"I'm Toby Ziegler. I work at the White House"

I just watched one of the saddest, most tragic things I've ever seen in my life. I just watched 7A WF 83429, the 5th Season premiere of The West Wing. The abysmal gap between greatness and hackery of the highest order was just one episode. The 4th Season ends on Commencement and 25 and opens on 7A WF 82429. All these years I've known and loved these episodes, the Sorkin episodes, 86 episodes of near unmitigated triumph of drama and comedy and humanity, art at its highest caliber. And then it committed an irrevocable sin. In the course of an episode, it transformed itself from all those things I just said into a television show. All I could see on the screen was waste. These actors, that set, those stakes, this beautifully rendered stew that was missing the one ingredient that elevated it from service to sublime. One time, a group of uncommonly talented people came together. There was a meeting of the minds and for four years these people were led to unprecedented levels of achievement by two men blessed with inspiration. One day, the men left, and the people were lost. The tragedy isn't in lack of quality but rather the chilling absence of the extraordinary.