Goodbye to The West Wing

****warning: if you have not yet seen the last episode of The West Wing you may not want to read this blog!****

last night marked the end of an era for my family and the end of the smartest show on tv, perhaps the smartest show that has ever aired...and one of my favorites of all time. For 7 years my family and I gathered around to watch and talk about the week's episode of The West Wing, the only thing we all watched together. Even after NBC decided to kill the show by moving it to Sundays at 8. And I'll admit that the last few seasons haven't been quite as good as the first four under series creator (and genius) Aaron Sorkin, but it has still been better than almost anything else on television.
But of course in an America that worships shows that allow freaks like William Hung to make our eardrums bleed or sitcom after awful sitcom of stupid fat guys who inexplicably have cool, hot wives...a smart, witty, sophisticated show like WW never had the ratings it should. Its actually amazing that it made it 7 whole seasons. God, I hate Americans sometimes...

but the show ended last night as President Josiah Bartlet (my hero who will never actually exist in the White House, an educated liberal with morals) left office and President Matt Santos took office. It was a pretty good sendoff....it tied up most lose ends and did a good job of sending the show off in the right way. Now I would have rather had a 2 hour finale to make sure everything was tied up, but NBC wasn't good enough to its own show to do that.....they even canceled a planned retrospective with the cast b/c it didn't want to pay the actors more. Now thats loyaly NBC...no wonder your network sucks. But here's what we know:
-Josh and Donna are apparently together for real and both working as Chiefs of Staff for the Santos
-Bartlet pardoned Toby as his last act as president (where was Toby in the finale)
-Sam Seaborne (Rob Lowe) came back to work at the White House
-CJ headed off to LA to run a charitable foundation and ends up married to Danny with kids
-Will runs for office in Oregon (no word if he stays with the hot blond chick)
-Charlie goes to law school
-Barlet and Abby retire to New Hampshire and open up the Bartlet Presidential Library (they should build one for real, I would so go to it!)

best part of the finale was at the end on Air Force One when the Bartlets were going home and he opens a gift from the late Leo McGarry and it was the napkin that Leo wrote "Bartlet for America" when he was trying to talk Bartlet into running....wow, even though I knew what it was going to be..I teared up a bit anyway

I had only 2 problems with the episode and either could have easily been prevented by a fact checker!!
-at the beginning when Bartlet and Abby are getting ready for the Inauguration and Abby is complaining about the cold and wondered who would in their right minds would plan a January inauguation outside and Bartlet answered with Jefferson, Adams and Franklin and said they got a few things right...OH MY GOD!! COME ON!!!!!
first...until the 1930s I believe (maybe even later) Inauguration Day was at the end of March!!!! not January
second...the day was decided by the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and only Franklin was even there!!!
thirdly...I am almost positive that the Constitution gave no specifics about Inauguration Day at all, hell Washington read his first Inaugural Address through an open window in NYC
-the other glaring problem was at the end of the episode the shot pans to Air Force One taking the Bartlets home from Washington to New Hampshire...but the plane is flying over the ocean! just by looking at a map you can see the plane should have been over land on its way there...to be over the Atlantic it would have had to go way out of its way. I asked my brother the pilot and he said it made no sense unless they were forced to fly over the ocean by busy air traffic...but this was Air Force One! it would not get out of other planes' way (Chief agreed)...I mean sure it was just a stock shot of the plane flying but there must be one shot over land.

but despite those easily fixable errors it was a great episode and a fitting goodbye to the show and my favorite fictional president ever, Josiah Bartlet. god I wish we could just have one like him in real life, now we don't even have one on tv to pretend he cares about the American people.
Goodbye West Wing...you will be missed.