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As I watch the old episodes of West Wing as they play on Bravo, two thoughts strike me. One is that the show is dramatically much improved in recent years. Older episodes focused more on the personal lives of the staff members and not the interpersonal relationships of the staff members. Older episodes, partly due to this and partly due to other factors, are also slower paced. There aren't as many running jokes and there aren't as many parts that force viewers to rewind to catch everything. Perhaps the actors have advanced in skill, or perhaps Aaron Sorkin has, or both, but the quicker pace is quite a good deal more enjoyable. West Wing was never slow, but it used to be slower.

The second thought is how well the series ties together. In the end, this may very well be a massive, epic movie. Zoe was kidnapped at the end of last season, the "man who's not only President, but also a concerned father" has just stepped down as President (temporarily), and so on. President Bartlett told (I believe) Leo that years ago he'd given Zoe a speech about exactly what would happen, and that it'd scared her and she'd cried. That speech did indeed happen in the 1999 episode I just saw, and the foresight was either dumb luck, brilliant planning, or a good grasp back into the archives to pull something new out for a season-ending cliff-hanger. Whichever it was, it worked well, and I'm tempted to say that it may be the middle of those three as Zoe's kidnapping is not the only idea which has taken its time to come to fruition or be fully realized.

The old episodes are certainly interesting. And though I'm making my own DVDs so I can clear the episodes off of my TiVo (I'm drastically far behind, and my 100+ hour TiVo is filling up), I will order the West Wing DVDs the day they are available.

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