The Wing Is Dead. Long Live The Wing.

Sometimes I swear I just write these postings because a witty title comes to me whilst I’m sitting on the bike at the gym. That’s why literature was better in Shakespeare’s day – he actually wrote when he had a valid reason to do so.

But I didn’t want the sad news of NBC finally axing The West Wing to pass without (my) comment. I would think that if you can bear to read to the end, you’ll agree with me that this will be my most contentious ever posting for I shall link the show to my ENTIRE ADULT LIFE. And, probably, offend absolutely everyone with a ‘really quite without foundation’ comparison…but don’t spoil the fun for yourself and just let it wash over you, as nature intended.

The West Wing has been constantly vying for the enviable title of my favourite ever TV show with The Sopranos in my head ever since they made their debuts in 1999. The West Wing actually came on NBC exactly one week after I started my first proper job at the BBC so you can see why I feel we’re kindred spirits. I was making tea and coffee (badly) for the production office and trying my best to write funny asides for the crawls that ran underneath music videos. Aaron Sorkin, meanwhile, was penning the greatest scripts in the history of television whilst (allegedly) being holed up on coke in the Los Angeles Four Seasons hotel. I mean, you might as well have called us brothers. That first episode is easily the best pilot I’ve ever seen: the characters spoke at a million miles an hour, the camera never seemed to cut (a good thing, if you’re wondering) and all that dialogue about “POTUS in a tree”, Leo ringing the New York Times to complain about the crossword misspelling Gaddaffi ("I should know - I've had lunch with the man!") and Martin Sheen’s eventual entrance made me fall in love with it instantly. And yet I must give credit where it’s due: I might have come to WW late had it not been for my friend Ummit texting me on the day it premiered on Sky One and instructing me to watch. Scarily, I’m pretty sure this text was written on Monday Jan 14th, 2000. Please don’t mock me for remembering that, I’m quite possibly wrong. And this is where the entire adult life comment might start to make sense. A few weeks later, my boss asked me to write and produce a weekly comedy/music chart show for the viewer/s of BBC cable channel UK PLAY. The one hitch? The edits would be starting on Monday afternoon and took the previous guy until the deadline of midnight to finish. I was so into the WW that I couldn’t even bear to watch the weekly episode on VHS and so I seemed to somehow deliver the chart show at around 8.30pm meaning that I could get back for the 9pm start time. A month later, upon being promoted to a fully-fledged researcher, I was informed that one of the major reasons for my promotion was the speed in which I edited the chart show. Hilariously, if you were to speak to any of my current colleagues, they would tell you that I took a fair amount of time these days to edit my pieces. Indeed, one of the messages in the wedding card my office sent us said, “quick work mate, shame you never edited as quickly”. I think we can reasonably conclude from this that I might not have been promoted as quickly were it not for The West Wing.

And there’s more: a couple of years into the show, they introduced a new character played by the wonderful Mary-Louise Parker. At the time, I was in a different relationship and can remember lying on my couch wishing that I could meet someone like the quick witted, beautiful ‘Amy’ from WW. Now, of course I wouldn’t dare claim that my resulting marriage was some sort of latent desire to be with ‘Amy’ (I mean, that would be the work of a stalker and, if you think about it, I could have gone straight to the source seeing as Ms. Parker lives in New York. Oh, and to the best of my knowledge, Liza has never worked for the First Lady) but I find it interesting that her favourite show of last year was Weeds…in which the main character is played by Mary-Louise Parker. I think we can, therefore, unreasonably conclude from this that I might not have been married as quickly were it not for The West Wing.

Finally, as I spent some time this morning thinking about what the show meant to me, it dawned on me how its moments would often make me shiver. President Bartlett raging at God after his secretary’s funeral, Josh’s “you want a piece of me?” to, seemingly, all of Washington DC, the entire episode based around a series of chess matches, all the genius flashbacks and – for me, the show’s highpoint – CJ’s policeman boyfriend being murdered in cold blood while Bartlett is at the theatre watching art tragically imitating life. I started to build a case comparing the show’s shelf life to the career of – wait for it – The Beatles. Both showed potential in an earlier form (Paul McCartney was a Quarryman while Sorkin wrote Sports Night…set behind the scenes of a sports show. And you doubt the earlier ENTIRE ADULT LIFE claim?!?) before wowing the world with their first few albums (if you permit me to compare an album to a season of a TV show) before outside influences led to arguments and a deterioration in quality (On the one hand, Yoko Ono and on the other, Sorkin’s nervous breakdown before he and Rob Lowe left) before regaining some past glories but only in patches (some of Lennon, McCartney and George Harrison’s solo material is excellent and WW is pretty good again these days). And just to seal the deal, how about this: both The Beatles and West Wing truly ended when Johns Lennon and Spencer (Leo) were tragically taken before their time was up. Don’t be offended by this (I can’t really compare Lennon’s death at the hands of a madman to Spencer’s heart attack, it’s just an effective literary device) but I always saw Leo as Lennon to President Bartlett’s Macca. And so, on May 14th of this year, exactly six years and four months after that fateful text message, we shall witness the end of an era. In a very real sense then: Hello, Goodbye.