Pop Culture Pick: A West Wing Special Turns Out To Be Very Special Indeed
Bartlet and the gang are back for a staged reading of Hartsfield's Landing
Image Credit: Warner Media
Welcome to Pop Culture Pick, a catch-all for subjects I want to highlight outside of the usual weekly Weekend Watch columns. In this edition, the West Wing cast and creators reunite for a special to promote voting.
It is fair to say that I am a massive fan of The West Wing. The political drama – well, strictly speaking, it’s occasionally more comedy-drama – created by Aaron Sorkin that ran on US TV between 1999 and 2006 was an endless delight, its first four seasons an enriching, enlightening, and always entertaining peek into a fantastical, flawed but progressively powerful West Wing. While the series stumbled a little after Sorkin and directorial genius Thomas Schlamme departed, executive producer John Wells and his team eventual found a new groove, one focused on the election to replace Martin Sheen’s President Josiah Bartlet.
Yet I’m also keenly aware that the show is a glimpse into a world that has likely never truly existed in American politics and certainly doesn’t now. In the series, the characters are actually working to make things better, while keeping their positions safe and their cards close to their chest on occasion. Their workplace celebrates learning, morality and comradery, a very far cry from what you imagine goes on behind closed doors in any normal governmental organisation and definitely the current American government.
Sheen, alongside castmates John Spencer, Rob Lowe, Allison Janney, Richard Schiff, Dule Hill, Bradley Whitford, Janel Moloney, Stockard Channing and their various supports, argued political points, crusaded for their passions and tried to avoid making goofs on TV. Ah, good times.
Now they’re back, not with new material necessarily, but with a staged reading of a season three episode, Hartsfield’s Landing, which features several plot points: a stand-off between China and Taiwan, the President playing chess with different staff members while discussing the situation, voting in a tiny New Hampshire town that has predicted the outcome of the Presidential Election for decades and, in a more light-hearted strand, Janney’s Press Secretary CJ Cregg and Hill’s Presidential “Body Man” Charlie Young getting into a prank war. It’s the sort of episode well suited to the stage, since it features few scenes outside the offices and is full of meaty dialogue (a speciality of the show).
It makes sense, then that Sorkin, Schlamme and the cast gathered in the Orpheum Theater in Los Angeles (under strict Covid safety protocols) to recreate the episode within, and occasionally outside of, the proscenium arch. Schlamme does a great job re-setting the show, with minimal staging and props and just letting the actors do their thing. The one big change in the cast is in the role of Chief of Staff Leo McGarry – since Spencer died in 2005, This Is Us award-winner Sterling K. Brown stepped in, bringing his own energy to the role. While it’s odd to see anyone else playing Leo, there’s no denying Brown’s talent. And mostly, I was just happy to see this cast back at it.
Instead of ads between the acts, there were messages from the cast and special guests such as former First Lady Michelle Obama, former President Bill Clinton, Samuel L. Jackson and Hamilton’s Lin–Manuel Miranda (a Wing superfan who snuck references to the series into the musical) to encourage voting. Which, even if it might seem like a desperate plea in these days of political exhaustion, is a noble one. Go and vote, people: it’s gone beyond important, and it’s become vital. And, if you can, and especially if you’re a West Wing fan, enjoy the special.
Then vote.
The special is available on HBO Max in the US. The streaming service is reportedly figuring out how to air it in the UK.