In a hardly unexpected deviation from normal fan behaviour, people who used to run a West Wing fan site are now running Don’t Save Our Show, a petition to NBC to cancel The West Wing after this series.
I agree with them.
Since Season 4, which ended on a dramatic high, the episodes are dry, stale, overdramatic and predictable, and encapsulated to the point where a “four episode story arc” is merely a return to what Sorkin did over an entire series, except not as good. And the direction, lifted from the ER school of shakeycam work for the first half of the season, just gave me a headache.
They’re going to do it, too. Or, rather, The West Wing probably won’t get another season. Since the beginning of March they’ve delayed three weeks (Patterned, so there’ve been two weeks of episodes, followed by one week of nothing) which is hardly condusive to following the storyline.
The first four seasons were wonderful. It deserves better than this.