![]() This hectoring tone reaches its nadir with The US Poet Laureate, the 16th episode of the third series, AKA the one in which Josh discovers the internet. can point them towards the righteous path of truth and justice. ![]() Their opponents, meanwhile, are cartoonishly evil figures who exist only so Bartlet and co. President Josiah “Jed” Bartlet (Martin Sheen) and his idealistic team always mean well. Partly it’s because creator Aaron Sorkin is so unashamedly sentimental about life on Capitol Hill. It’s the drama that convinced me to love American politics, that taught me about filibusters, pork-barrel projects and how fast it’s possible to walk while still holding a conversation. Not quite the smuggest show ever made, but … The West Wing. And if, as I suspect was actually the case, it was intended as a happy ending with the great man creating a lasting piece of culture, then I had to despair for humanity. If the conclusion was a cynical comment on the nature of mankind, it hadn’t been necessary to spend 70+ hours to get to that point. The conclusion, if you’ll pardon the spoiler, was that Don Draper, Mr Death Instinct, had used a moment of ultimate crisis to come up with a better jingle for Coca-Cola. ![]() In the end all I got was an attempt at pulling a Sopranos an enigmatic ending that, in fact, wasn’t at all enigmatic. I stuck with it to the end, partly because I didn’t want to admit I’d wasted my time (there were 92 episodes, ninety flipping two), but also hoping there would be a satisfying resolution. Like Saul on the road to Damascus, I had a realisation: Mad Men wasn’t the great existential drama of our age, exploring the nature of identity and our Freudian urges. This may have coincided with the third reinvention of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce Cuthbert Dibble Grub, or when that underwhelming Brit baddy got his toes chewed off by a lawn mower. After a while, I decided all this effort wasn’t worth it. ![]()
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