West Wing

Did someone put something in the water that the Santos campaign workers are drinking? Everyone's hooking up! Lou (Janeane Garofalo) and the 23 year old campaign worker; two women who work on the staff; even...Josh and Donna! Yup, even they go off to Josh's hotel ro...HOLY CRAP, LOOK AT JANEL MOLONEY IN HER UNDERWEAR!!...room. Later in the day Matt and his wife get into the act, waiting for numbers to come in.

Are they sure the title of this episode isn't "Erection Day"?

Before I get into the review, a couple of questions. One, where is John Spencer? Supposedly he filmed several episodes before he passed away, but he hasn't been in it much at all.

Second, Jon Bon Jovi is not only the guest star, the episode title comes from one of his songs. Um, is Bon Jovi still a big star?

As the lovely and talented Anna Johns reported back in February, Monk will have a companion show when it returns with new episodes in July. The show is called Psych. It was previewed at the end of the Monk series finale, and is also being shown on the network's website, with information on the characters.

The show seems to be a combination of buddy comedy and mystery. Turns out that the main character, Shawn Spencer (played by James Roday, who has appeared in nothing very interesting) is a bit of a slacker. Cha, who isn't? Instead of going into the family business, being a cop, he goes from job to job and spends his evenings calling in tips to the police. One day that gets him in trouble and he ends up pretending to be a psychic to work his way through it.

Starring with Roday will be Corbin Bernsen as Spencer's father, and The West Wing's Dule Hill as Spencer's level-headed buddy. It will be good to see Hill back on a series after is disappearance from The West Wing this season. In the preview you can see a bit of his Charlie personality in this new character, but also a lot more emotion.

 

Regular readers of my West Wing reviews know that I haven't been a fan of the show the past two years. Oh, it has had a certain quality, but it's nowhere near the level that we saw in the first four seasons, when Aaron Sorkin was in charge. But I gotta tell ya: if the remaining episodes continue the quality we've seen this season, then at the end of the year I'm not only going to name this show Comeback of the Year, it's going on my Top 10 list.

Guest stars. Think of them as spiking the punch. Sure, it's bright red, tasty, and fun to drink already. But dump in that flask of rum and it gets even better. Of course, the type of rum makes all the difference. You start playing around with the cheap stuff that comes in the non-descript plastic container and costs less than a gallon of milk, then you're begging for a headache and hangover. But if you suck it up, mortgage the house a second time, and fork over the newly acquired funds for a juice-box sized bottle of the spiced stuff from an unpronounceable coastal Puerto Rican village... well, you're gonna have a good night.

That being said, five guest stars who didn't give me a headache and a hangover:

1.) Bob Saget [Himself, Entourage] - Saget guested as one of Vince's new neighbors midway through the second season. If we're to believe that Saget's part as himself was true to life, then he's a woman-loving, sex-crazed, brothel addict. As Turtle so wisely put it, nothing is more embarrassing than being "cock-blocked by Bob Saget".

It seems like such a long time ago that we had a new episode of The West Wing. We had John Spencer's death, then the Olympics. Seems like it's been forever. So when they showed the "previously on The West Wing..." recap, I was actually interested in it. Where exactly did we leave off? Oh yeah, the nuclear accident in California, Santos starting to creep up on Vinick in the polls, the aftermath of the live debate. And now we see that Santos isn't just creeping up on Vinick, he has tied him in several states (including Vinick's California), and surpassed him in others. Donna and the gang is so happy by the polls that they go crazy and start waking up everyone in the hotel. Donna goes into Josh's room, and they are so ecstatic about the numbers that they...

Get excited folks. While the number of remaining West Wing episodes is getting smaller, the cast just got a whole lot bigger. Unlike ABC and Alias, it seems that NBC actually cares about giving The West Wing a proper send-off.

Bob had some info about the final episodes a few weeks ago, but this morning a boatload of casting news was announced. Most notably, Rob Lowe will return as Sam Seaborn for the final two episodes. I know there had been a lot of speculation about Lowe's return, but now it's happening. Also set to reprise their roles:

• Mary-Louise Parker (Amy Gardner)
• Anna Deavere Smith (Nancy McNally)
• Emily Proctor (Ainsley Hayes)
• Marlee Matlin (Joey Lucas)
• Gary Cole (VP Bob Russell)
• Tim Matheson (Ex-VP John Hoynes)
• Timothy Busfield (Danny Concanon)
• Annabeth Gish (Elizabeth Bartlet Westin)

[via The Hollywood Reporter]

When The West Wing airs the "Leo's Funeral" episode in mid-April, the show will feature members of the L.A. Air Force Base Honor Guard. (Leo McGarry was in the Air Force when he was a younger.)

Other news from this article: producers have asked several people from past episodes of The West Wing (including Stockard Channing - and I'll guess Allison Smith and Joanna Gleason too) to come back to the show for Leo's funeral.

The West Wing Continuity Guide site is also reporting that Bradley Whitford recently gave a speech at American University, and he disclosed that they have filmed the funeral episode, and that not only was he a pallbearer for Leo, he was also a pallbearer for John Spencer. (Lots of spoilers at that site, by the way, so surf at your own risk!)  

Ok, we've done our lists of the hottest female TV personalities over 40 and the hottest over 50. We were happy to see that we came up with plenty of names for both lists. But would we be able to come up with five women to make hearts go thump amongst the TV ladies over 60? No problem!

For this list, I decided to consider all women over 60, not just the ones that were between 60 and 69. The reason for that was simple: can you think of any woman on the air that's over 70 or 80? I can only think of two over-70 women, both of whom are on the Honorable Mentions list. And the one over-80 woman I can think of is Betty White, whom I've never really considered to be all that sexy (covers head waiting for the tomatoes to fly in). Oh, and for those who say "Diane Keaton": I love her and think she's extremely sexy, but I still primarily think of her as a film actress, even though she's been doing a lot of TV movies lately.

So, after the jump, my list of women who would make for a hot date and get a discount at the movies at the same time. Who could beat that?

Though I could really do without this writer's ludicrous assertion at the end that "America produces the worst television in the world" (???????), he does love The West Wing enough to devote an entire column to it. What made it so great, why it hasn't been that good the past few seasons. He seems to get what the show was about, and how it managed to be both important and incredibly entertaining.

The West Wing airs its two hour finale on May 14.

[via TV Tattle]

The Hollywood Reporter states that it took a lot of convincing, but Matthew Perry has signed on as the lead in an untitled Aaron Sorkin/Thomas Schlamme drama for NBC. The project was originally called Studio 7, but that title has been scrapped. Also on board are D.L. Hughley and Steven Weber. The show is set behind the scenes of a long-running comedy sketch show (think: SNL). Matthew Perry will play the lead role of Matt Albie, a brilliant comedic writer who gets pushed around by the network. Sorkin reportedly wrote the part specifically for Perry, who did a stint on The West Wing not too long ago.

Whenever Aaron Sorkin is attached to a project, I'm automatically interested. The addition of Matthew Perry is just icing on the cake.

The cast and crew, including Martin Sheen, Bradley Whitford, Allison Janey, Janel Maloney, Kristen Chenoweth and producers John Wells, Peter Noah, and Lawrence O'Donnell, Jr. held a press conference to talk about the end of the show and the death of John Spencer.

(Lots of spoilers follow, so read at your own risk.)

OK, so we know the show is canceled, and we talked about last night's episode. Here are some more news tidbits for fans:

• Producer John Wells knows who wins the election, but he's not talking. (The election will be held on the April 2 and 9 episodes; the two hour series finale is on May 14).
• Aaron Sorkin and Tommy Schlamme will not be returning.
• Producers are talking with Rob Lowe about coming back as Sam Seaborn. It all depends on whether he has the time.

It's funny that on the day that NBC officially cancels this show, it has one of its best episodes in years.

There's a nuclear mishap in California, and President Bartlet has to figure out what to do about it, as Vinick worries about how he'll look to voters (he's a Senator from California and OK'd the building of the San Andreo reactor), Josh tells Santos to lay low, and the crisis in Kazakhstan gets worse.

NBC has made offical what many people thought would happen: they've canceled The West Wing. Actually, they canceled it before John Spencer passed away on December 16. They're just now announcing it.

They also announced that creator Aaron Sorkin and director/producer Tommy Schlamme will not be involved in the finale. Damn.

The series will end with a two hour episode on May 14. A one hour retrospective will air just before the finale. (Personally, I'm happy the show is ending. The quality has dropped off the past couple of years, and like NBC says, it's time.)

So tell us West Wing fans: how would you like the show to end?