Gape in Horror as The West Wing Goes Down the Tubes
I guess it was too much to hope that The West Wing would survive Aaron Sorkin's ouster with the same level of quality it reliably demonstrated over the first four seasons. The jury is out on whether the show is still worth watching, but the decline in quality is evident.
The Sorkinesque repartee has gone, replaced with dialog that would be fine on another show, with other characters, but is a day late and a dollar short in the Bartlet White House. And did anyone else laugh out loud at the very end of "Separation of Powers," with the reverberating gavel-noises that accompanied the pointless "dramatic" cuts around the room? Am I watching amateur hour at editing school? Overall, it's like The West Wing is a high-performance bike tire not quite inflated to pressure. It looks like a high-performance bike tire, and it gets you to work and back, but the discerning rider curses it all the more because he knows how great it could be.
Apparently ratings are up this season, but I fear John Wells' tenure as showrunner marks the end of my reliable enjoyment of The West Wing. It certainly marks the end of its four year "Best Drama" Emmy reign.
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