Speaking of television endings, tonight is the finale of The West Wing. It will be a bittersweet moment — on one hand, I’m not invested in the slightest in the new administration and its new characters, probably because they so forcefully introduced them last year by shoving aside the characters I’d known and loved, characters who didn’t even appear in the show for weeks at a time in favor of the new cast.
I guess that strategy backfired, since viewership fell so low that the program was canceled.
They also screwed with time — an entire year of the Bartlet administration disappeared when they moved the election up. I feel cheated that I missed an entire year, that I could have had more time with CJ and Jed and Margaret and Debbie and … well, in the real world, I suppose that the salaries for the cast had hit that seven-year mark where they’re simply too expensive; still, I think they were worth it.
I’ll miss the fantasy White House, where everyone is honorable and does their best, where the president has a brain and uses it, where the staff is unbearably witty and can carry on complicated conversations while walking down stylish but dimly lit corridors without tripping.
Now we’re only left with the real occupants of the White House. Disappointing in the extreme.
