The West Wing Season That Never Was

The West Wing was one of the very best TV shows ever made.  It took a real­is­tic, yet opti­mistic look at Amer­i­can pol­i­tics, and brought the ‘walk ’n talk’ to unpar­al­leled heights of excel­lence.

When The West Wing end­ed after 7 sea­sons, I was very sad to see a show of such amaz­ing cal­iber go off the air.  Espe­cial­ly since I felt that it end­ed pre­ma­ture­ly.  There was at least one more sea­son of qual­i­ty sto­ries that could be told.  So, to both hon­or the series and to offer a smidgen of hope that it can be reborn, I present the West Wing sea­son-that-nev­er-was:

Before I get into the syn­op­sis, let me say when I feel this sea­son needs to take place.  Sure, we could look into the new San­tos admin­is­tra­tion, but I feel that there was plen­ty of untapped poten­tial in the orig­i­nal cast, whom, in my opin­ion, is the great­est ensem­ble ever to grace the small screen.  So, this sea­son-that-nev­er-was will take place dur­ing the clas­sic years of the Bart­let admin­is­tra­tion.  The per­fect place would be when cre­ator Aaron Sorkin left after sea­son 4, espe­cial­ly since sea­son 5 is gen­er­al­ly con­sid­ered to blow.

I wrote some syn­op­sizes to many pos­si­ble episode ideas.  Here are some of them:

1. Zoey, the President’s daugh­ter, has been cap­tured by ter­ror­ists.  Pres­i­dent Bart­let goes under­cov­er to res­cue her, but is dis­cov­ered by the cell.  Now he and the ter­ror­ist leader must bat­tle it out in a caged knife-fight in which there could only be ONE sur­vivor.  To make mat­ters even more intense, if the Pres­i­dent los­es, the ter­ror­ist becomes the new leader of the free world!

2. 

   Pres­i­dent Bartlet’s moth­er-in-law is com­ing to vis­it, and we all know that means trou­ble!  It seems that Abbey’s moth­er always thought of the Pres­i­dent as a good-for-noth­ing slug-about and that her daugh­ter could’ve done bet­ter – no mat­ter what Pres­i­dent Bart­let does to please her.  It’s just the President’s luck when the coun­try is placed in a nation­al cri­sis with an impend­ing trans­porta­tion strike.  To make mat­ters worse, his moth­er-in-law took the bus to get to the White House, and won’t be leav­ing until the mess is sort­ed out!

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