Winging It

Chud has a totally exhaustive multi-author overview/review of the entire run of The West Wing as well as full length reviews of the first six seasons. It’s pretty intense, and if it sometimes get a little repetitive or fan geekish (these are movie nerds, not political wonks), it also gets an awful lot right about one of the defining TV shows, really one of the defining cultural reference points, of the last decade. Say what you will about its politics (for the record, they hovered somewhere between laughable and outright hideous), but it was classy, whip-smart drama, especially during the Sorkin era. And maybe now is the right time to revisit the show—as Garance Franke-Ruta points out, “An entire generation of Washingtonians is completely unfamiliar with life in a city that is not run by Republicans. This is going to take some getting used to.” No kidding.