A "Wing" and Despair
Sort of a part two to yesterday's post...
"The West Wing" is going off the air tonight after seven seasons, fitting perfectly into the two terms of its President (the first season began one year into his first term). It goes without saying that the fictional President Bartlet is leagues above the actual one we've had for the past five years, blah, blah, etc.
Now that that's out of the way, I have to say I've never loved the show as much as I should have. Yes, its point of view was reliably reasonable, although occasionally suffering from the typical liberal bending-over-backwards-to-consider-the-repugnant-other-point-of-view. I've always thought of it as politcal porn, and while it's nice to look at once in a while, I don't want to live in the fantasy. On the other hand, plenty of people do.
The only analogue that springs to mind is "Sex In The City." For the time that show was on, you couldn't get away from women talking about who they were--that is, who from the show they most resembled. There were the four archetypes--the naif, the slut, the cynic, and the romantic--and all the intelligent, liberated women you know were lining up to pigeonhole themselves into one of them. "The West Wing" has had a similar effect on liberals. You're a get-it-done firebrand like Josh or a know-it-all, soft-hearted Sam or an angry, liberal Toby or a wise, pragmatic Leo.
My friend J has said that he has always looked at me as the Leo McGarry in his life. He means it as a high complimment, but I never identified with Leo. Instead, I thought of myself as more of a Toby Ziegler--deeply principled, self-destructive, good with words, vaguely depressed. Still, I stopped even sporadically watching the show midway through the second season and never thought about the character as someone I had to follow.
Never, until I saw a rerun on Bravo just after I got my cable hooked up again. In this episode, Toby has apparently bought his pregnant ex-wife a house and is asking her to marry him again. She says no, he asks her why, and she tells him that he is too sad for her. And suddenly they end up in the exact same conversation that I had with my (not pregnant) ex-girlfriend years ago just after she left. The exact same words being used, the same responses. As coincidence would have it, we also had our conversation in Washington DC.
My disbelief in seeing the imaginary me have this all-too-real conversation was matched only by this overwhelming sense of grief that there's nothing that he can do about it, either.
(Moments like that are what make dramatic television so great. They're also what make shows like "Law and Order" and "CSI" so useless, because they're not about people. Nobody will ever identify with the Sam Waterston character on "L&O" unless they have spasmodic dysphonia, but lots of people out there have found a scene where they're Leo or Josh or CJ. That is, in a word, cool.)
So now that I know I'm a Toby Ziegler, I realize I may have missed something in not watching the last five and a half seasons of "The West Wing." I have to go back and catch up, to see what Toby's going to do with his life now that the administration's term is finished. Maybe the fake me can offer the real me a little wisdom. On the other hand, I'd hate to think about what all those Mirandas and Carries were learning from their on-screen counterparts. Hmm...
Oh, well. Goodbye, NBC. Hello, DVD.
"The West Wing" is going off the air tonight after seven seasons, fitting perfectly into the two terms of its President (the first season began one year into his first term). It goes without saying that the fictional President Bartlet is leagues above the actual one we've had for the past five years, blah, blah, etc.
Now that that's out of the way, I have to say I've never loved the show as much as I should have. Yes, its point of view was reliably reasonable, although occasionally suffering from the typical liberal bending-over-backwards-to-consider-the-repugnant-other-point-of-view. I've always thought of it as politcal porn, and while it's nice to look at once in a while, I don't want to live in the fantasy. On the other hand, plenty of people do.
The only analogue that springs to mind is "Sex In The City." For the time that show was on, you couldn't get away from women talking about who they were--that is, who from the show they most resembled. There were the four archetypes--the naif, the slut, the cynic, and the romantic--and all the intelligent, liberated women you know were lining up to pigeonhole themselves into one of them. "The West Wing" has had a similar effect on liberals. You're a get-it-done firebrand like Josh or a know-it-all, soft-hearted Sam or an angry, liberal Toby or a wise, pragmatic Leo.
My friend J has said that he has always looked at me as the Leo McGarry in his life. He means it as a high complimment, but I never identified with Leo. Instead, I thought of myself as more of a Toby Ziegler--deeply principled, self-destructive, good with words, vaguely depressed. Still, I stopped even sporadically watching the show midway through the second season and never thought about the character as someone I had to follow.
Never, until I saw a rerun on Bravo just after I got my cable hooked up again. In this episode, Toby has apparently bought his pregnant ex-wife a house and is asking her to marry him again. She says no, he asks her why, and she tells him that he is too sad for her. And suddenly they end up in the exact same conversation that I had with my (not pregnant) ex-girlfriend years ago just after she left. The exact same words being used, the same responses. As coincidence would have it, we also had our conversation in Washington DC.
My disbelief in seeing the imaginary me have this all-too-real conversation was matched only by this overwhelming sense of grief that there's nothing that he can do about it, either.
(Moments like that are what make dramatic television so great. They're also what make shows like "Law and Order" and "CSI" so useless, because they're not about people. Nobody will ever identify with the Sam Waterston character on "L&O" unless they have spasmodic dysphonia, but lots of people out there have found a scene where they're Leo or Josh or CJ. That is, in a word, cool.)
So now that I know I'm a Toby Ziegler, I realize I may have missed something in not watching the last five and a half seasons of "The West Wing." I have to go back and catch up, to see what Toby's going to do with his life now that the administration's term is finished. Maybe the fake me can offer the real me a little wisdom. On the other hand, I'd hate to think about what all those Mirandas and Carries were learning from their on-screen counterparts. Hmm...
Oh, well. Goodbye, NBC. Hello, DVD.
posted by Matthew at 3:11 AM
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