First, it’s hard to imagine that NBCs "The West Wing" - the show staring Martin Sheen as President Jeb Bartlet, his cabinet and his family - is heading off the air. Since the show will play on forever indefinitely on The Bravo Network, sandwiched between other reruns of that channels own shows such as “Queer Eye…” “Blow Out” and The Survivor/Apprentice knock-off which is almost as good as it’s prototypes – “Top Chef.” it won't ever really be gone. Forever we’ll be able to “travel back in time to The Bartlet Administration;” where at least on Television politicians on both sides of the isle are the people we wish they could be… or at least how the show’s creator Aaron Sorkin would like to believe. Maybe Sheen's performance as the Roosevelt/Kennedy hybrid won't be missed, nor will the personal melodrama's about members of his staff who's personal lives bleed into their work, nor the self congradulating and often smugness that's often displayed by some of the regular characters... But the good writing will be missed on this show that made civics cool for more then just political junkies like myself.

The good writing began with the show's creator - Aaron Sorkin is the scribe behind similar projects, beginning with the Tom Cruise and Demi Moore vehicle “A Few Good Men,” (The one where Jack Nicholson immortalizes the line: “You can’t handle the truth!”) then to what’s essentially a Big Screen pilot for The West Wing. “An American President” starting Michael Douglas as the President looking for love after the death of the First Lady. Sorkin has also done other non-political work such as the screenplay for “Malace” (Staring Alec Baldwin, Nicole Kidman, and Bill Pullman.) and writing scripts for episodes of other shows such as “Sports Night.” He’s a proficient writer and created a good show about party politics with look inside the lives of those who inhabit 1600 Pennsylvania Ave… whether that inside look is accurate or fantasy is a subject of debate and one I’ll tackle later on.

There were moments when Sorkin’s liberal politics seeped through the various episodes and found there way into characters dialog, namely through Richard Schiff as “Toby Ziegler” and Bradley Whitford ‘s “Josh Lyman.” (Which is pretty ironic when the two characters literally had a fist fight in an office in the White House in an episode this season or last... sort of like two different versions of the same person from an Alternative Universe fighting with himself, or one traveling back in time to pick a fight with his older or younger self...) Sorkin’s characters often don’t come out and make retarded remarks that “consevitives/republicans are evil," but in a sneaky way he tried to show some of them as being misguided. Often the Republican characters on The West Wing were turned around towards the end of various plot threads when they become a bit more “educated” on any given subject with a pearl of wisdom by Martin Sheen’s President Jed Bartlet.

The characters who do remain “conservitives” on this show are usually the more developed "moderate" ones, the more “three dimensional” the character is, the more palatable that character and his or her views are to the writers – notably Alan Alda’s Senator and Republican candidate for President "Arnold Vinick" and Ron Silver as the conservative political advisor “Bruno Gianelli.” But in many episodes the conservative characters on The West Wing are mere caricatures used as means to flog an issue. This happened progressively less after Sorkin left the show in 2003.

Fair enough, though, there are also caricatures here on this series that belong to the “loony left” who are shown for what they are as they criticize the Bartlet Administration for not going far enough or not being progressive for their special interest group’s tastes. “The West Wing” shines a harsh, bright spot light on the extremism on both sides of the political isle, but perhaps letting the spot-light linger too long on conservatives and the compromises this Administration made because of a system that’s divided by ideology.

Sheen may have been the perfect actor to play to President Josiah Bartlet; but by no stretch of the imagination is President Bartlet a perfect man. Sheen played Bartlet as a flawed, thinking man who perhaps cares too much what history might think of him and his years in office. There were also times when he would realize that he made a mistake and would cop to it, at least with in the walls of The White House. Some times, the show's "Chief Of Staff Leo McGarry," played by John Spencer would have to play the President's disciplinarian or the Truth's handy Pezz dispenser when Bartlet was wrong or needed restraint. Often times I was left wondering what the show would have been like with John Spencer's character as The President, and Martin Sheen's character as the Chief Of Staff... that's how strong a character he was, and how good John Spencer was before his death earlier this year.

As I wrote earlier here, Bartlet’s not a perfect man, but he’s the kind of President I wish we had during the Clinton Years and at times during this Administration, too. Sheen’s Bartlet did what he did, not for political reasons, a person agenda or because the polls told him to, but because it was simple the right thing to do. It’s as if Sorkin and the writers of the show weren’t tying to paint an accurate picture of who or what our current Presidents really are, but more who they should be - the perfect hybrid between FDR and JFK. (Many plot lines in this show did parallel or echo that of the lives of those two Presidents, FDR's polio and hiding it compared to Bartlet's MS as one exsample...)

Which gets me to a question I said I would get to earlier: Is this an accurate depiction of life with-in the White House? Again: It’s what Aaron Sorkin and those who have worked on the show would like us to believe. If it’s accurate or pure fantasy is anyone’s guess because it’s a safe assumption that the vast majority of the readers of The Fedora Chronicles have never worked for the White House or have seen what really goes beyond it’s gates. Sorkin and company took liberties with some of the characters and plot lines, doing a “Law And Order” treatment to Washington, doing stories that are “Ripped From The Headlines” and plugging in the characters and their traits and letting the scripts almost write themselves.

What this show did have going for it above everything else is that it was a civics lesson each week that was turned into an entertaining melodrama. When I’ve watched these episodes the show tried to be accurate as to how Government worked, how bills become law and the different branches of power. Whether it was intentional or not, this show also had little snips of Presidential history when the characters would ask what a particular President would have though or done in the particular situation they were in. Whether the episode was unintentionally funny in their portrait of conservative groups or individuals, or beating their own liberal allies for being too short sighted, at least you learned something about the wheels of “progress” in Washington DC and the other Presidents who occupied the Oval Office before the fictitious Jeb Bartlet. And regardless of what party you belonged to, the show never played down or attacked the audience intelligence.

Will this show be missed? I’m sure that it will be for more then a few people. There are avid fans of this show from all over the political spectrum and it’s been a good alternative to the various hospital and cop shows, not to mention the now countless reality shows that take up the time slots that were once occupied with sitcoms and dramas.

With “Commander And Chief” starting Gena Davis  as good as gone, and there won’t be another season of The West Wing that will show the Santos administration (Jimmy Smits as former Congressman and new President Matthew Santos,) the question remains where will the political junkies get their fix? The West Wing might not have been the perfect show for some conservatives and traditionalists, but it does seem to capture the spirit of our youthful enthusiasm for politics and government and tries to show us not as how things are, but how things could be.

Hopefully Sorkin and company tried to show us what this country and Washington would have been like if men like Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy were still in office. Did this show accomplish that goal? Who knows, since nobody can give an accurate and definitive answer. In the end it was an entertaining show with engaging (if sometimes whinny) characters and didn't dodge the bullet from it's critics when tackling serious issues.

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