West Wing Season 5 - DOA

So, after burning through 4 seasons of The West Wing on DVD the wife and I sat down to watch disc 1 of season 5 with some trepidation. We knew that Aaron Sorkin and Tommy Schlamme were gone. We knew that John Wells had taken over and was left with a relatively lame cliffhanger to resolve (TWW was never really good at doing the season openers and closers). We knew that weird things were going to develop in future seasons (we caught little bits here and there and saw CJ as the Chief of Staff) so, overall, we were cautious but going into it with an open mind.

What we discovered? Many of the show's trademarks were gone. The snappy dialogue, the exposition on the run, the constant running off of statistical information and the strong women characters had all gone into hiding for some reason. In their place we saw verité style camera work, soap opera shenanigans, a greater emphasis on character's personal relationships, Toby wandering around looking lost, Will also wandering around and looking lost and more Martin Sheen in one episode than I remember seeing in all of the first four seasons. Oh, and CJ just walking in on the president to get the Cosby Show summation of events in the season's 4th episode, 'Han'. In any of the previous 4 seasons, you'd have to get through secret service agents, Charlie or either of the president's secretaries before you could actually go in and have an audience with him.

We're going to try disc 2 and see what the next four episodes hold for the show, but we're not holding out any hope for it. It's starting to look like a Gilmore Girls style washout for TWW proving all those 'the show was better than ever' reviews on Amazon wrong.

And if you're going to jump in and say, 'Oh, but you just don't like change', remember that I actually really liked the last three seasons of The X-Files.

Later!

mike