The West Wing Season That Never Was

 The West Wing Season That Never Was

West Wing

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!

 

  1. Mother In Law
    Need­less to say, she’ll have a rolling pin with her at all times…

    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!

  1. While clear­ing out a long-aban­doned room of the White House, Char­lie dis­cov­ers a mag­i­cal mir­ror that is a por­tal to anoth­er dimen­sion!  Char­lie gets sucked into the mir­ror, and out comes a mus­ta­chioed Char­lie dop­pel­ganger.  Nobody seems to sus­pect any­thing except for CJ, but can she fig­ure out what hap­pened before the red moon ris­es and Char­lie is trapped forever?

 

  1. FrankensteinIt turns out that the leg­end of Frankenstein’s mon­ster is true, and that Thomas Jef­fer­son trans­port­ed the slum­ber­ing beast in the base­ment of the White House as a sci­en­tif­ic curios­i­ty.  Now the mon­ster has awak­ened and has cap­tured any­one who dares go down there.  It turns out that there are a lot of brave peo­ple in the white house, as only the Pres­i­dent and Mar­garet remain free.  Can they fig­ure out a way to put the mon­ster back to sleep?

 

  1. In a very spe­cial episode, Toby is dis­cov­ered to be addict­ed to opi­um!  His friends in the West Wing band togeth­er to get him off the drug, but is their inter­ven­tion enough, or will Toby’s way with words con­vince them to join him in his sin­ful drug den?

 

  1. Here we go again!  The Pres­i­dent hit his head while reach­ing for a pen under his desk, and caught a bad case of amne­sia!  It’s up to the West-Wingers to help him regain his mem­o­ry before the State of the Union lat­er that night, and keep news of his sit­u­a­tion from falling into the hands of Rex Nut­ley, a news­pa­per reporter who has had it in for the Pres­i­dent ever since Bart­let alleged­ly ran over his dog.

 

  1. A nuclear bomb is about to go off in the white house, and due to a gas leak that knocked every­one else out, only Josh can dis­arm it!  The only prob­lem is that his unique brand of wit is use­less against the auto­mat­ed timer.  Josh needs to find anoth­er way of sav­ing the DC area against total destruction!

 

  1. Muppet Babies
    An artist’s ren­der­ing of the West Wing crew as toddlers…

    At the West Wing’s annu­al sci­ence fair, Dr. Farfenhosen’s aging device goes hay­wire, and turns the West Wing staff into a bunch of tod­dlers!  Now the Pres­i­dent and Char­lie have to keep those ram­bunc­tious ras­cals under con­trol until a cure can be found – and keep an eye out for a kid­nap­per who has been mak­ing the rounds in their area.  They thought run­ning a coun­try is tough!

 

  1. Leo is alone again on Christ­mas and con­tem­plates sui­cide.  An angel appears and shows Leo what life would be like if Pres­i­dent Bart­let were nev­er born.  Leo is con­fused until he learns that he is just a char­ac­ter in one of Josh’s spicy-food-induced dreams.

 

  1. Possum
    The trai­tor!

    There is a trai­tor in the West Wing!  Very impor­tant doc­u­ments of nation­al secu­ri­ty have dis­ap­peared, and Leo is on the case to find out who sold out his coun­try.  He even­tu­al­ly nar­rows his list of sus­pects to Josh, Don­na, CJ and the new­ly intro­duced West Wing char­ac­ter, Boris.  Leo decides not to take any more chances and puts them all in front of a fir­ing squad, until it is dis­cov­ered that Boris’ pet opos­sum was steal­ing the papers and using them to make her nest.

 

  1. Sea­son Finale: The ter­ror­ist leader that kid­napped Zoey is back, and out for revenge!  He’s also become an unstop­pable cyborg, and this time the Pres­i­dent can’t pos­si­bly stop him alone!  The West Wingers must put aside the pet­ty dif­fer­ences that have recent­ly torn them apart, and band togeth­er to stop this un-Amer­i­can killing machine!

 

I have more ideas where these come from, but to find out what they are, you’ll have to see them on TV.  So, if any­one on the now defunct West Wing is read­ing this blog – call me.  Let’s work some­thing out.  Okay.  What’s next?

One thought on “The West Wing Season That Never Was

  1. Did you stop mak­ing the gi joe com­ic or is there more coming?

    Reply

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