The Great West Wing Rewatch: 5.14 "An Khe"

Joel: Most people can agree that the fifth season of The West Wing is one of, if not the weakest season of the series. And most of the credit/blame goes to the fact that it’s the first season without Sorkin outlining and writing most of the episodes every year. But nobody really takes the time to look into exactly where the replacement writers went wrong trying to emulate Sorkin. Now halfway through the first Sorkin free season I think that one of the biggest issues here is that the fifth season is relying far too much on military and foreign power stories to try and capture the dramatic feel. It seems that every other episode, this one included is about Bartlet having to address something that could easily turn into a full blown war if not handled very carefully. This episode dealt with a spy plane crashing into North Korea and trying to get the men out safely. An earlier episode dealt with a new country testing nuclear weapons.
I’m not saying that these aren’t important issues, or things that don’t make sense to address in a show about the West Wing, because neither of those things is true, but it’s been the go to method of upping the dramatic stakes this whole season, constant reminders that the people in these positions could start a war if things didn’t go exactly as planned. You start to get numb to it.
There should be military related storylines in The West Wing, it’s one of the biggest parts of the president’s job. But there needs to be a balance here. There hasn’t been anything like the butterball turkey storylines, or the big block of cheese episodes, in Season five, and it’s what’s missing that makes this season feel so gloomy and dower as a whole.

Chris: I've got to agree with Joel on this one, this is yet another episode from this season where they're trying to raise the global political drama stakes from week to week and it reached the point where we don't seem to care because ultimately, everything will be settled by the end of the episode and the next episode will be as if the previous never happened. Yes, we're a few episodes removed from a multi-episode story arch with Josh being in the doghouse and the president trying to get his groove back (again) but now it feels like something else needs to happen and last a while. I'm not saying nothing big has happened because that's all that's happened but the last couple episodes have lost track of the big picture within the White House staff drama. On a bigger scale, this is the part where it seems like anything that can happen has happened to the Bartlet Administration.

A good president has strong opinions over his presidential portrait. So much so that he puts it off for what seems like his entire second term.