Three to go

Sitting here all alone in the dark (literally and figuratively), I began thinking how so little time seems to exist for just about anything.

So what do I do? I polish reviews for TV.com about the last few episodes of "The West Wing." Like this one, about "Requiem," special to me because it featured a real-life goodbye to John Spencer, who played Leo McGarry, the Chief of Staff in the fictional White House and the real-life heart and soul of the show.

Here goes:


Random thoughts:

1. I was wondering if John Spencer would be in the opening credits; he was. So, all morbid thoughts aside: a casket played John Spencer playing Leo McGarry.

2. Placing the funeral before the opening credits was precisely the right move: we were cued both for the returnees and for the counterbalancing scene, Bartlet's appearance at the wake. Not only was Bartlet providing catharsis for everyone else, he was honoring his friend by making the wake more in keeping with Irish tradition. (I was disappointed there was no Harp or Jameson's to be had. In the Boston wakes of Leo McGarry's boyhood, circa 1955, there would have been fiddles, drums, and dancing.)

3. My money, these past few weeks, has been on Josh having his legs cut out from beneath him, but in those surprising-yet-inevitable moves that distinguishes the show, Santos threw his lot in with Josh, even at the expense of an old friend. It didn't hurt that Josh was right. So, in a nice narrative folding, Josh becomes COS after all, the spiritual heir to his surrogate father.

4. The politics were fine; my love for political inside baseball was (along with John Spencer) the reason I tuned in seven years ago. But one big eye-roller. When a lobbying opponent says, "Money is speech," the screenwriters have it all wrong. Lobby/campaign finance reformers claim that their opponents argue that money is speech--in fact, they're putting words (or is it dollars?) in the other guy's mouth. (Campaign finance reformers claim that restictions on money are tantamount to a restriction on speech--somewhat akin to ordering the New York Times to spend no more than five thousand dollars a year on printer's ink--but not that money is, in and of itself, speech.) This has always been the weakest part of The West Wing since Day One: purporting to represent GOP views but not doing so, really, unless said views were voiced by drop-dead gorgeous Ainsley Hayes.

5. On which subject. The younger generation takes over, right? Ainsley Hayes becomes White House Counsel. Sam Seaborn, Deputy COS. Donna, Amy, and on down the line.

6. That fellow Marino. How in the world could he be elected president of his condo board, let alone to Congress?

7. Oh, in the memory scene in the Oval Office. Was it just me, or were we being told things about Leo that made absolutely no sense in the context of what we know about Leo? Luge? Minor league baseball? Was there a season or three I missed? Leo McGarry is going down in television history with Captain Furillo and Sam McCoy. His legacy needs to be handled with extreme care.

8. Still, I'm giving the show high marks, since it passes the "crap, only 20 minutes to go" test. I'm invested enough in these people's fates to care about what happens, and the show keeps keeping me on tilt, no knowing. I spent forty minutes with my stomach in a knot, thinking Ray Goodwin would take over as Chief of Staff. I don't mind saying I feel a lot better.