Trans/plant/portation

The West Wing rushed in at the end of the 2oth Century when we were all worried about Y2K and our brand-new Internet crashing down around our ears. Helmed by Martin Sheen, Aaron Sorkin’s vision of the capitol city gave us a non-sexist image of a Democratic president, quick-witted and principled to the hilt, someone who would never receive, much less request, oral sex in the Oval Office from an intern. The biggest argument inside the Beltway was whether Ken Starr needed to spend $20 million of the taxpayers’ money to investigate the commander-in-chief’s sex life. We may not have thought of it as a simpler time, and it wasn’t all that long ago, but well, in retrospect popular culture was somewhat less complicated.

This is not a series that didn’t manage to hit the point of poor performance, often called “jumping the shark.” It did become somewhat preposterous, with a pretend coup of a pretend nation that could not possibly compare to the destruction of our national mental stability brought about by 9/11.

But many of us watched anyway, for the rapid fire dialogue, for Rob Lowe (until he left, of course), for the rich relationships among the senior advisers to the president (C.J.! Toby! Lyman!), and the ways in which smart people in Washington were portrayed. Intrigue on the domestic front was especially believable, First Family kidnappings aside. Audiences were willing to go along with a few half-baked story ideas because so much else about the series rang true. And when Jimmy Smits and Alan Alda ran for the highest office in the land, viewership rebounded. Read More…