The West Wing: Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc

The best episodes of the West Wing expertly balance its lightweight and heavyweight elements. Both aspects can be prone to problems: the lightweight can be annoying fluff, and the heavyweight can be overwrought (never more so than when Latin and/or biblical). At their best, the lightweight banter sparkles as brightly any writing on any television show, and the heavyweight brings the show’s formidable intelligence to bear on issues of real import.

This particular episode doesn’t execute that balance particularly brilliantly, but it certainly hints at the show’s potential. The lightweight worked for the most part. Where it didn’t, like Josh proclaiming ‘victory is mine’ and then being applauded for his insufferable smugness, at least it was recognised as ‘unbearable’ by Donna. Where it did, the wit was gentle as a breeze and much more effusive for it (Leo showing Margaret the baby picture, the snappy morning staff meeting, etc.).

This episode also set up one of the seams of comedy the writers would mine most often. Thus, the assertion that ‘very serious men and women’ work in the White House segued into Josh gloating, and the insistence that the new media consultant be ‘anyone but Mandy’ inevitably led to her appointment. It’s not a bad construction and the payoff usually comes quickly enough for it not to grate. It also neatly defuses the arrogance of the staff, supplanting it with a tender sweetness. It had this effect when Sam repeatedly denied the accusation that he was going to try to reform the call girl, elucidating the character’s relationship with her and with his colleagues without fuss. The charm of their flirting later in the episode underlined how well the show can portray relationships when it calms the pace.

We were permitted a peek at the heavyweight for the first time when Leo confronted the vice president. There was no humour here, no clear-cut villain or hero, and no cheap resolution. The conflict was introduced smartly, staking out the capacity of the parties to harm each other. The prize wasn’t specified, but it’s suitably well established that politics is most vicious when little is at stake, and so we can concentrate on the characters without any external issues to dilute the conflict. Lower down the divisions, CJ’s interaction with the vice president quietly reaffirmed her dignity, in stark contrast to Mandy moaning about how ‘accomplished, brilliant, young and cute’ she is.

One aspect of the show that’s a constant disappointment is its amateur use of exposition. This recurs throughout the series (Donna in particular frequently occupies this role), but here the trait was best exemplified by Mandy’s lame summation of her life story minutes after the ‘previously on’ opening. The subsequent work put into establishing that the president is disinclined from violence and that his doctor is a nice guy was understandable given that this is only the second episode. However, more could have been said more powerfully with less recounting. Leo’s introductory chat with the doctor and some of the president’s playfulness would have sufficed, without worrying about the doctor’s family history. The character just had to be a nice person and a new father, not the embodiment of black hope. Equally, it would have been better to see rather than hear about Bartlet’s discomfort with the generals. Even if this was just an imagined insecurity dating from his father, Martin Sheen is a fine enough actor to convey it.

His final promise to blow the Syrians ‘off the face of the world with the fury of god’s own thunder’ was another case in point. Now, few do Old Testament bombast like Bartlet and it is genuinely affecting, but it only really makes sense if the idea is that he is trying to convince himself of a course of action (somewhat acknowledged by his declaration that he was not frightened). This doesn’t seem to be a major theme of the show, though. I don’t think we’re expected to doubt Bartlet’s willingness to exercise power (after all, one of the big messages is that a liberal president does not equate to a weak president), in which case I would prefer simply to see the weight of his decisions communicated through his face and shoulders.

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The West Wing: Pilot

I look for two things in pilot episodes. One is obviously a compelling reason to continue watching the show, whether that comes from the characters, story, jokes or whatever. Normally this is just the promise of great things to come, as most pilots by necessity just sketch the ideas with the broadest possible strokes. This gambit for instant appeal rarely works, as viewers tune in expecting nuance and instead get exaggeration. However, the intelligence of the best shows will usually still gleam through the added gloss. This is the second thing I look for: something that won’t completely embarrass me when I try to introduce someone else to the show from the start.

The first few scenes of the West Wing are full of the characters being such assholes that they really ought to put off anyone unacquainted with the show’s reputation. The smugness, pomposity and smart-ass dialogue that plague the series are all evident: the ridiculous posturing about the POTUS, Toby pretentiously citing the plane’s specifications to argue that he can use his phone before witlessly joking about in-flight peanuts, and the cringe-inducing score.

In one of the show’s more egregious failures, the pilot brings in Mandy. Aaron Sorkin has clearly and admirably determined that his shows need a strong, distinctive female voice. CJ goes some way towards this, but her voice isn’t truly a confident and oppositional one. Mandy is both those things, and fails because of it. The formula later worked better with Ainsley Hayes and Amy Gardner, but Mandy is just plain awful. No matter how much sympathy we’re meant to feel for her as the outsider or strong female or whatever, she’s basically too immature to be likeable. In the pilot, she gloats about ‘bitch slapping’ people and making them ‘cry like a girl’. Of course there are people – male and female – who overcompensate for their own perceived weaknesses in such crass ways, and we can even sympathise with them when we see them in moments of solitude. Bur their cause isn’t helped when they’re on the outside of a gang we like, wasting everyone’s time by trying to fit in. It’s a shame, certainly, but life’s too short to spend in such uninspiring company.

The plot of the episode was otherwise unconvincing when held against the rest of the series (Would the president really have sacked Josh? Does Sam really do one-night stands, in front of a journalist no less?) but worked fine as a standalone story. More importantly, these slight character inconsistencies are useful references when encouraging people not to be put off by other shows’ pilot plot contrivances.

One of the show's key draws is the intelligent and inspiring approach to politics. As Josh explains, ‘Anybody willing to step up and debate ideas deserves better than a political punch line’. When you’re convinced that an idea is right, it’s easy to be blinkered and imperious. Thus the president enters with the intonation, ‘I am the lord your god’ and proceeds to eviscerate the hypocrisy of the religious right. That’s all very well, and the delivery is genuinely awesome, but it risks devolving into a procedural: a cold open in which an old lady dies in a hospital corridor because she has no insurance or a foreign leader celebrates a terrorist atrocity, the political opposition attacks the president for it, the staff panic about the poll ratings, and the president wraps everything up with a fierce diatribe against the forces of wrong.

All that said, the show makes clear that it is more interested in dialectic than polemic. The voice of opposition is frequently shrill and plainly wrong, as with the religious right here, and as it should be in a programme dealing with contemporary politics: plenty of opinions deserve to be exposed as idiotic. Such voices, though, are complemented by thoughtful and convincing critiques of liberal orthodoxy. There isn’t much in the way of policy debate in this pilot, but at least we get Toby telling Josh that he was smug and taunting. Josh was, but he was also on the right side of the argument, and so we are fleetingly introduced to the show’s meditations on ends and means. Introducing this theme in a more portentous way would probably have been less effective and preachy, but glimpsing how character traits can shape the policy landscape hints at a reflective show more than a didactic one.

One of the show’s other principal attractions is its smart, fast-paced wit: the ‘Is that the same suit you wore yesterday?’ exchange; the always reliable ‘I always thought he was gay’ response; Sam’s small talk as he revisits the prostitute’s home; the ‘All the girls think you look really hot in this shirt’ flattery; ‘too high a price to pay for pornography’; ‘I particularly liked the part where you said nothing at all’, etc.

With this combination of banter and inspiration, it’s better to classify the West Wing as a feel-good office drama than a strictly political drama. The idealised (but not fatuous) office relationships are ones to which anyone would aspire, while the archetypical wise and jolly patriarch (especially the way he chides the staff at the end) is a manager anyone would love. That this workplace is a stimulating and meritocratic marketplace of ideas doesn’t do the show any harm either.

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