I'd never seen The West Wing until last week when my cousin bought the 4th season on DVD (having seen the first three). I watched about 8 episodes of the 4th season with him, and I was amazed. It is by far some of the best TV I have ever seen. The actors are cast perfectly for their roles.

I downloaded Season 1, and I've been watching 4 episodes or so a day all week (almost done!). Great stuff.

Hell yeah! Favourite show on television right now! I'm in the UK, wasn't a big fan when season 6 was aired but i have seasons 1-5 on DVD. The smartest writing on television, perfectly cast characters like you said. Its so funny and yet so dramatic at the same time. Everything is just perfect.

Don't be put off by season 5. Aaron Sorkin left the show at the end of season 4 so 5 is more of a transitional season. The writing isn't as good, the writers were finding their ground really.

But its a fantastic show.

Y'all motherfuckers better recognize some good TV!

this is my favourite television show. i wake up in the mornings just to watch it on bravo, and i stay up late on saturday nights to watch it.

i especially love sam and will. their characters really make me smile.

I'll say it again: Most well cast show on TV.


I'm almost done with Season 4.

Season 6 hasn't been shown on tv here, and isn't likely to be shown considering the station that has the rights to it shows it ZERO respect. Season 5 hasn't finished screening, but the station took it off mid-season and nothing's been heard about it since. Good thing the DVD was released.

I've long since been in love with Josh.

I've now seen every episode, I finished season 6 last night.


Season 1 and 2 are definately the best. The writing is just incredible.

Season 3 wasn't as interesting to me, but it was still better than most TV (it just kinda followed the pattern of seasons 1 and 2). The first week of the season was just after 9/11, so instead of the first episode they aired an episode about a similar situation, which is one of the best episodes ever.

Season 4 was possibly my favorite, although i'll admit the writing slightly better in 1 and 2. I really like the election episodes. The episode about CJ's father having alzheimers is really the only episode in 6 years that is set completely outside the White House and has no politics involved, which is kinda cool.

Season 5 was by far the worst. Aaron Sorkin (the writer and creator) was let go by ABC (god knows why, it had 4 straight best drama emmys), and the new writers couldn't match up at first. It really just drags a bit. Toward the end it picks up a bit. Also, losing Rob Lowe left a big gap that Joshua Molina can't quite fill.

Season 6 is slow at first but the last 10 or so episodes are real great. Again, the election stuff is great. They really shake up the staff, and they split time between the White House and the campaign trail (usually alternated every other episode). The last episode was awesome, and I'm really looking forward to next season.

lol, i pretty much agree with everything you said there apart from the comments about season 6 coz it hasn't been shown here (DVD comes out at the end of Sept!)

About season 4....its also my fave altho the writing was quite as good as the first two seasons. Season 5 definitely sucked by West Wing standards, altho 'The Supremes' is quite possibly my favourite episode.

Is season 6 better than 5? Did they bring the funny? Coz season 5 was seriously lacking in humour.

Season 6 has some more humor than Season 5, but its still not as half as witty as it used to be. If you liked Season 4, I guarantee you'll like Season 6 because it has a lot of similar election themes. After the first 10 episodes (which are similar to season 5) it really picks up, and the finale is one of the best ever.

Tonight's ep was interesting. It was a live debate episode, and it was actually shot live. they're shooting a second episode an hour later for the west coast (I'm not sure how different it will be). An interestin gimmick, and the debate was actually really interesting (all the statistics are real, I think). Good stuff.

My Favorite show ever!!! So brilliant....If you like Aaron Sorkin's writing style...check out Sports Night. It only ran for 2 seasons but it was really good. A little cheesy at times, but well done....it was meant to be more fun than Drama....

I agree that the 'Sorkin Seasons' were by far the best....but the episode "Shutdown" from season 5 was amazing. Best episode from season 5 IMO....

eric,

Aren't you in school? How the hell do you have this much time to watch T.V?

I agree with you, I love West Wing and have been watching it since the first season, but only sporadically when I am home. Alan Alda could make a person remember what used to be good about Republicans....

Thoughts on the live debate. It played well. pretty much what I expected. I could have done without Ellen doing the AMEX ads though.

I think Santos "won" the debate.

What say you all?

arny i think had all the data, but santos had new ideas. layed it on the line, but was too far back to exert prescence like arny was doing. arny was talking a lot, but most of it was just memorized data.

Sure, a strange bump, you might say. I was surprised, a search showed me no less than 3 separate threads had been made in RM history dealing strictly with The West Wing just on its own merits (as opposed to the 4th thread about John Spencer's death and the 5th about the show's cancellation), none of them seemed to have as many as 20 or so replies, I picked the one with the most recent posting here to top.

I absolutely adore this show, as probably evidenced by my misguided 1st round draft pick in the recent TV Shows Tournament. Funny thing is I came late to it, I started started watching "live" at the start of the 3rd season, and caught up later via Bravo reruns, but it's by now pretty much evenly matched with Arrested Development as my favorite show of the last 15 years at least (although to be fair, every single one of AD's episodes were top notch genius, whereas TWW's latter 3 seasons did not compete with its initial 4). For one thing I wanted to correct a comment I saw in one of these threads, that Aaron Sorkin and Tommy Schlamme were "fired" from the show; this wasn't exactly true. There was a growing frustration building with the NBC suits at Sorkin because of his scripts constantly coming in at the last minute, pushing the production both behind schedule and budget, but obviously it still proved as the formula to success -- I believe the show still holds the record of being the only show to win the Best Drama Emmy for each of its initial 4 seasons. It was pretty much a mutual decision by Sorkin/Schlamme and NBC to part ways at the end of the 4th season.

As most fans agree, out of the total 7, the 5th was easily the worst. Though parts of it are watchable, I personally feel the problem was the writers (John Wells primarily) tried to do far too many big things in that 5th season. Think about it: the Bartlett administration saved Social Security (having to do so without getting any credit, no less), they put not one but two new members on the Supreme Court (including the Chief Justice), and perhaps the most preposterous development was held for the end of the season -- Bartlet began establishing peace between Israel and Palestine. Talk about pie in the sky. When Leo had his first heart attack and a new Chief Of Staff was needed, it may've been more dramatic for the mantle to get passed to CJ, but there's simply no logistical way in a Bartlet universe that would've actually happened. Why in the world would Leo not recommend that Josh get the job, his protege, the guy he looked at like a son that had served as his deputy throughout the whole show? And along these lines, in retrospect it seemed painfully obvious that Toby was the source of the NASA security leak. After all of the 3 remaining big non-President characters on the show (CJ, Josh & Toby), CJ had been promoted to Chief Of Staff, Josh was going down the road of grooming the next major candidate, so of course that left Toby to have as his main storyline to finish out the series that he was the culprit.

Anyways, the main reason I came back looking for this thread was another point I've realized in retrospect, having been watching many of my later season DVDs once more. In season 7 when Josh goes to visit Toby in his Washington apartment and Toby's giving his reasons for why he doesn't think Matt Santos will win the presidency, his main piece of evidence is how much Josh had to go out of his way to convince Santos to do it, Toby remarking that a man worth of being president should be hell bent on grabbing that ring from day one, that nothing can hold him back from doing so. But ahh... only with time away did this occur to me. If you recall, Jed Bartlet came to power pretty much the same way. It was only when old friend Leo McGarry came to chat with Barlet about running for the White House did Bartlet first consider it, and from words exchanged between Leo and Toby in later seasons, Leo getting Jed to do it at all was practically like pulling teeth.

So, yes, it's years later, but like I said I still worship the memory of this show, and for the hell of it now that I've realized this detail, I thought I'd come round and share it

Great post, i'm glad you bumped the thread. You make a good point about Bartlet being hesitant to run, i hadn't thought about that when Toby said what he said about Santos.

Despite the less-than-stellar fifth season, this is still tied with Curb Your Enthusiasm as my favourite show ever. Season 6 really picked up again and 7 was a great end to the show, plus we have four amazing seasons from Sorkin to look back on fondly. From a writing perspective, i don't think any other show can match West Wing for quality.

i love this show so much...sorry about this..i hadta

Pretty sweet May I ask exactly when that was taken? Was it during TWW's early years?

I think part of the reason I fell for this show in the way that I did is the particular job I held when I began watching it. As I've talked about on other parts of this board, for 2 years while I lived in Los Angeles I worked as an assistant on the Sony lot in the production office of director Paul Verhoeven and his producing partner Alan Marshall, and it was easily the best 2 years of my life. It was a very small operation, like 5-6 total people, and Alan was such a great boss (Paul as well, but in total I only interacted with him about 75% as much as I did with Alan), he was really great at creating this atmosphere like we were this little family and it was us against the entire world. I would've walked thru fire for that man, and frankly I still would. And that's largely the vibe I got from TWW, and many members of the cast have even since touched upon this themselves, that they were a tight little family, Jed and Leo being the parents, all the way down to Charlie being the baby. And I was the youngest in our office, definitely the baby. But they all had such undying devotion to Bartlet and there's nothing they wouldn't do for him, and that's how I felt about Alan, and Paul, really.

Anyway here's a full Charlie Rose episode I found with many cast members and Sorkin, though be warned, after not too long the audio starts to drop significantly behind the video.



And ya know when John Spencer died... oh man. The closest I'd ever come in my adult life to having that type of reaction from an actor dying was JT Walsh, he's pretty much my favorite character actor of all time (if you don't know the name, trust me you'd know the face), but it was still worse with Spencer, I absolutely cried when I first heard. And the incredible irony of course that the first new episode back in the series after his death was all about the VP's debate, and Leo's line "Overwhelmingly, the first symptom of a heart attack is death". And "Requiem", the episode dealing with Leo's funeral, pffffftt... forget about it. I was turned into a blubbering 2 year old trying to get thru watching that night.

I'd heard after the fact that the production team had in fact decided that Vinick was going to win the election, but then when Spencer's death occurred, they figured that in reality and having the Republican win the presidency would be too much for the lifelong hardcore fans to take, so they decided late in the game for Santos to get the victory. (of course, only in a WW universe would such a left-leaning Republican be so able to win the White House )

Nah this was in February just gone..i hadta ask her the name of her fish(a real fan would know
but she's a really lovely lady...very very tall!

Wow, really, that's kinda surprising (btw the name of the fish was Gayle )

I'm surprised because frankly she looks better there than she did in the TWW's final 2 seasons, she seemed to have aged quite a bit in 6 & 7. And btw I loved her appearance on "Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip" -- that scene when a drunken Jack Rudolph was trying to look like he knew what he was talking about, saying how much he loved The West Wing (Allison: "We've been off the air for over a year"; Jack: "Fantastic!")