he sticks to pushing issues instead of getting bogged down in the usual attacks (remember when Obama's unwillingness to stay on the offensive was a sign of integrity and not a routinely disappointing display of his reluctance to stand by his beliefs?). His unexpected rise throws the Democratic caucus into pandemonium, preventing a clear choice for nomination when the Republicans immediately fall behind Sen. Arnold Vinick of California (Alan Alda).

At last, The West Wing returns to gripping television. Both the confusing nature of the Democratic situation and the plans of the Vinick campaign make for fascinating stories. Part of this, of course, can be attributed to the actors. Jimmy Smits has always struck me as an actor I shouldn't like until he unloads a heap of talent while you're not paying attention. He looks as if acting excites him more than anything, like a boy wondering onto a set in the middle of classic Hollywood and managing to get on-screen. I almost expect him to stop in whatever performance he's giving and wave "hello" to his mother at the camera, and that eternal, endearing boyishness makes him magnetic. When he combines that with the conviction of belief he brings to Santos, I couldn't take my eyes off him, and I noticed more about this actor I adore than I ever had previously. His physicality matches his acting style: slight pockmarks lay off the side of his still-youthful face, adding a hint of wisdom and calm to his enthusiasm. When Santos walks around New Hampshire before the primaries, insisting on discussing policy instead of simply hunting photo-ops with average citizens, he still comes off as the most likable of the candidates.

At the other end is Alda, whose casting as the Republican senator only compounds the unlikelihood of Vinick's complexity. Not only do the writers at last come up with a conservative character who does not serve as a punching bag for our pent-up frustrations with Bush et al., they picked one of Hollywood's most committed liberals to play him. While Santos struggles to stand by his idealism as Josh attempts to soften him, Vinick has the voice of authority of a longtime politician, sticking to his guns even when it could cost him among the conservative base. His commitment to hands-off policy causes him to butt heads with social conservatives on issues like abortion, and his religious doubts lead him to denounce his castigation among the press for not attending church regularly. Perhaps it is a byproduct of The West Wing's tangential relationship to reality, but Vinick's more libertarian policies actually sound as if they could work. Modeled loosely after Barry Goldwater, Vinick lacks his inspiration's hawkish qualities but shares a commitment to fiscal conservatism over the Religious Right and an unwillingness to simplify or soften his message for the sake of easily digestible rhetoric. If Santos comes off as a man of the people, a young gun who can connect seemingly with anyone even if his beliefs clash with his or hers, Vinick emits an authoritative tone, fatherly without being patriarchal.

The caliber of these two candidates makes for riveting television, taking Bartlet's magnetism and splitting between two completely opposed but respectful men. Though the sixth season deals with the tension among Democrats as the race for nomination is too close to call even heading into the Democratic National Conference, one instantly hopes that the final race will pit Vinick against Santos, for the two of them continue to display such honesty that I would set aside any hopes for truly realistic politics just to see what it might be like if two candidates would conduct themselves honorably and truthfully. So enraptured was I by the pair of them that I never stopped to consider that, in real life, we finally got one such candidate in the last presidential cycle, only for him to sorely disappoint on many of the core issues that defined the courage of his beliefs.

If Santos brought up the Barack Obama connection openly, the end days of Bartlet's administration blurred the line of who might best embody our current president. Though Bartlet is entering his final year of a second term having accomplished much, the single year we see in this season mirrors the two Obama has presided over since taking office: Bartlet is besieged by compromise and regret, unable to get anything past a partisan Congress (though at least Bartlet has the decency to be gridlocked by a Republican majority and not a small but militant minority), and idealism takes a back seat to politicking. If the writers called Obama's meteoric rise three years ahead of time, they also anticipated the cynicism that would take foot when certain things beyond the leader's control spiraled out of control and some of the policies he enacted to right them only made matters worse. After suffering through a season I originally pegged as mediocre but not entirely terrible before revising my opinion to something even less positive, I needed to see this shift from dragging plots to ahead-of-the-curve projection. Though it appears as if The West Wing will never return to its original format before its finale in the next season, I no longer mind. By changing course, it saved itself, and I can at last look forward to completing a series that instantly leaped into the high reaches of my favorite programs when I dove into its mesmerizing early seasons so long ago.