The West Wing Revisited
Over the past few months I've been working my way through a full rewatch of The West Wing, concluding in a 2 1/2-day mainline of season 7 when I was home sick this week. My initial watching had not been that methodical. I didn't start at the beginning, but did watch regularly from season 2-ish through season 5-ish when it was airing. Then the end of the show combined with John Spencer's death meant I watched the last quarter or so of season 7 live. At some point I went back and watched seasons 1 and 2 straight through. With the exception of late season 5 through early season 7, I'd seen all of it at some point, and I'd seen some of the eps in that gap, as well.
But my relationship with The West Wing had always been more of it being a pleasant backdrop to my college years. Deeply beloved but not as deeply engrained as some of the other shows I loved at the same time. I was still obsessed with The X-Files and starting to fall for Stargate: SG-1 at the time: those were the shows where I had every episode title memorized. Never this one. So my memories were a little spotty: sharp memories of particular moments or episodes, combined with some gaps, combined with some hazier impressions. My narrative of the show was, I think, the common one: it was great until Sorkin left, and then it kind of jumped the shark, but still managed to end on a strong note.
As a result, it's been really interesting to rewatch--all of it, all in a row, as the person I am now as opposed to the person I was then. I still love this show a lot, for some of the same reasons I did before, but also a lot of different ones, and my show narrative looks a lot different now. For instance:
1. Yes, the show had better writing and tighter storylines and more flash and pizazz in the first four seasons, but wow, did it ever become less misogynistic after Sorkin left! It was really surprising to me just how sexist a lot of those early, memorable, and beloved episodes turned out to be in retrospect. And that whole thread really disappears in the latter three seasons. Also, seasons 5-7 are much better than I had thought/remembered. Sure, the Zoey kidnapping plot was horrible, and there were some boring and unfortunate episodes, like the one where CIA Kate and Drunk Leo hung out with Castro in the 90s, but on the whole, it's still good television.
2. It was also a little surprising to me how conservative it was, in retrospect. I was kind of a baby liberal in college. I grew up in a fairly conservative, religious environment, had a scary raging evangelical phase in high school, and then, thank God, discovered feminism in college. A lot of really basic left-leaning ideas were still pretty fresh and revolutionary to me when this show was on the air, and it felt like it was singing my song. Now, of course, I'm a proper communist, as gabolange would say, (not precisely, but I am a socialist and a pacifist and a staunch anti-nationalist) and wow, is this show conservative and militaristic. Even in the pre-9/11 years when it thought it was being all leftist and edgy. Oh, America...
3. Ugh, Josh and Donna. Why do you make me care about your horrible selves??? I really don't know why I don't hate them. Josh is such an ass, especially to Donna, and she could do so much better, but instead she just takes it and lets herself be his punching bag, and yet I still find myself cheering for them getting it together in the end, even though he never apologized for his many years of being an ass, or for the particularly horrible things that precipitated their estrangement in season 6. Why do I care??? Why can't I just handwave you away to do your unhealthy codependent, quasi-abusive relationship thing in peace? Instead, I'm all "aww, Josh/Donna! Finally!" Narrative manipulation. I, too, still fall for it.
4. On the other hand, CJ and Toby!!! Not CJ/Toby. I've never shipped them, though I see why people do. But these two are my favorites--originally, now, forever. Toby is my favorite to start, and probably through the whole Sorkin era, with CJ a very close second. He drives me up the wall sometimes with some of his views, but I do love the passion of Toby's convictions. Few people love like Toby loves. And I love Toby and Andy and the twins and the fact that he was always going to go out in a flame of self-destruction because the world just doesn't live up to his ideals. Oh, but CJ wins out in the end, for me but not just me. I think the show as a whole decides CJ is its favorite in the end: so much of the end of season 7 is about CJ's journey, and the road she's traveled, from the brilliant and talented but somewhat green press secretary to chief of staff who owns her authority and wants to work for a living and has learned how to make her own choices. She's the character who grows the most over the course of the show, and as a result, it becomes her show, maybe more than it's Jed Bartlet's show, or anyone else's. I'm still not wild that they gave her a kid in the flash-forward, and I'm ambivalent about CJ/Danny, but overall, I still want to be CJ when I grow up. (Except that I think CJ at the beginning of the show is supposed to be roughly the age I am now, and that's really depressing.)
I could come up with more--about what a phenomenal tribute they made to Leo and John Spencer, about the most excellent way they came to an end, about how I hope that Charlie and Zoey live their separate lives for a while and keep in touch and maybe in 10 years or so end up together after all, or at least stay very dear friends for the rest of their lives. But this has never been a show that I've loved in detail, and I suspect that's not going to change now. Rather, it's the broad sweeps of narrative, and my narrative about the show is different now, but still beloved, and I've found it well worth the time to have rewatched it this way.
Crossposted from DW, where there are
comments. Comment here or there.
But my relationship with The West Wing had always been more of it being a pleasant backdrop to my college years. Deeply beloved but not as deeply engrained as some of the other shows I loved at the same time. I was still obsessed with The X-Files and starting to fall for Stargate: SG-1 at the time: those were the shows where I had every episode title memorized. Never this one. So my memories were a little spotty: sharp memories of particular moments or episodes, combined with some gaps, combined with some hazier impressions. My narrative of the show was, I think, the common one: it was great until Sorkin left, and then it kind of jumped the shark, but still managed to end on a strong note.
As a result, it's been really interesting to rewatch--all of it, all in a row, as the person I am now as opposed to the person I was then. I still love this show a lot, for some of the same reasons I did before, but also a lot of different ones, and my show narrative looks a lot different now. For instance:
1. Yes, the show had better writing and tighter storylines and more flash and pizazz in the first four seasons, but wow, did it ever become less misogynistic after Sorkin left! It was really surprising to me just how sexist a lot of those early, memorable, and beloved episodes turned out to be in retrospect. And that whole thread really disappears in the latter three seasons. Also, seasons 5-7 are much better than I had thought/remembered. Sure, the Zoey kidnapping plot was horrible, and there were some boring and unfortunate episodes, like the one where CIA Kate and Drunk Leo hung out with Castro in the 90s, but on the whole, it's still good television.
2. It was also a little surprising to me how conservative it was, in retrospect. I was kind of a baby liberal in college. I grew up in a fairly conservative, religious environment, had a scary raging evangelical phase in high school, and then, thank God, discovered feminism in college. A lot of really basic left-leaning ideas were still pretty fresh and revolutionary to me when this show was on the air, and it felt like it was singing my song. Now, of course, I'm a proper communist, as gabolange would say, (not precisely, but I am a socialist and a pacifist and a staunch anti-nationalist) and wow, is this show conservative and militaristic. Even in the pre-9/11 years when it thought it was being all leftist and edgy. Oh, America...
3. Ugh, Josh and Donna. Why do you make me care about your horrible selves??? I really don't know why I don't hate them. Josh is such an ass, especially to Donna, and she could do so much better, but instead she just takes it and lets herself be his punching bag, and yet I still find myself cheering for them getting it together in the end, even though he never apologized for his many years of being an ass, or for the particularly horrible things that precipitated their estrangement in season 6. Why do I care??? Why can't I just handwave you away to do your unhealthy codependent, quasi-abusive relationship thing in peace? Instead, I'm all "aww, Josh/Donna! Finally!" Narrative manipulation. I, too, still fall for it.
4. On the other hand, CJ and Toby!!! Not CJ/Toby. I've never shipped them, though I see why people do. But these two are my favorites--originally, now, forever. Toby is my favorite to start, and probably through the whole Sorkin era, with CJ a very close second. He drives me up the wall sometimes with some of his views, but I do love the passion of Toby's convictions. Few people love like Toby loves. And I love Toby and Andy and the twins and the fact that he was always going to go out in a flame of self-destruction because the world just doesn't live up to his ideals. Oh, but CJ wins out in the end, for me but not just me. I think the show as a whole decides CJ is its favorite in the end: so much of the end of season 7 is about CJ's journey, and the road she's traveled, from the brilliant and talented but somewhat green press secretary to chief of staff who owns her authority and wants to work for a living and has learned how to make her own choices. She's the character who grows the most over the course of the show, and as a result, it becomes her show, maybe more than it's Jed Bartlet's show, or anyone else's. I'm still not wild that they gave her a kid in the flash-forward, and I'm ambivalent about CJ/Danny, but overall, I still want to be CJ when I grow up. (Except that I think CJ at the beginning of the show is supposed to be roughly the age I am now, and that's really depressing.)
I could come up with more--about what a phenomenal tribute they made to Leo and John Spencer, about the most excellent way they came to an end, about how I hope that Charlie and Zoey live their separate lives for a while and keep in touch and maybe in 10 years or so end up together after all, or at least stay very dear friends for the rest of their lives. But this has never been a show that I've loved in detail, and I suspect that's not going to change now. Rather, it's the broad sweeps of narrative, and my narrative about the show is different now, but still beloved, and I've found it well worth the time to have rewatched it this way.
Crossposted from DW, where there are
comments. Comment here or there.