The West Wing Thing Dave Anthony & Josh Olson

The west wing was the world wars and you two are France. You put up such a valiant fight under brutal conditions during the sorkin years that I feel you were left war weary and spent when it came to the Welles blitz.

It was a long project and the world changed a lot since it began, no shame in getting sick of a show that you hated.

Show rewatch podcasts made by people associated with the show can be problematic because they often avoid criticisms of the show. So, show podcasts made by people not affiliated with the show can be refreshing. This podcast is not.

The title of this podcast should be, “I Hate Aaron Sorkin”. 95% of each episode is just complaining about Sorkin and his political point of view. What becomes clear early on is that they don’t put any real effort into watching the show. They don’t know characters or their roles. They don’t know the inspirations for story point, passing them off as implausible with having done any research. So when you hear from someone who did work on the show that explains that the inspiration is from a real account, it just illustrates how much work was not put into this endeavor.

The hosts will complain that the show is both not fictional enough (they can do politics however they want, so why not do it idealistically) but then also complain about not an accurate representation of people/behavior/situations. There is a cognitive dissonance that is quite jarring.

The hosts become what they complain Sorkin is, which is arrogant, preachy and elitist. I was hoping for something great and got something that amounted to a sophomoric exercise in “I’m a better writer, more in tuned political thinker, more socially conscious person than Aaron Sorkin”.

It got tired really quick. 5 episodes in, I can’t do anymore.

To start, the fact that people come on here to write reviews complaining that Josh and Dave aren’t fans of the WW and feel the need to like warn the public, “be careful, this IS NOT a WW fan podcast” makes me lol. God, WW fans are such nerds.

I loved the WWT, but my absolute favorite part is that it really does a lot to break down the myth that Sorkin is a good writer. Now, Sorkin certainly has some good projects, don’t get me wrong. I liked Moneyball and A Few Good Men is okay but Sorkin is treated like a god when the totality of his career is meh at best. If you want proof, go watch the Newsroom. I love that show because it’s insane that it was even made. It’s amazing to watch. It’s pure, fully realized, fully unhinged Sorkin. It’s amazingly terrible.

For years, I have been fighting with friends who enjoyed WW because they’d say, yes it might have its problems but Sorkin is so good and the show is so well written - it’s not well written and the story is not well crafted. It’s actually quite bad and boring. That’s one of WW’s greatest crimes (that line is a joke, it’s greatest crime is that it infected the mind of American libs, you can draw a straight like to the rise of trump from the shows ideology, and it gave us Mayor Pete - oh yeah, and all of the racism and hatred of women). If I have to be subjected to all of the racism, sexism, misogyny, etc, can’t it at least be interesting?! Josh and Dave did a really nice job of picking apart the ways in which the narrative flow of the story and the dialogue itself are garbage. It helped to hear the audio of the show as well because then you aren’t able to be distracted by the walk-and-talk crutch or charmed by the quippy dialogue. I challenge anyone who like this show to simply listen to it and not have the picture on. Turn the brightness all the way down on your screen and listen. Whenever they talk about any actual policy or any substantive issue (it’s rare) it’s complete nonsense or just racist/sexist/misogynist/American exceptionalist.