THE WEST WING
RIESE, EDITOR
It was maybe a few months after George W. Bush was elected for his second term when I came home from work and found my roommate Krista crying on her bed and eating rice pudding from the tub with the tiny television on. On the screen I saw some sort of surprisingly soft-lensed political event. Presidential colors. I asked her what was wrong and she wailed, he’s so perfect, he’s just so perfect, why can’t we have a president like him?
Like who?
Jed Bartlet. (dramatic pause) On The West Wing.
I thought, “What?! You’re crying over an inauguration on a television show?” but a few months later when I’d caught up to that scene I cried, too. I think every time someone I respect is either sobbing or cracking up over a teevee show, I check it out. Krista owned some of the discs, or her friend did, and she’d been re-watching the first five seasons (the last two had yet to air) in some sort of post-2004-election-therapy cleansing. Also in 2005, Bravo had West Wing Mondays and I was still young enough then to feel watching television was an acceptable way to spend an entire afternoon.
I had a job then where I was mostly unsupervised and when we were busy, I was busy, and when we weren’t, I was watching The West Wing on DVD. In addition to the DVDs we owned, at this point Krista and I both had 3-disc Netflix plans as well. They never seemed to come fast enough.
By all means, the show looked — and by “looked” I mean literally how it looked on the screen for a newbie — really boring. But it wasn’t. It’s government porn. It’s everything you’d ever wanted government to be, and with these brilliant sharp clever evolving characters, too, including kickass women CJ Cregg (Allison Janey) and Abigail Bartlet (Stockard Channing).
Jed Bartlet is at once passionately religious/spiritual as well as politically liberal and entirely logical. He’s memorized the Bible, so he can go head-to-head with Conservative Bible-Beaters and win every time. His idea of a fun secret field trip involves a used bookstore. He was just so JUST, so fair, so smart — and when Obama ran for President, I voted for Obama partially because I voted for Bartlet. Then oddly the 2008 election almost exactly mirrored the contest between Barlet’s successor, Matthew Santos (Jimmy Smits), and Arnold Vinick (Alan Alda). It turns out during the summer of 2004, when the writers were constructing Santos’ character, “they modelled him in part on a young Illinois politician – not yet even a US senator – by the name of Barack Obama.” During the 2008 campaign there was a lot of chatter about West Wing parallels — Aaron Sorkin constructed a read-out of the “imaginary meeting” between Obama and Jed Bartlet. The Guardian UK compared Obama’s White House to Barlet’s. Ultimately the difference between Obama’s White House and Bartlet’s was probably that Bartlet’s wasn’t controlled by lobbyists and money.
Also! There’s a rotating roster of impressive guest/reoccurring roles for actresses you love like Kristin Chenoweth, Mary McCormack, Mary Louise Parker, Lily Tomlin, Anna Deavere Smith, Jorja Fox, Marlee Matlin, Janeane Garafalo, Elizabeth Moss, and Evan Rachel Wood Bisexual.
The first time the song Ave Maria struck me as something I needed in my earbuds a lot was when I heard it on The West Wing. When I’d been writing for too long and my brain hurt, I’d turn out all the lights and lie on my bed and listen to Ave Maria over and over until time slowed down and my limbs got cold. Then I could sit back down, turn on Firefox, go to my Google Home Page, see the CNN headlines, and remember that George W. Bush is president, not Josiah Bartlett, and then I’d go stick my head in the oven.
Watch this and then watch all seven seasons on DVD.
DARIA
LINDSAY, WRITER
I moved to Atlanta for a summer less than a week after graduating college. Packing was a blur, having to move everything from university flat to home to new room in the ATL, but I made sure to bring the essentials: laptop, bottle opener, tank tops because that is all you can wear there because of the heat, a couple of travel guides for urban exploration and summer roadtripping, and, of course, a bootleg copy of the complete series of Daria on DVD, a.k.a. the Best Graduation Gift Ever. During the week, I would come home from the office knackered and usually a humid, sweaty mess and look forward to winding down with my favorite ’90s TV heroine and the other denizens of Lawndale.
Daria has always been a summer-viewing show for me for some reason. This probably has a lot to do with the nostalgia effect — summer is an explosion of nostalgia. Freeze pops, Third Eye Blind, summer romances, fireworks. All the things that bring you back to being young and stupid and deliriously happy. If there’s a show that takes me back to that kind of blue-tongued, sunburnt bliss, Daria is it.
The ’90s, in particular, were a great time to be a girl, too — ‘Girl Power’ may have been a marketing ploy for EMI to sell albums, but I feel like then more than now, girls & young women had a lot of visible role models and figures we could relate to, especially in television. We had Clarissa Darling, Alex Mack, Shelby Woo. Everyone on My So-Called Life (a show that gives me similar feelings). Lisa Fucking Simpson. Lori Beth Denberg, Amanda Bynes and Alisa Reyes had all the best sketches on All That. Buffy and Willow, of course. And Xena and Gabrielle too, for your earliest dose of Ho Yay. And then there was Daria Morgendorffer, in all her sarcastic, filterless, combat-booted glory. Her wit may be as biting as a winter storm, but in watching the show, I will always find an invincible summer.
Get the complete series on Amazon.
LA INK
CRYSTAL, MUSIC EDITOR
As far as I’m aware, LA Ink never aired in Australia. I stumbled across the series accidentally while looking for The L Word in the ‘alternative’ section of my local DVD store.
While I generally loathe reality tv shows that are not based on cooking challenges, I was working on a concept for my next tattoo and thought a reality series about an LA tattoo parlour might provide some inspiration. It didn’t, but it did give me weeks of quality entertainment. LA Ink definitely falls into the ‘so bad it’s good’ category, there is so! much! drama! Kat Von D and her shop manager Pixie are hot messes and (unintentionally) hilarious, by the second season I had developed a strong sympathy-based emotional investment in the tattoo artists that had to deal with them on daily basis.
Get Season One, Season Two, Season Three, Season Four, Season Five or Season Six on Amazon.
SIX FEET UNDER
KATRINA, WRITER
I want to explain to you how much I love Six Feet Under in words, but it’s been a long day, and maybe we could just settle in bed and watch half a season tonight instead? To say that Six Feet Under is a show about a family of undertakers isn’t inaccurate; it’s just not the whole story. I guess alternatively you can say that it’s a show about what it means to be human. Neither description is particularly informative, which is why, you see, I think you should just watch the whole series instead.
Six Feet Under is a show that forces you to confront mortality within the first few minutes of every episode, which says a lot about the gravity of what the series can make you feel. Because, yeah, the show centers around a family – the Fisher family, – but it’s also about what it means to be in a family. The loyalty, the obligations, the struggles and breakdowns and the absolutely heartbreaking, frustrating, manic kind of love that you experience when you realize that people who have been around you your whole life are complete strangers. It just talks about being fucking crazy, or feeling fucking crazy, or going fucking crazy — quietly — while being surrounded by other crazy people all trying to be loved. When main characters die, they remain on the show, the same way that loved ones never truly leave your mind.
It’s catharsis. It’s something to live and hide inside of. And I’m telling you, I think this show is actually perfect. It’s beautiful. It’s literature.
You have to see the series the whole way through, if for nothing else but to watch it end. By the time the final episode of the fifth season rolls around, every moment is so developed that the story and the experience become so devastatingly meaningful, dammit. It is the greatest finale because it’s the end of a journey of lifetimes. You get to say goodbye to everyone. You get to see them to their very end. Jennifer Beals loves it. And you know she’s always right.
Okay, wait, here. Watch this clip of the final scene of the series and think about it some more. I’m crying here. Crying.
Get the complete series on Amazon.
GREY’S ANATOMY
BRITTANI, WRITER
My freshman year of college I was introduced to a lot of things. Notably, frozen yogurt, the hours 3-5 a.m. and Grey’s Anatomy. Prior to my stay in Bingham Hall, I had not seen a single episode of the medical drama. One of my suitemates had the first two seasons on DVD and managed to get the four remaining girls hooked. The last holdout, I popped the omnipresent DVD into the player during a moment of weakness. I was hooked…we all were. We watched episodes in the awkward gaps between lectures, during classes we deemed “canceled” and any time procrastination called (which, for me, was all the time). No matter the day, no matter the hour, there was an 83% chance someone would be in our common room catching up on the first two seasons. Season 3 premiered that fall and every Thursday night our common room was packed bargain poster to mini-fridge with girls babbling over McDreamy and guys whose presence I’m unsure how to explain. I regularly camped out 30 minutes in advance to ensure I got a spot on the futon.
I never questioned my allegiance to the series until Season 5 when more than a dozen of my friends joined me around a television in Myrtle Beach. Foregoing our constant quest for the ever-allusive Myrtle Points (awarded for debaucherous and/or lecherous activities) in lieu of the season finale was when I realized we were all addicted to what was becoming an increasingly shitty show. I continued to watch anyway and felt vindicated when during Commencement Weekend and flanked by two of my freshman year suite-mates, I saw Jessica Capshaw. She waved back at me and offered her congratulations. What could have been a cute full circle kind of moment was sullied by me thinking how hot she was.
Get Season One, Season Two, Season Three, Season Four, Season Five or Season Six on Amazon.
