The Great West Wing Rewatch: 7.7 "The Debate"
Joel: This debate episode is easily my favorite of the season and one of my top moments of the entire series. When first watching the third season, I had hoped for a full episode long debate between Bartlet and his opponent, and while we got several extended bits from the debate, it was really just a highlight reel to show Bartlet destroying his opponent. But now, four seasons later, we not only get the type of episode I was hoping to see for the debate, but this time around, the show went above and beyond what I could have hoped for. The debate episode was not only shot like a real life presidential debate, but it was actually performed live in order to make it appear as much like the real thing as possible. The show was actually performed twice, once for the east coast broadcast and once for the west coast. The version that we watched was the west coast as I don’t believe the east coast version has ever been officially released. The gimmick is cool enough that the whole t...