Review: 'The West Wing' reunion brings the fight to Trump. And it doesn't even name him
picked up two Emmys for “Mom.” But people who might not bother with a Robert Plant or Chuck D solo show will stand in line for days in acid rain to score tickets to a Led Zeppelin or a Public Enemy reunion. And there are surely those who get excited by the prospect of seeing the cast of “Friends” virtually reunited —
also intended for HBO Max but COVID-delayed — because the series means something to them that Jennifer Aniston’sor Lisa Kudrow’s “The Comeback” or Courteney Cox’s “Cougar Town,” all fine in their own right, do not. Though I am well-disposed, with reservations, to Sorkin’s habitual high-mindedness and his highly wrought, even overwrought bantering dialogue — which I once described as bearing “the same relation to actual human speech as a Globetrotters routine does to professional basketball,” and thank you, history, for the opportunity to repeat that — I was never the world’s biggest “West Wing” fan.
Like all of Sorkin’s television shows, including his TV-about-TV trilogy “Sports Night,” “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” and” “The West Wing” is a show about people who love their jobs, and are good at them, set in a nontoxic workplace overseen by the world’s best boss. Premiering in the twilight of the Clinton administration and continuing its alternate history through much of the Bush II years, it is a mash note to late nights and takeout pizza in the service of democracy.
The unobtrusive naturalism of Sorkin’s series can sometimes war with his preference for text over subtext and love of speechifying. But the theatricality of this special staging, the suggestive spareness of the decor — door frames give the actors something to “walk and talk” through — along with the ornate empty theater and the pinpoint lighting give the performance a ceremonial feeling that supports such a direct approach and a ritual energy suitable to the subject. It’s summed up by C.J.
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