Guest Post: West Wing Rewatch

My good friend Chris has decided to offer us a peek behind the curtain of his summer viewing habits and of the special features on some of his West Wing DVDs. Seems Chris is spending his summer rewatching The West Wing and has gleaned quite a few factoids from the special features. I can hear that soaring theme song already....




I’ve just about finished up my first season rewatch of The West Wing, and Maggie Cats has invited me to write up a guest post for only the second time (I’m starting to think she doesn’t fully appreciate my television choices…otherwise, there’d already be posts on Storage Wars, Parking Wars, Pawn Stars, well, you get the idea). 

I started rewatching it simply to have something to do on plane rides.  But, then, episode after episode, I realized just how much I loved the show when it was originally on.  For one, I find the theme song tremendously inspiring.  Plus, it doesn’t hurt that their politics line up with my own, and it’s nice to think of an administration actually fighting for what it believes (more on that below).  I appreciate the fact that the writers weren’t afraid to touch hot button issues…gun control, education, gays in the military, etc.  The scene when Admiral Fitzwallace (the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and a black man) walks into a meeting between White House staff and Representatives, agrees that allowing gays to serve openly would disrupt unit discipline and cohesion, but then says:

That's what I think too…The problem with that is that what they were saying to me 50 years ago.  Blacks shouldn't serve with whites.  It would disrupt the unit.  You know what?  It did disrupt the unit.  The unit got over it.  The unit changed. I'm an admiral in the U.S. Navy and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff...Beat that with a stick.

Seriously.  Great television.  Just wish it didn’t take so long to become a reality.  I can’t wait to watch the next six seasons again, and continue to be inspired.

I hope you’re prepared for some random facts…I just watched the extra features.

The West Wing sort of came about as an accident.  Aaron Sorkin went to a lunch meeting with producer John Wells unprepared.  Wells was expecting a pitch for a new show, while Sorkin thought it was a social visit.  In a panic, and having just finished The American President (which happens to be one of my favorite movies), Sorkin threw out the idea of a television show focusing on senior staff at the White House. It took a little convincing (who would watch a drama that wasn’t based in a hospital?!?), but NBC finally picked up the series.

If you’ve ever watched the show, its hard to imagine that casting could have gone any differently.  In fact, Bradley Whitford (Josh) was originally cast as Sam Seaborne.  Janel Maloney (Donna) originally auditioned for the role of C.J. (played by Allison Janney).  Donna, Josh’s assistant, was originally not meant to be a recurring role.  And, believe it or not, Sorkin was within hours of casting someone else as President Bartlett (Alan Alda) before he thought of Martin Sheen.  In fact, Sheen didn’t audition for the role until two days before filming started.  Before the pilot, the President was meant to appear an average of one out of four episodes.  Sorkin was afraid the series would veer too much towards focusing on the presidency instead of the senior staff. 

The West Wing won nine Emmys in its inaugural season, a record that still stands.  It went on to win the next three Emmys for best drama series, along with multiple acting, writing and directing awards. 

There are many, many, many other examples of info swimming in my head, but you’re probably already bored of reading about a show that’s over a decade old.  Needless to say, I love The West Wing.  Its somewhat amazing how political history repeats itself. Either that, or Sorkin is prophetic.  Picture a Democratic president, enthusiastically elected, but one that veers heavily towards the center after inauguration and facing an opposition Congress.  He focuses more on reelection than making bold changes his base had hoped for.  Reelection isn’t a sure thing, because the Republicans call him a radical while Democrats complain he’s not radical enough.  Any of this sound familiar?

If you’re interested in watching West Wing again, or for the first time, let me know. I have all seven seasons on DVD.  Or heck, we could just have a rewatch party with all of our favorite episodes!

Revisionist History with Maggie Q

Ever somewhat late to the game, I’ve been taking advantage of my Netflix subscription to watch season one of Nikita, the CW spy show that is now in it’s second season. My fellow TV Sluts have talked about Nikita before, but since it’s been a while and, as far as I know, I’m the only one who’s watched more than an episode or two, I wanted to reflect on a couple of things about it.

The first is, like all the other reviews here have mentioned, that despite seeming like a pretty tired conceit, the show manages to kick some serious ass. The acting, for the most part, is solid and believable and the plotting and pacing of the show make it fun to watch. There isn’t a lot that’s truly innovative in terms of bringing much new to the scene (hot chick who kicks butt getting revenge on a secretive and high-tech pseudo-government hit squad is pretty much standard femme fatale fair for the spy genre), but it gets points for delivering the required notes well. Also, I re-read what I just wrote and realized that it says something about my entertainment choices that I’m even comfortable using all those nouns in the same sentence.

The big thought that I had watching this show, however, was something along the lines of, “Damn. This is what Dollhouse should have been.”

Also? Less Eliza Dushku. Kthanx.

Dollhouse suffered from two things – the lack of interest in a main character that was constantly becoming someone else and Joss Whedon being a notorious slow-starter. Anyone watching Dollhouse knows that by the time we got to the part about why we should care, namely the brilliant post-apocalyptic future that the Dollhouse technology would create, it was hard to go back to the mission-of-the-week episodes. What viewers needed to see right at the start was Echo already trying to take down the Dollhouse and already struggling with what it meant to be a new personality stuffed into some other girl’s body. Instead, we got a season and a half of just wondering how it was that Echo was going to start to lose her shit with each mission. Nikita, by contrast, gets to jump right in to the interesting stuff on her show. And, really, how she broke out isn’t nearly as interesting as what she’s doing to do now as a damaged nobody with no real skills except for infiltration and murder. Following her through season 1 as she struggles with wanting to exact her revenge but also rebuild herself back into an actual human being and not just a programmed killer is honestly compelling. Had that kind of ex post facto development been applied to Dollhouse, I’m convinced the show would have done better.

So, for people like me, the fans of Dollhouse who don’t have a lot of promotional options aside from being crabby little cheerleaders for a show that could have been awesome but ultimately never really got on its feet, Nikita offers a nice, cozy alternate reality version of the show, one that has the same intrigue and overarching sense of dread, but without all the sloppy plotting. And, thankfully, no Fox Entertainment executives.