It is perhaps not a stretch to say that the United States has changed somewhat since The West Wing was a living, breathing television program. For me, two things come immediately to mind. The first is cultural: in its glorious, Seasons 1-4 heyday, The West Wing was widely considered the smartest show on television. Which is not to say it wasn’t – “smartest show” is an impossible and kinda dumb metric, plus there was still a noted anti-premium channel bias despite the fact that this show was also on the air at the time – but more to point out that Aaron Sorkin’s rapid-fire dialogue in The West Wing, its wide-ranging pop culture references and overall frenetic pace, somewhat unorthodox for its time, are now a part of TV’s DNA.
And the second is, of course, political. The West Wing is a rose-tinted depiction of a bygone era (to the extent that it ever existed in the first place). It’s an idealized version of the Clinton years, when bipartisanship was still possible despite bilious right-wing hated for the Democratic president and soaring rhetoric could convince a country to change its mind. For now, we’ll overlook the fact that President Clinton tried to govern as an updated version of the Kennedy years and simply suggest that government doesn’t work this way anymore, when it even works at all.
Indeed, the past few years in particular have convinced a lot of people (myself included!) that the United States government never really worked that way at all. Also something that happened over the last few years in particular: I could not bring myself to rewatch a single minute of The West Wing. I was raised on this show; I took my high school government and US history courses while TWW was on the air; it is not at all a stretch to say that my now-former opinions about what America stands for and what it can be at its best were shaped by West Wing-style idealism. The thought of revisiting any idealism during the previous president’s time in office seemed…hollow, to say the least.
To quote Leo McGarry, then, now we’ve arrived at our problem. What “A Very Impressive Tomato” wonders is simple: does The West Wing hold up? Is its fictional universe too far removed from our own reality to make me do anything but laugh? When we’re not all terrified by the endless introductory melody of an open-ended pandemic and thus at our most easily charmed by well-meaning and well-timed West Wing podcasts, can the show still make me feel like this country is worth salvaging and that its citizens can, in fact, salvage it?
To that end, I am going to watch every single episode of The West Wing and recap them all for you, the good readers of The Antagonist, a blog about which you should tell your every friend and living relative. I can still quote huge chunks of dialogue from memory, but I haven’t actually sat down and watched this show front-to-back in about fifteen years, so I really have no idea what I’m going to find nor what conclusions I’m going to draw. As of this moment, I can only promise that while I am, yes, a bit long-winded, this will be the longest preamble of any of the “A Very Impressive Tomato” West Wing rewatch recaps.
(One other, minor thing: I swear I’m going to explain why I decided to call this series “A Very Impressive Tomato.” It’s just that it’ll probably take me about 154 recaps to do it.)
The West Wing Season 1 Episode 1 (“Pilot”): A Synopsis as Brief as that Intro is Long
President Bartlet crashes his bike (actually Leo’s, but whatever) into a tree and suffers a minor injury that for half a minute gets teased like it’s a medical emergency. There are Cubans on fishing boats trying to make it to America. Sam sleeps with Laurie, who is a call girl, before he knows she is a call girl, then mixes up his pager with hers and breaks up with her before they can be a thing. Josh insulted the christian right (lowercase intentional) and walks a tightrope thinking he’s about to get fired. When he apologizes, the fanatic he insulted in the first place insults Jewish people with an actual insult, unlike the glib-but-accurate thing Josh said. Toby goes off on a moron. Jed returns and kicks all the morons out of the White House, then chides Josh like the good father he (Jed) tries to be.
Most Believable Thing About This Episode
Uh…I guess that Jed would have the checkmate move in his back pocket the whole time? I certainly can’t be shocked that conservative “religious” “leaders” wouldn’t condemn violence done in their religion’s name. On that note, it’s also both period-accurate believable and fuckin’ bonkers-gobsmacked-unbelievable that there was ever a period in our nation’s history, let alone its recent history, when the christian right was not understood by everyone other than the people sucked into its orbit to be a vile swarm of hypocrites who epitomize “Do as I say, not as I do.” Reverend Caldwell comes off OK in the West Wing pilot only if you overlook the fact that he doesn’t publicly condemn the violent threats against President Bartlet’s family. The two chuckleheads he brings to the White House with him are Aaron Sorkin’s typically two-dimensional foils (until you remember, of course, that they’re also the type of people who wield huge influence over the Republican party today).
Least Believable Thing About This Episode
I didn’t think that Josh’s flippant crack about “the God [Mary Marsh] worships is too busy being indicted for tax fraud” was that big a deal 20 years ago, and it sure seems laughably quaint today. And not just because the right has ratcheted hateful discourse up way beyond dangerous levels. At the heart of Josh’s insult is the christian right’s long and well-documented history of grift. (Metallica wrote “Leper Messiah” in 1986, after all.) Yes, Jed Bartlet is supposed to be above all a Serious, Thoughtful, and Devout Catholic, but he’s also not a moron. It just doesn’t ring right to me, regardless of the fact that the administration apparently “needs” the support of these people, that Jed would be so furious about Josh’s (admittedly glib) wisecrack he’s thiiis close to firing him.
Episode MVP (For Narrative)
The West Wing was intended to be a star vehicle for Rob Lowe, so it’s unsurprising that he gets a lot of the big scenes. Upon further review, though, Sam Seaborne comes off as kind of stupid? He’s socially clueless; he has no understanding of US history (something that thankfully got retconned the hell out of the show pretty quickly); he’s careless with his pager; and he somehow doesn’t know that his boss’ daughter is a grown-ass woman who teaches children, not one of the children in some grown-ass woman’s fourth-grade class. So I’m going to give this inaugural MVP award to Jed, because he gets to come in at the end of the episode like God’s own thunder and blast everybody the hell away and put this meh Josh storyline to bed and just generally right the ship of state.
Episode MVP (For Governance)
By that same logic, this could be Jed as well. It’s damn sure not Sam or Josh. C.J. really doesn’t do much in the Pilot, which is dumb and a tragic waste of Allison Janney’s many, many talents. Leo is maybe the most fully formed main character in 1.1, but his role here is less about governance and more about keeping the White House running smoothly until the President can fly home and kick some ass. So I’m giving this award to Toby, who kicks just as much ass all episode long, has a terrific scene where he explains to Josh how politically precarious his position is, and gives us the first of many, many Looks of Death.
Song of the Week
“Moment of Weakness” by Bif Naked – it’s the song Mandy is listening to way too loudly, to show what a ne’er do well she is, while talking on the phone and driving and then getting pulled over by a (in retrospect very patient) police officer.
TWW doesn’t use too much diegetic music, especially not compared to prestige-equivalent dramas today. So this usage really stuck out like a Lyman hangover for me. TV shows & especially network shows used to love tossing in thirty or forty seconds of some loud-ish rock to establish a character’s badassery or anti-establishment persona or general malcontentedness. (Or just for poops and giggles.) This is The West Wing shooting that particular shot. In the meantime, though: you bet your ass I’m gonna embrace that treble-heavy ’90s alt-rock production.
Errata
–If you had told me a week ago the very first line ever spoken on The West Wing was “Two Absolut martinis, up; another Dewar’s, rocks,” I would not have believed you. That is a weird first line for this show! It is a more appropriate first line for Mad Men.
–Leo says the President crashed his bike into a cypress tree in Jackson Hole. However, no cypress trees are native to the state of Wyoming. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that some eager beaver developer trying to be all showy would have planted a grove of Thuja plicata (which is often grouped with Cypress trees at nurseries, though it isn’t one) or something from the Cupressus family. Barring that, though, Leo is wrong. By which I of course mean Sorkin is wrong.
–Lol @ these hot poli sci juniors from Florida State who think Josh is “excellent” and want his autograph and couldn’t bobby sox out over him any harder if it were 1945.
–Lol also @ Laurie being up and toking away at 5:28 AM. Why is she not sound asleep? And don’t say “Sam woke her up getting ready to go to work.” Do you really believe Sam is so bad in bed he can’t fuck his partner into double-digit hours of blissful slumber?
–”I’ve known him 40 years, C.J., and all I can promise you is on any given day there’s really no predicting what he’s gonna choose to care about.” Leo’s line is accurate in the sense that Jed is easily influenced by goodwill and potential and possibility. Like, he may well come in to the office having read about, say, the National Parks system and decide he absolutely has to make sure that there’s extra spending for it in some omnibus bill under consideration, or something like that. But the way Leo says this makes Jed seem more flighty and whimsical than steadfast and motivated by good. It’s not a huge deal – just one of the many little oddities that always stick out in every long-running show’s pilot episode, before characters have been fleshed-out and back stories firmly established. (See also: the many ways in which Sam is, in this episode, especially stupid.)
–I understand that third religious dolt at the meeting gets the first commandment wrong so that Jed can have his big entrance. But come the fuck on, Aaron Sorkin. How can you expect this guy or any of his cohorts to have any credibility with the show’s audience as either villains or worthy opponents when he bungles the first commandment? That would be like me starting off a review of a holiday movie by talking about how the Easter Bunny comes down the chimney on Christmas Eve.
