It’s loyalty to the work and to the position. Not the person that holds said position. There’s a stark difference to those that serve because they want to make a difference and those that only want to be seen making a difference.

Except the CoS. When CJ becomes CoS, Bartlet asks her to jump off a cliff.

@@redwall1521 well.... that wasn't written by Sorkin so I pretend those episodes don't exist.

You’re supposed to have loyalty to the president and his office. Anything short of that is treason.

Well obviously. What kind of narcissistic mad man would act that way?

Without a doubt!

My daughter recently asked me what my favorite show of all time is, and I didn't even hesitate before saying, "The West Wing". It was a first for me, in that I had not watched a show based on politics before, but now I kind of love that genre. The amazing actors who made these characters come to life so much that you wanted to be in their world and you hated when a show ended. The humor, interspersed amongst the drama, was priceless. I laughed and cried during EVERY. SINGLE. EPISODE. No show has ever even come close to being this wonderful, at least for me.

No show comes close.

Newsroom too

@@stribe1000 I agree.not the same level, but very very close. And I'd like to see a new show with mix crew from both... Imagine a President CJ Cregg with Will McAvoy as Com Director, Charlie Young chief of Staff, Jim Harper in the speechwriter staff... and MacKenzie McHale Deputy Chief Of Staff 🙂

But what if those citizens are completely and utterly mistaken or delusional? As are those, for example, that continued to vote for Nancy Pelosi, the most corrupt and disgusting "politician" that has ever existed?

Great quote. Margaret Meade is attributed as saying it.

Boy, those where the days. How in the hell did we get to trump?

How can you not cry? And how can you not laugh while you're crying? Donna's comment to Josh, Josh's comment to Will, Will's confusion, the underlying humor in Jed Bartlett's very nature...it all makes me laugh, while at the same time being so moved and touched that this group of people could create this incredible magic that the tears just start flowing.

Thank you - and them for your service. With best wishes from the UK.

Great line...

I could kiss you. (metaphorically)

Reminds me of this from Toby: "You see what I did with 'lowers' and 'raises' there? It's called the science of listener attention. We did repetition, we did floating opposites, and now the one that's not like the others." (from s2e16)

As a former member of the 82nd Airborne, that would be a mission I could get behind.

A Senior Counselor to the President is anyone the President chooses to listen to. It can be two or two hundred.

In the 3d season Toby presented himself as "White House Communications Director and Senior Counselor"

@@gabrielabagala Ya, I think in the modern white house you ahve your job title and then also some sorta title like "special advisor to the president" if your on the senior staff

*who

But what about all the bigs? You know, big oil, big pharma, big banks, etc.

i scanned to see if anyone beat me to it.... poop.

Gokul Varadan : You need to get off the internet for a while and smell the flowers Gokul.

I have never watched this scene, heard that line, and not cried.

"You make my heart sing ...."

(Your awe is making you forget mediocrities like "Access" and "Ninety Miles Away.")

@@tejaswoman maybe, but even a bad episode of this show is light years ahead of most.

Oh I disagree... that blonde woman (Kate?) was annoyingly bad. Or maybe it was just the screenwriting for her character.

@@Elisheval Mary McCormack as Kate Harper? She wasn't blonde.

Will makes my heart skip a beat.

They are all nightmares compared to reality, Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden, are real flawed, corrupt, selfish people, who sometimes manage to do something good in doing aload of awful things. Tv presidents don't have to run for anything, they don't have to pay for anything, deal with 10000 conflicting desires the people want/need.

Love Sorkin but he was gone at this point as a writer I believe. He left after season 4

Not for much longer.

@@prospero4183 It's because most of them are establishment. Politics is not what the West Wing portrayed as this glorious way of promoting change because you want it, nor is it the bitter negotiating that House of Cards portrays, although HoC is closer to reality than the WW. Politics is a one party system where they play good cop bad cop and we the people are the ones who actually get f*cked by everyone.

@@prospero4183 "Tv presidents don't have to run for anything" and yet here the USA was, not too long ago and not for much longer either.

It is for me

It's a shame that Lowe left the show. I would've liked to see Sam on the show in his new role at the same time that Will was on the show.

Joe McKim at least we got to see him return at the end of the Santos campaign

Very different in The Big Bang

He didn't have to deal with Sheldon in WW...then again Bartlet did like obscure facts...

Check out sports night

I love, love, love Will. He would be the absolute best next president.

A lot of the characterizations became shallower/more one-dimensional in Season 5 after Sorkin left the show, and was even more pronounced in the later seasons.

Joshua Dworkin

Different writers.

Michael Muldowney and as we all know, bob russel is the only person in the world (real and fictional) who has not even a code name from the secret service... 😊

Joshua Dworkin Agreed. Sorkin would have never written the storyline about Toby’s treason. Toby was a patriot and loyal servant of his country and his President.

Was just going to say the same thing..Damn, when they do up Janelle Maloney, she's amazing...

She looks pretty, but her hairstyle is downright silly. For me it detracts from the effect to have badly done Cindy Brady curls on a grown woman. No reflection on Janel, only on her stylist.

Thanks..

You are welcomed.

I don't. I watch it on re-runs, and Netflix, and I have the dvd's. :) I struggle to not re-watch the series more than twice a year.

I miss competent, mentally healthy presidents a lot.

Greatest show ever written

Excellent song from Penzance ... though Lionel Tribbey would mistakenly claim it's from Pinafore. Sam, as the recording secretary of the Princeton G&S society, could set him straight.

@@kdmdlo you people make me want to vomit. find a new hobby

she appears less elegant in Practical Magic, but no less dynamic and powerful. The cast of the TWW was simply amazing.

Certainly, Rizzo was the embodiment of elegance :)

Don't feel bad - feel proud. We've got YOUR back. Best wishes from the UK.

And becoming more chilling by the day

Dan Smith kzfaq.info/get/bejne/irBhpLh4mcCvd3k.html Then, I remembered it was a drama series written by two great screenwriters and produced by a team for the viewing pleasure of ours, yours, mine, and countless others, most of whom watched an episode once on Thursday nights and never gave it a second thought. As it should be.

Sonic3nKnuckles sure did

Iirc, SACEUR is also the Supreme Commader of all NATO forces, in particular, but not limited to, ground troops. By tradition, SACEUR has always been a three Star American General who reports directly to the Secretary General of NATO, as well as the Joint Chiefs. Also by tradition, his second i/c is a British officer one rank below, as ASACEUR, although memory fails if they are restricted to Army/Royal Marines, or whether that post is drawn from our four branches ...

@@nigelft DSACEUR as in Deputy

I say pick the one who doesn't want to dismantle Democracy.

smilingkevin Oh, if it did, MS or no, I'd vote for a Jeb Bartlett in a heartbeat!

+ anchorskid oh hell yeah, me too Bartlett for president 2020!!

Democrats do love wars to cover their failings

It's actually neoliberalism. I mean I love this show, but in real life, it isn't nearly and black and white. This is just Sorkinizing the '92 Bosnian conflict.

@@stthomasaquarius - Correct president, wrong continent. It's wishful thinking about what they wish we would have done with regard to the Rwandan genocide. Watch the episodes again, and you will see it. Yes, there are tinges of Serbo-Croatia-Bosnia, but everything about the Equatorial Kundu storyline comes down to the essence of The West Wing. As one conservative critic correctly noted during the early seasons, it's the Clinton presidency as viewed by people envisioning what it would have been like without the Clinton sex scandal and his other failings. One of those is the failure to act regarding Rwanda, and the plot line seeks to correct that -- a fantasy world in which a president is confronted in the way they wish the real one had been and makes the right decision the real one did not.

send the 10th mountain! fort Drumm

climb to glory!

got bless special opps, god bless artillery and amazing pilots men and woman god bless they are there!, but when doors need kicked in go to the 10th

James Taihuttu wish she’d been given credit.

Sadly thats so true, but after November we can start rebuilding our standing in the world again.

@MikeJames6 that statement makes no sense whatsoever, the nations of the world in the past always respected the US until trump became president then we make a nation of liars, cheats, misogynistic, hate spreading people all thanks to trump, a president who was supposed to unite the people but instead divided us even further and hopefully President Biden can restore us to the dignified standing we were before and maybe even "like us again".

@MikeJames6 And trump is bought and paid for by mother Russia. 🇷🇺

@MikeJames6 Wow "dementia Joe", how original, attacking him with a illness that affects individuals Worldwide, typical trump supporter. But when Bunkerboy is rotting in jail who will get the last laugh.

@MikeJames6 You are pathetic, I would say you are a waste of humanity but you are far from being human, so the worst I can call you is a "trumpet"

If you really screw up a shoot by running that long, then you are going to get not so nice women.

Which of the women were unfriendly ? Was that a typical length of time for the West Wing to shoot scenes ? Or was that particularly long for some reason ? Thanks for sharing your comment and experiences

What were the women like? Cranky for standing in high heels? Spill the beans! And wasn't Joshua simply wonderful? Although, he pulls pranks, so....stay away. Kate got a bug in her ear..

Holy Night. The Christmas episode in season 4. Episode 11.

THANK YOU. Perfectly summarized. Knowing how close he was to Sorkin, how he's essentially sorkin's lucky charm, I wonder if it was resentment on the part of the writing staff when they got stuck trying to make the show work after he left. Not saying AS was the indispensable genius HE thinks he is -- talented, yes, but with a lot of lazy writing habits/tics, a massive sexist chip on his shoulder, and an ego the size of Montana -- but it has to have been hard picking up the pieces after he left, especially given the bomb he dropped on the way out the door at the end of season 4 for them to defuse.

I think they wanted to seperate Will from Sam by having him be with Russell. I can't see Sam going against Josh like that.

because changing Donna's position would remove the pretext that keeps the tension with Josh ramped up to the nth degree. also, Josh Lyman wouldn't have been able to function without her.

She becomes the first lady's Chief of staff in the last season

@@johnobrien7562 I like how no one in the senior staff even questions it when she's there. They all know why.

Only if Sorkin was behind the project. Anyone else then I'll pass on it. As for who should be the President the only logical choice would be Sam Seaborn. They practically foreshadowed it prior to Rob Lowe leaving the show. Have him come in as the current President in the pilot similar to how Bartlet was already President during the original pilot.

TheAudioman15 because she’s on the cast?

@@kelvinktfong So out of place. She is not senior staff.

because she's the Deputy Deputy Chief of Staff? really, because after the debacle with the Jack Reese quote, Josh wasn't going to let her out of his sight.

+brian hibbs (Pilot728) Jed

Jed. As in Josiah Edward.

It welcomes you into the nightmare of the job. Last moments before you get mangled.

Wrong. Bartlet/MCNALLY. (or vice-versa)

Seaborn/Moss 2020

Learn how quotation marks work, spaz

they are going back to work in the West Wing as it is a 'work night', everyone else enjoys the ball...

crimdell Plus there wasn't an official intro announcement for the President and First Lady when they walked in

I still say it's unlikely that they weren't announced. Look at the doormen at 4:02. They can't see the President because they are on the other side of the door, inside the room. Someone is in charge of that event, and there is no doubt in my mind that an announcement would have been made. I think it's simply an oversight in the writing.

You don't see them in the shot, but it's likely there were two Secret Service agents in front clearing the way - just like the two that blended in the end if the line at the edge of the crowd. And those two "doormen" were also agents. No President would be allowed to walk through a crowded ballroom without escort.

They had already been in there, if I remember correctly. This was a reentry, to make their way to their offices.

It's almost as if actors have range.

Sadly you are right. It's government the way we wish it was, flawed humans making impossible decisions with mostly good intentions