Socko's Review of The West Wing: The Complete First Season

Departing from movie reviewing for a few days during the holiday season, I was debating how to tackle the review of an entire television series (though at the time I was thinking of writing about Alias Season 2). It's not as easy as you might think. How do you write about a series without revealing the secrets to those who have never seen it before? It's easy to give the basic plot to a movie without revealing the details, but it's much harder to write a plot synopsis for 22 different episodes without revealing too much.

I decided that it would be best to start by reviewing the West Wing's First Season DVD set. I received the set as a Christmas gift and was anxious to burn through the series quickly. It was also an ideal choice, as I had never before watched a single episode of the West Wing, and thus wasn't able to ruin any future surprises from after the first season (since I don't have a clue what those surprises might be). That's a good thing, because from what I've heard, this is when the show was in it's prime, and not in the decline it has been the past two years.

For the seven people out there who don't know, The West Wing is a show set in...you guessed it...the White House. We follow the adventures of the President and his staff as they face both external and internal crisis on a daily basis. But while the show is based in politics, it really is all about the characters. Here's a brief run-down of those involved:

President "Jed" Bartlet (played by Martin Sheen)- He's the head honcho, the big cheese, the...you get the picture. Bartlet is a Democratic president early in his first term facing major political issues and a lackluster approval rating.

Leo McGarry (played by John Spencer)- The president's chief of staff, he's the one who really seems to be in charge on the show, even if he does have his own personal demons.

Josh Lyman (played by Bradley Whitford)- Lyman is the deputy chief of staff, and always seems to say the wrong thing at the absolute wrong time.

Toby Ziegler (played by Richard Schiff)- Ziegler is the communications director and straightman of the bunch.

Sam Seaborn (played by Rob Lowe)- Seaborn is the deputy communications director who always seems to fall for the wrong woman.

C.J. Cregg (played by Allison Janney)- Cregg is the White House press secretary. I might note that Janney won three Emmys in a row for this role.

With one great storyline after another, culminating into a shocking end to the first season, it's easy to see why the West Wing won 9 Emmys in it's first year and has won the best drama series Emmy for the past 4 years. I could easily give the set a 5 star rating if it was based on nothing but the content of the show, but this review is about the first season DVD set. Unfortunately, the DVD set doesn't live up to the standards set by the show.

The first complaint that I (and many others apparently) had was that the DVD discs are two sided. Mind you, I own approximately 35 DVD series sets, and this one of only a couple series that I have seen do this (one of the others is NBC's other drama hit, ER). Would it really kill them to go one step further and actually use single sided discs? This leads to more risk of unexpected and unintended damage by fingerprints and smudgemarks.

This leads right into my second complaint, which was that as soon as I opened the packaging of the set, I noticed smudge marks on two of the four discs. After doing some research online, I discovered that this was not an isolated event. Many consumers reported finding smudges and scratchs on brand new sets that led to skipping and freezing while viewing the show. Not only that, but when the sets were returned to the store and exchanged, the new sets had the exact same issues. I found this to be very disappointing.

The special features on the set are right in the middle of the road for DVD sets. There are some decent commentaries by Aaron Sorkin (the show's creator) and a couple behind-the-scenes features on the making of the show that are pretty good. The rest of the features are unimpressive though, with a gag reel that isn't funny, segments that just serve as filler, and deleted scenes on the final disc that would have been better served by being put on the discs that showcased those individual episodes. For a set to add an entire fourth disc of just features, and then to have the relative lack of content that this set had was altogether disappointing as well.

That being said, I went ahead and gave the set four stars out of five, with two thumbs up. The series is just too good to rate any lower than that, even with the flaws of the actual set. I'm hoping that Warner Brothers is able to correct these errors when it is time to produce the second season. To those who love the show, to those who loved the show, and to those who have never seen the show, buy this set.