The West Wing

One way condensing my thoughts on a show into a single post after I've seen the whole thing is problematic is when that show lasted for 155 hour-long episodes over the course of seven years. There's just a lot to talk about. There's an easy way to sum it up, though. The West Wing is my favorite multi-season network drama of the last decade. Take away all the qualifiers, and it's still probably one of the twenty best shows ever made. It combines fantastic writing and direction with possibly the best ensemble cast ever assembled for a long period of time, and the balls to approach actual politics rather than creating false conflicts and ignoring party distinctions. Plenty of shows have revolved around political maneuvering to drive their plots, but they always have something else to entertain the audience. In The West Wing, the politics, and the characters who engage in them, are the fun part.

The show has two distinct eras; the four seasons where Aaron Sorkin produced it and essentially wrote it by himself, and the three seasons after he left. Before his departure, the show was wittier and more overtly liberal, often serving as a mouthpiece for his own ideas, but always being exciting. Also Rob Lowe was there, and his character was fun. After the two left, the show struggled a bit, having to deal with the leftovers of a silly plot thread (I wonder if Sorkin intentionally left a big mess to clean up knowing he was leaving) and not being sure what to do for an entire season. But its move to a more centrist perspective, allowing conservatives a voice and even a few likable characters, was a worthwhile change, and the plot determining who would replace Martin Sheen's President Bartlet after he left office breathed new life into the show before it could get stale.

The show is known for its rapid-fire dialogue and distinctive filming style, where rather than sit in a room discussing the matters of the day, the characters would trade barbs while making their points and walking somewhere through the labyrinth of the White House's many offices as the camera followed them. It a solid approach that wouldn't have worked without the great cast, which changed over time but retained a solid core for most of its run. Martin Sheen plays the President we all wish we could have, a man who's smart enough to run the country but likable enough to get elected to do so (please read nothing political into that statement). I still remember how in awe I was when he first entered the show near the end of the first episode, having been built up as a great titan of a man, and surpassing those expectations. He was somehow one of the only regular cast members not to win an Emmy, but it's certainly one of the best roles any actor could have, and he nailed it.

The rest of the main cast is mostly people helping decide policy and present it to America, from his chief and deputy chief of staff, to his press secretary, to his director and deputy director of communications (speech writers). Everyone is good, but a few who deserve pointing out are John Spencer, who plays Bartlet's right hand man and best friend, and unfortunately died before the show ended; Bradley Whitford, who somehow makes a whiny blowhard into a truly likable and sympathetic figure; and Allison Janney, who brought a much-needed strong feminine presence to the boy's club that is American politics. Janel Moloney's Donna is also a good character, though she mostly serves to get other characters to explain certain delicate political positions for the audience early on. The cast grows as the show goes on (and a couple characters leave), with two of the biggest additions being Alan Alda and Jimmy Smits as the two candidates to be the next President, a plot that comes on strong in season six and dominates season seven. I preferred Alda's performance, though both are good at getting across certain specific points the show wanted to make, and the live debate episode they carried together was one of those rare silly TV stunts that actually worked.

The show premiered before overarching serialized plots began really dominating critically acclaimed television (The Sopranos was just starting around the same time), so a lot of the time an episode would just introduce a few problems for a few different groups of characters, and they would all be resolved by the end. That approach is still fine when the writing and acting are as good as this show's, so it didn't really stick out, and they got better and better at introducing longer term story ideas as the show went on. An arc involving a medical condition that Bartlet hid from everyone is possibly the best achievement of the show's entire run. If there's one issue that crops up, it's the show's unfortunate tendency to make characters it no longer finds useful completely disappear without any mention, which seems lazy. It's especially noticeable when a regular character vanishes between seasons in the middle of a story, even though the cliffhanger finale and the continuing premiere take place on the same day. I imagine watching the show a second time would reveal a treasure trove of characters that I had forgotten even existed in the first place, that just left without a single line to explain it. The show is constantly pushing forward though, and if this was the price to pay for the consistency of its writing and the characterization of the people that do stick around, it was worth it.

I can't imagine a show this polarizing and intelligent premiering in the modern political climate, which is a shame, because even if you don't agree with a show's ideas, it can be worthwhile to see another side of a familiar debate. Lots of times the show would just experiment with fringe theories, throwing stuff at the wall and letting the viewer decide what stuck. If I had to pick one show to have an actual influence on the way world events were looked at in its wake, it would probably be The West Wing. And I guess that's a testament to how interesting it is. So many shows require sex or violence or something gimmicky to get people to watch, but The West Wing was a success just being itself, and that's commendable.

Finding Nemo

I feel like the first several Pixar movies were good but not quite exceptional like their more recent output, and Nemo sort of marks that transition to true brilliance. It's not a favorite, but it's really quite good, capturing the right combination of humor, excitement, and heart. I guess they really figured things out when they started making things sad. The movie doesn't linger on it, but the opening scene where Marlin loses his wife and most of his children is probably harder than anything else the studio had done to that point, and it works very well to inform the character for the rest of the film. Marlin searching all over the ocean for his son isn't a terribly different story from say, the toys trying to rescue Woody after he gets stolen, but the knowledge of that earlier tragedy gives everything a greater weight and urgency. You want him to find Nemo because you know it will destroy him if he doesn't. One of the best family relationships the company has done.

It doesn't take over the whole movie though, as there's plenty of opportunity for the expected clever action sequences and windfall of entertaining celebrity voices. Sequences like Dory reading the address by the light of an anglerfish and escaping from the seagulls in the beak of a pelican are a lot of fun, and while I think having famous people do voices because they're famous can be damaging in pointless, everyone here seems really well cast. Albert Brooks and Ellen DeGeneres make a good leading pair, it's surprising hearing a very young Shane from Weeds as the titular character, Willem Dafoe is entertaining as the gruff leader of a group of aquarium fish including Brad Garrett and Allison Janney, and you'll probably hear a few more recognizable voices at some point. It's a nice looking film if not as eye-popping as what they've done in the last few years, and it tells its story and wraps it up at a very nice pace. Not my favorite animated movie, but a pretty good benchmark for what family films should aim for.

Juno

Part clever indie teen comedy, part real drama about pregancy and love, Juno is a great movie. The script is really pretty terrific, and almost the whole cast carries it well. Some of the lines can seem a little strange or out of place, but it's not another Napoleon Dynamite, it's a smart, funny movie with a good heart. Ellen Page is very good as the titular Juno, a not-quite-so normal teenager who finds out she's been impregnated by awkward classmate Paulie Bleeker, played well by Michael Cera. I'm not sure if his character was actually supposed to be strange or not, but it seemed to work with the movie. Juno eventually decides to give the kid up for adoption and finds a nice couple, but things might not be quite what she thought.

Some people would get turned off by the whole quirky vibe, but it didn't bother me. The only aspect I didn't like was the soundtrack, full of poorly played music that wasn't that bad, it just didn't seem to add anything at all. It's very funny throughout, with good dialogue that never gets uncreative or resorts to childish jokes. As the plot actually develops, it gets pretty interesting, as you actually feel for the characters and when they mess up, you actually have feelings about it. The entire cast does a great job with it, and the conclusion comes a little fast but worked for me. I expected to probably like this movie, maybe not that much, but I came out really loving it.