I just watched the 4th season finale of The West Wing, on Bravo. I can't believe it was the finale--it seems like it went by far too quickly, that there should have been more episodes.

It was a helluva finale--Zoey, President Bartlett's daughter, was kidnapped and, knowing that fact was, and would continue, clouding his judgement, he invoked the 25th Amendment. Under the terms of the amendment, assumption of the Precidency goes to the next in line, normally the Vice President. But on the show, the Vice President oh-so-conviently resigned two episodes prior. It was sloppy writing; though the series long held the premise that the President and the V.P. did not get along, the reasoning behind his resignation (an affair with a socalite who then leaked information he told her to get a book deal) was incredibly forced and sudden, doing no justice to the previous four years of story-building behind the character. Regardless, since there was no V.P., that meant the Speaker of the House would assume the Presidency. In the show, the Speaker is a Republican, about 180 degrees removed in personality and ideology from good old Barlett.

It was a powerful scene. The Speaker was played by John Goodman, who used every ounce of his size and stature to project as imposing and inhospitable persona as possible. The White House Staff were completely shell-shocked and discomforted, and the Speaker did nothing to ease their minds. He asserted his authority clearly and forcefully. It was a powerful scene.

And as far as I'm concerned, that ends the show.

The fifth season is still continuing on NBC. But the show's creator, Aaron Sorkin, left at the end of the fourth season. There was minor controversy involved. Sorkin had been arrested for maruijana posession in 2001, and there was a growing criticism that the show had lost its edge. Sorkin leaving, and the daring shake-up of the status quo, signaled that the show as people knew it was essentially over.

When the fifth season began I lurked on a few boards to see the reactions. Places like Sk8J where there are people whose opinions are well-thought and intelligent. And while there were varying degrees of reaction to the show post-Sorkin (some hated it, others thought it OK, others liked it just fine) the overwhelming concensus was that whatever magic Sorkin worked to make the West Wing so spell-binding in the past was no longer there.

I figure I'll watch the fifth season sooner or later. By the fall Bravo will probably be airing it. though by then it will have cycled through the first four seasons at least one more time, so I don't know if it will retain it's juicy 7:00 time-slot (much like F/X shuffled Buffy after it cycled through its episodes three or four times). But I know that Zoey was rescued and Bartlett resumed his role, so the status-quo was resumed soon enough, so there's no real incentive for me to watch.

What hooked me on The West Wing was that it was unlike any other show you could find. It was intensely passionate and cerebral, the dialogue was a barrage of information--from exposition to philosophy to character quips. You had to think to keep up, you had to think about what happened, and more often than not, you had to keep on thinking about what you saw, even after the episode was finished. I don't mean think in the "I thought it was a good episode" sort of way that usually happens with other good shows, I mean you had to think about what you just watched: the issues it presented, the direction it took, the actions and reactions of the characters. And from all accounts, that aspect of the show ended with the episode I watched tonight.

Ah well. There's always the DVD sets.