West Wing
Posted: Mon 23 January, 2006 Filed under: Thoughts 2 Comments »According to the BBC Today, The West Wing is to be cancelled after its current series finishes in May.
It’s lasted seven seasons, and up ’til recently has been one of the most consistently fantastic series around. Season 6 seems to have lost its way a lot since the creator, Aaron Sorkin, quit. The replacement people, particularly when it comes to script-writing don’t seem to have quite clicked in with it yet. In fact, Season Six is the first one I haven’t devoured in about three sittings. Yes, I will watch it in the end, but it just hasn’t been quite as right as the previous seasons. And yes, I’ll get Season 7 when it comes out on DVD over here.
I just hope that it comes to a satisfactory conclusion, rather than a simple season end with no closure or “what happened next?”.
It’s quite a natural series on which to end, it being the final year of Barlett’s term of office.
I’m not particularly happy with the direction the new series has taken; with less time spent in the White House and more time devoted to the campaign trails of Barlett’s potential successors, the main characters have been split up and consequently a lot of the group dynamic which made the earlier seasons so entertaining has been lost.
Oddly enough, I though 6 was a return to form, and that 5 was the weakest one. Towards the end of 6, especially, there are new group dynamics forming and interacting with the existing ones, and it’s all good.
Plus, the way that they have less of the original groupings means that there are less dead ends in their discussions, which was definitely becomming obvious towards the end of Sorkin’s time.