The West Wing: Season One (2000)

Creator: Aaron Sorkin

 Spending my summer interning on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC seemed like a good time to start watching this loved and popular Aaron Sorkin show about the minutiae of daily life in the west wing of the White House. There are a handful of main characters, all of whom work for the President of the United States. In true Sorkin fashion the characters are definitely idealistic, but the show recognizes that the world they occupy is not a world of idealists. I was most impressed with the fact that the show is not afraid to display the characters struggling to get things done the right way. It's the ultimate conflict between compromise and principles (Sorkin's new show The Newsroom mostly fails at this, but more on that in another post). Throughout the season the main arc seems to be this battle between playing it safe to stay alive and taking risks by doing the right thing. It's a conflict that's been present for as long as politics has existed and Barack Obama is proof that it's definitely still a huge issue today.

One of my best ways the show displayed this conflict was the personal issues of the staffers. Sam Seaborn loved a call girl, and even though there's nothing wrong with that, it's still going to be a problem because of how it might be viewed by the press. Another great thing the show did is make sure the personal stories and personal relationships of the characters were focused on the effect they had on the job they were doing. This is a show about the job these people are doing first, and the people who have the job second. We see the negative effects the time and energy the important job has on the personal lives of the characters (though I wish we would have seen more of this). While the conflicts in the job is shown very well, I do think the characters are a little too-good-to-be-true. This is most evident when it comes to President Bartlett. There are a few moments where he does things that make him out to be some Gandhi-like figure. There is a scene early in the season in which the President lets his emotions get the best of him and almost orders an attack on hundreds of innocent civilians, and I would have liked to see more of that side of the President. But I will say one thing, all of the characters on this show are incredibly likable, and because you enjoy spending time with these people it makes it so much easier to watch the show. You'll know what I'm talking about when the season-ending cliffhanger occurs and you find your heart beating a million times an hour.

Grade: B+