Apparently I wasn’t alone in this (according to my local independant movie store, right around the election there was a big resurgence of interest in the West Wing) but all I want to do these days is watch the West Wing. I hate being predictable but it’s one of the things you eventually have to accept as you mature that you are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. I guess I’m just not as snarky as I would like to believe – I let the tide of “hope” and “inspiration” and “patriotism” move me along with everyone else.
It’s nice to watch it again, though, because it really allows me to look at the show and Aaron Sorkin’s style objectively. Particularly if you’ve watched Sports Night or Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, his style is almost unbearably distracting. I finally figured out, though, that one of the things I like so much about it is the theatricality of shows made by Sorkin. And I’m not talking about the music or the storyline. I’m talking about the structure of the “scenes” and the dialog – the structure, the nerdiest part, of each episode and the show as a whole. He looks at the bigger picture, he has lofty ideas. I like that. It becomes totally rediculous and redundant a lot of the time but then there are totally brilliant bits that make it totally worthwhile. Even Studio 60 had it’s moments. The West Wing, though, seems to be where he really found his voice; he created wonderful characters that really live in that show. Tobey Zeigler? Josh Lyman? C.J. Cregg? Sam Seaborn? I can go back a million times.
