A West Wing Special to Benefit When We All Vote

In my mind, A West Wing Special to Benefit When We All Vote (aka the West Wing Reunion) is not the West Wing reunion we wanted or needed. Why? Because everything is so different now that the universe of The West Wing seems way too fantastical. So much time has passed since the show went off the air in May of 2006 that such a reunion seems misguided. I once mentioned the show when writing about House of Cards and the shows' differences in 2014. (How simpler a time 2014 was, even before we knew about Kevin Spacey.) "The West Wing might be what we want our political system to be," I wrote. "House of Cards might simply be what it is." The reality, though, is that Frank Underwood was nothing compared to the current mess we've been in for some time now. 

The West Wing was a series that served as a civics lesson, reminding viewers that we're all on the same team and we want the same things. How naive that all feels now. The past few years have shown that we are, in fact, not on the same team. If the Obama years showed us that so many people in the United States are still quite racist, the Trump years have showed us just how authoritarian many Americans are. Thus, in the midst of a pandemic that has left more than 200,000 Americans dead and an economy in the tank, with almost daily reminders of injustice against so many people, who would possibly be in the mood for another glib center-left lecture from West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin and company? 

It might have worked had Sorkin, writer Eli Attie, and the cast reunited for an update on where these characters are these days fourteen years after their fictional administration ended. Instead, the cast has reunited to recreate on stage (COVID precautions and all) an episode from season 3 in 2002 called "Hartsfield's Landing." The episode is named after the small town in New Hampshire called Hart's Location, one of the three small towns in New Hampshire that are the first to declare their results of the election around midnight. In the episode, the main drama is that China is threatening to act aggressively if Taiwan tests its Patriot missiles it purchased from the U.S. The subplot is a feuding press secretary C.J. Cregg (Allison Janney) and aide Charlie Young (Dulé Hill) going at it with pranks. President Jed Bartlett (Martin Sheen) is feeling the weight of all this pressure from China's saber-rattling, with two different games of chess with his speechwriters, Sam Seaborne (Rob Lowe) and Toby Ziegler (Richard Schiff) serving as some stress relief. 

It's a bit challenging to critique their acting because these are all performances we've seen before. Needless to say, it's a joy to see them again. These are some of the finest actors recreating some of their finest work. Sheen, in particular, is fantastic in one of his best roles of his legendary career. Sterling K. Brown is the newbie in the cast. He plays Chief of Staff Leo McGarry, who was played on the show by John Spencer until his death during the final season. Brown is a renowned actor, winning Emmy Awards for his work on The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story and This Is Us. But his performance as Leo is much less inspired than Spencer's, coming across as flat and unnatural. That never happened with Spencer.

Aside from the acting, this version of the episode just feels...awkward. The opening preamble by Bradley Whitford (who plays White House aide Josh Lyman) describing the project's inception and aims is surpassed in weirdness only by similar monologues from the other cast members. The gist of their speeches can probably be summarized as "if we can get just get one more new voter...", which (spoiler alert), they probably won't. As a friend pointed out, the people who watched The West Wing are not the people who aren't going to vote in elections. Fans of the show, though, are certainly going to have a reaction to this reunion, most of which will be positive. Some have called it a "home run". 

I am not one of them. This was not a home run, but a missed opportunity, dripping with Sorkin's misunderstanding of reality. I was a fan of the show as much as anyone, but we are lightyears away from how the world worked back then. Sorkin, Attie, and the others could have addressed this. The West Wing often worked as a reaction to the real world, with the show starting in the late 90s as Hollywood's wishful thinking of what a more ambitiously and proudly liberal Bill Clinton could have been. (Clinton, whose presidency doesn't exist in the West Wing universe, for some reason shows up here, as does Michelle Obama, Samuel L. Jackson, and Lin-Manuel Miranda.) Most of the show's run existed during the horrible years of George W. Bush, and while the show didn't spend every episode providing hypothetical alternative universes to how a Democrat might have handled some of the events of the time, it did take that route occasionally. And while the show ended before Barack Obama became president, many noted at the time how similar the fictional presidential race between Democrat Matt Santos (Jimmy Smits) and Republican Arnold Vinick (Alan Alda) mirrored the race between Obama and John McCain.  

It would have been captivating to have seen Sorking get Bartlet, Lyman, Cregg et al post-presidency reacting to whatever similar event might be going on in their universe. Instead, this reunion is a painful remind that we're a long way from 1999-2006, and, in some ways good and in some ways bad, we're never going back.