As I believe I've mentioned before, I only saw The West Wing for the first time around a year-and-a-half ago. I loved it immediately, and between DVD and Bravo reruns, I set about catching up in time to start watching the sixth season when it debuted last October.
But there were a couple of holes. When Bravo has rerun the fifth season episodes of The West Wing, they've skipped two episodes consistently every time: the Thanksgiving episode and the Supreme Court episode. In the case of the former, it turned out it had been left out of the Bravo cycle intentionally, because they planned to air it on NBC for the week of Thanksgiving a few months ago. I caught the episode then. But that left "The Supremes." I have no idea what about that episode caused it to be skipped not once, but twice in cable reruns. Did someone at Bravo have something against Glenn Close?
Once it had come down to that being the only episode of The West Wing I hadn't seen, I turned to TiVo's handy Wish List feature, and told it that if ever that episode should come up on any channel at any time, I wanted it recorded. And bless you, TiVo, tonight you came through for me. The local affiliate that does weekend reruns here in Denver ran the episode Sunday night. And so, after enjoying Family Guy and Desperate Housewives, I watched "the lost episode."
For the fifth season (which, though I'd have to say was still good television, is generally the series' worst), this was a very good episode. One of the best. It kind of got back to the core of the show -- offering wish fulfillment to viewers of the way many of us dream our government ought to work, and doing it in an entertaining way with likeable characters and snappy dialogue. I quite enjoyed it.
But now I have to wait until next fall like everyone else to get a new episode of The West Wing.
2 comments:
My wife and I watched the first two seasons religiously when they debuted, but we started to stray somewhere in the third season. The only episode or scene that ever rubbed me the wrong way to that point was when the President mercilessly and publicly rips a Dr. Laura proxy a new one. The writers' Dr. Laura hate turned Bartlett into a smug-ass quasi-theologian long enough to make me gag.
We've been watching reruns on Bravo and on local affiliates to catch up, but haven't been as dedicated as you. We sometimes wish the show had stayed true to the original premise -- following the West Wing staff with the President or First Lady sometimes popping in for brief appearances. Regardless, we'll likely pick the show up again in the seventh season.
Alda vs. Smits -- should be a great contest!
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