In Praise Of… West Wing

There comes a point at the end of every show role when a girl’s just gotta unwind.  For the first time in six weeks, massive, regulated cycles of laundry are done (I promise, I do wash my socks more than once every six weeks… but panic is the motive, not systematic hygiene…) floors are scrubbed, bulbs are changed, kitchens are cleaned, windows are scrubbed, paperwork is tidied, filing is done.  And when all of that domestic upheaval is completed, there settles in a moment of… well, what now?

And there’s the answer… West Wing.

Had I known the day I staggered into HMV armed with a student discount card, a gift token value 25% and a determination that my weekend would be long and lazy what a discovery I would make there…

… well, I would have staggered in a little faster.  For lo!  The complete West Wing, all seven seasons, were there on offer for a ridiculously low price tag, and I had not a moment’s hesitation in buying it.  Back home, I turned down the lights, fired up the computer, wrapped myself in a blanket, got out the hot chocolate and started watching.

And it’s brilliant.  Utterly brilliant.  I mean, sure, I can sympathise with those who say it’s bewildering, too fast, makes no sense to anyone who doesn’t have a degree in American politics or isn’t a supporter of the Democratic Party.  But on the other hand, for decades, programs like Dr Who and Star Trek have specialised in talking utter nonsense at very high speed while being shot at by aliens with unknown motives – hell, anyone who’s ever watched 5 minutes of House or ER will know that it is a) utterly gripping and b) utterly non-sensical.  I’ve sat through I don’t know how much House (enthralled) and to this day can’t tell you the difference between a PET, CAT, CT or MRI scan.  (But I’ll not tell you the difference in a very urgent voice.)  With West Wing at least there’s a hope that if you concentrate very hard, you’ll get an insight into the workings of US politics.

Not that this is the point…

… I know only two people who might be accused of watching West Wing for its political insight…

No, the reason you watch West Wing is because it’s a fantastically constructed, break-neck bit of television, full of intelligent, sympathetic, complicated characters, performed brilliantly, which in its seven years of running swept up and down the gauntlet of political debate, probed those issues that no one really wants to probe, delved into every corner of the American psyche and came out with hands dirty and the conclusion that in governance, there’s really no such thing as an easy answer.  And yes, while we were cheering for the Democratic inhabitants of the West Wing who made up the leading characters, there weren’t really good guys or bad guys (except perhaps for the odd Bush-shaped Republican Senator…) … just people with passionate and opposing views that they struggled to reconcile in an ever-changing and complicated world.  And it’s funny.  I mean, like all good drama, it’s all other things besides, but even when it’s not actually making you laugh out loud, the sheer speed and wit of the dialogue keeps you entranced, and you’ll catch yourself grinning even when you should really be and probably are feeling something else.  For punchy one-liners, I have rarely seen anything better, and for intelligent argument delivered as gripping drama, it gets full marks.

If I have one single complaint against the West Wing, it’s this…

That President Bartlet (who the LSE proudly claims, incidentally, as one of our proudest (if fictional) alumni) seems perpetually to be haunted by a twelve piece brass band.  This brass band tends to only make its presence known at the end of episodes, and usually in the presence of morally ambivalent moments, but, at the very last, there it will be, the trumpets firing up in sombre and portentous manner as President Bartlet pulls off his glasses, looks up seriously to camera, and begins to declaim about the nature of morality in politics.  And as his speech, usually extolling truth, virtue and honour, reaches its crescendo, so this invisible brass band will also reach its crescendo, and if you’re really, really unlucky, I mean, having a really bad day, there might be an American flag in the background, and if you’re in serious trouble, someone, heaven help us, might go so far as to proclaim, ‘god bless America’ and that’s it, the entire EU audience rolls its eyes and cringes in the sofa.  But this is something of a rareity and I can, in fact, only think of one ‘god bless America’ moment in the entire, otherwise utterly brilliant series, when I’ve found myself making rude and fruitily inappropriate sounds at the TV screen.

If you’ve never seen it…

… pop down the local library, borrow season one, get yourself a warm sofa, a big blanket, a cup of hot chocolate and a ‘Dummies Guide to US Politics’ and buckle down for an addictive experience…