Once, he was so young and vigorous.
Well, there’s not much “West Wing” left.
As I was working out this morning, Leo McGarry — now Matt Santos’ running mate — was sweating over debate prep, and Josh and the rest of the campaign were leaking how badly he was doing, to lower expectations.
One by one, President Jed Bartlet’s key staffers have pulled away. Sam Seaborn just sort of fell off the face of the Earth when he went West to run for Congress (the way he faded away, without any mention of what happened to him, is one of the few weaknesses in the writing of the show). Leo stepped down after his heart attack, but is now “jumping off the cliff” again with Santos. Josh is running the Santos campaign. Toby is — well, you know what happened to Toby — and if you don’t, I’m not telling you.
The Bartlet administration is winding down. This was episode 10 of the 7th and final season. Only 12 episodes left.
And if you think the presidency of Barack Obama has aged him, have you ever compared pictures of Jed Bartlet from season one and season seven? Being a TV president can be pretty rough, too, apparently.
Of course, the transformation is more startling to me than it was to folks who watched the show the first time around. I saw my first episode at the start of this year.
As you know, I have loved this show. I don’t want to lose it, and have to go back to the horrible real-life politics. Or to vastly inferior television, for that matter. I try to cling to it. I get excited when someone else out there writes about how much he or she loved the show, and I nod enthusiastically. When a young woman asserted in the WashPost that “I’m the biggest ‘West Wing’ fan you’ll ever meet,” I protested, “No, you’re not.”
I’ve started following “Leo McGarry,” my favorite character, on Twitter. A sample:
Getting slurred, incoherent phone calls to do with Scotland and the referendum. Someone please confiscate John Marbury’s mobile phone.
— Leo Thomas McGarry (@LeoMcGarry) September 17, 2014
All this fanboy behavior is pitiful, I know, but then my plight is truly pitiable: I’m about to run out of West Wings. And I fear there’s nothing out there that I haven’t seen that is as good as this.
Showing his age, with Leo in Season 7.
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Since we’re talking WW, one of my favorite episodes is the one where Bartlett comes back from an overseas trip with a bunch of chess sets. He then gives them out and plays chess with everyone simultaneously.
With Toby, I can’t remember what they discuss, but with Sam, it’s the Chinese/Taiwan standoff. Bartlett keeps saying “See the whole board” to Sam, who is struggling to figure out Bartlett’s military moves.
Great episode.
The AEGIS destroyers….
Part of that is that Sheen let up on the diet and hair dye.
This new “Madame Secretery” show has a West Wing vibe.
Haven’t seen “Madame Secretary”. Is that supposed to be a Hillary Clinton kinda thing? Is she the Secretary of State?
Do they do a lot of the “walk and talk” shots where the camera has two characters walking down a hall talking? WW did that a whole bunch. Also, I think I read somewhere that WW had more lines of dialogue than most shows of that length.
Lots of fast talking. Like a ’30s madcap comedy…
I’m assuming Hillary as SofS was the inspiration, but the character isn’t Hillaryish.