Something that adds to my enjoyment of some TV series (or movies or books) is a belief that depictions are authentic, true-to-life. For example, Sopranos gains much from the knowledge that real mobsters endorse it as realistic. What other TV series are noted for being true-to-life? How about The West Wing? I’m doubtful … but know naught.
This is not to say that realistic portrayals are essential. Glee and Dexter are fun to watch, in part because they are NOT realistic.
My WAG -
Are people really that witty? No. Is it possible to hold all those conversations while walking through crowded hallways? Probably not without repeated injuries.
Is the government actually run by a bunch of workaholic political operators, largely unknown to the general public, who obsess over every little detail of policy and PR? That part’s probably true.
The West Wing was highly stylized, but employed real White House veterans and reporters as consultants and they tried to make everything as accurate as they could within the demands of an entertaining TV show. I also remember reading an article about how the sets were particularly accurate according to those who had worked there.
The plost are generally pretty absurd though. Aaron Sorkin is definitely a liberal, and his tendency to play Bartlett as a borderline Gary Sue (Marty Stu, etc.) has been noted. For a relatively minor point: nobody with a Nobel Prize in Economics is in politics. The closest thing in real life in Paul Krugman’s cranky column.
I loved Obama’s comment about a previous Sorkin vehicle the other night at the WH Correspondent’s Dinner:
My favorite accurate detail is how nobody in Washington ever has any liquid in their coffee cups.
Because they’re all robots and they only drink motor oil.
I’ve said before that Aaron Sorkin’s Bartlett administration and Tom Clancy’s Ryan administration are essentially mirror images of each other.
They’re both products of ideological certainty. Their creators are sure of the ideology. If the characters ever falter, it’s from not remaining true to their ideology not due to the ideology being wrong about an issue. Therefore, the solution to any setback is to go back to your ideological roots and there you will find the truth.
The characters are pure of heart. Sure they may have their faults but they’re blameless for them. You won’t have a character who’s follows the right ideology but has private flaws like cheating on his wife or taking bribes. The morality of their ideology is matched by a personal morality.
Their opponents are always wrong. They’re either evil people who know they’re doing the wrong thing or they’re deluded people who haven’t seen the truth yet. But either way, it’ll be clear that they’re wrong and our heroes are right.
The exception are crossover opponents. These aren’t really opponents however. They’re people who are supposedly on the other side - but they agree that the main characters are right on every important issue. And these crossover opponents have tremendous admiration for the main character’s personal integrity.
The people support them. Sure there are times that some people might be temporarily fooled by the lies the other side is telling. But in the end, the people always come around and agree with the characters.
White Houses are reflections of the presidents they serve. Under Clinton it was more of an informal “lets gets some pizza and hash things out” type vibe. Clinton liked to play people off of each other and insert himself in the middle.
Bush was more button downed, every body wrote up their pitch and brought it to a meeting. At the meeting Bush quizzed them on it and at the end of the meeting made a decision.
Obama likes to go over memos by himself at night and indicate his decisions on the memos. There is much less known about his style since his people have not started writing books yet.
The Nobel prize winning economist as a politician is particularly far fetched. The only economist-politicians in america who ever did anything were Dick Armey, and Phil Gramm. Neither of them made any significant contributions to the economics profession. The only presidents to actual study economics were Ford, Reagan and Bush 41 and they only had a BA.
Wilson’s doctorate was in political science and history, but he taught “political economy” (almost the same thing as present day economics) at Princeton. That’s closer than most I can think of.
The place where I think *West Wing *must be way off reality is that Barlett had a staff of 5major characters and maybe another 7 minor characters doing everything to run the government. I should imagine a real president has at least 30 people who report directly to him, and hundreds under them.
I think the writers made Bartlett an economist *because *there’s never been a president of that stripe, as well emphasizing Bartlett’s genius in a field not many people know much about.
I stopped reading Tom Clancy long before Jack Ryan was president, so I can’t comment on that part of your comparison, but I think you’re fairly far off the mark with a lot of your criticisms about The West Wing.
The first vice president on the show, John Hoynes, was a serial adulterer, which eventually led to his resignation. President Bartlett himself covered up his MS while campaigning for president, and his wife violated medical ethics by treating him herself. Josh Lyman is incredibly arrogant, which frequently leads to him badly mismanaging political situations - really, one of the more unrealistic things about the show is that Josh still has a job. Toby Ziegler is every bit as arrogant, and a huge asshole to boot.
Actually, the show went to some lengths to show Republicans as both intelligent, and well intentioned. In fact, a fairly common cliche on the show is for one of the main characters (usually Josh) to assume that a political opponent is stupid or incompetent, only to have it blow up in their face when the conservative character gives them a scathing defense of their principles or actions. There were a few unambiguously villainous conservatives, but they’re a lot rarer than people remember. Although, in fairness, not as rare as unambiguously villainous liberals.
One of the major plot arcs during Bartlett’s second term is that, while Barlett himself won by a large margin, the country as a whole went strongly conservative in the Congressional races, a fact that the Republicans in the show use to force a number of concessions from the White House over the next four seasons.
I can take the razor-sharp witty repartee with not a single moments hesitation to even think, but the thing about West Wing that always irked me is how a character will utter something that sounds completely innocuous and the principle characters all look at each other with a knowing glance, immediately identifying the faux-pas – everybody is right on board with the same incredibly convoluted analysis of the comment.
Two scenes later we see that a junior staffer’s comment on the nesting habits of yellow-bellied sap-suckers will now force the president into an international stand-off with the prime minister if Whatthefuckistan somehow … and everybody saw it coming like it was spelled out in neon lights for them.
Well, the whole point of the show was just to focus on a small group in the White House. Obviously there were a lot more people working, but we only got to see a few snippets of. I think we only saw the Cabinet members once.
Bartlet is an archetype: The Philosopher King. Actual presidents are, without exception, compromised mercenary whores. I’d love to see a West Wing-type show that features a Republican administration, freely asserts that greed is the driving force for all the characters in it, and ultimately defends this as the proper way a government should be run.
Case in point: In The West Wing, every time Bartlet commits US troops to Jerusalem, Kazakhstan or some Rwanda-like hellhole in Africa that practices ethnic cleansing, the troops–unaffected by the Powell Doctrine, since neither Powell nor his doctrine exists in the Sorkinverse–are magically home by the next episode. When has that ever happened in the real world?
Well, the Whatthefuckistanians take their ornithology seriously.
But, yeah, the contrivances did get bothersome. At least a show like Veep can mock the standards of scripted television, while throwing in lots of cursing.
John Hoynes was never a main character. He was brought into the show as an adversary. He was supposed to show how noble everyone in the main cast was. Josh would become disillusioned with politics while working for Hoynes and then he’d see Bartlet and his idealism would be revived. And then we were shown how noble Bartlet and Leo and Josh were for standing by Hoynes when he had acted so poorly - he was shown as a bad person so they could be shown as good people who forgave him. And then Hoynes returned for the campaign arc so we could contrast the nobility of the Santos campaign with the underhandedness of the Hoynes campaign.
But Bartlet was a victim of MS. He wasn’t covering up an affair or a kickback scandal. And the writers made sure we saw that his disease didn’t really affect his ability to be President. So we were supposed to feel sorry for what had happened to him not angry at him for what he had done.
Apparently the original intent of the show was to be more tightly focused on the staff, who would have been reported to Leo. President Bartlet was supposed to be a distant figure that would only appear in one or two scenes per season.
I don’t think so. In the first season, rather than being shown as an adversary, he’s shown as someone who’s usually willing to work with the administration, except when the administration expects him to fall on his own sword for their convenience. Which is pretty frequently. His original function in the show was largely to demonstrate how viciously petty Bartlett could be. This is, I think, Hoynes second or third appearance on the show, and nothing he’d done to that point merited that kind of treatment. Later in the show, Bartlett admits that he treats Hoynes like shit because Hoynes didn’t jump at the chance to be VP immediately after losing the nomination.
Sure, but that doesn’t excuse his covering up a catastrophic illness that could affect his decision making abilities. And the show was pretty explicit in pointing out from the start that there’s no way to tell how much the MS was already effecting his decision making process. And then, of course, there was the whole China summit thing from late in the show’s run, where he’s almost incapacitated by an MS attack on the eve of a major diplomatic event.
The audience is certainly inclined to forgive Bartlett’s coverup, because he’s the main character of the show, and an immensely likable figure, but the show never soft-sells or excuses his actions, which are universally recognized by virtually every character in the show (including, ultimately, Barlett himself) as hugely unethical.
Also worth noting is the fact that his cover up effectively prevented Hoynes from winning the nomination. Despite this, Hoynes agreed to keep Bartlett’s secret for him when he accepted the VP post, and he kept his mouth shut through the abuses he took at Bartlett’s hands. Largely because Bartlett had promised he would only run for one turn, and would back Hoynes for President after he was out of office. A promise Bartlett ignored once the scandal broke and it became clear that it hadn’t irreparably damaged Bartlett’s chance at a second term.
Sentimental bollocks and bogus propaganda.
How about “not a historical documentary”?
It is, in the end, very mildly instructive entertainment, and as a new watcher, I’m finding it very, very entertaining.