West Wing 7.22: "Tomorrow"

Written by John Wells
Directed by Christopher Misiano


I feel for John Wells, because this was a no-win situation. I honestly think that Aaron Sorkin would have found it very difficult to end the series in a way that would make everyone happy, especially given the expectations raised by the promotion for the episode. In the end, I think he did about as well as one could reasonably expect, even if a lot of what people wanted couldn’t be done.

The business end of the episode required that Bartlet be at the center of the drama. It was hard to see the man who was so vital and eager in the early seasons reduced to a shadow of his former self, yet he carried out his final hours in office with dignity. Here is where I think a lot of fans will take issue. This was a slow, sober look at the inauguration, and Bartlet (and the episode) was very deliberate throughout. It wasn’t the kinetic style that marked the early seasons, that’s for sure.

Yet how else could they do it? I liked the banter between Santos and his First Lady, because it brought it down to the human level. Who doesn’t banter during moments of high stress? And in keeping with the “West Wing” tradition, we didn’t hear Santos’ speech; rather, we saw how the day’s events were affecting everyone else in the old regime. (Still, who didn’t love that Aaron Sorkin cameo?)

I was a little annoyed, to be honest, with the continued focus on CJ. That was covered in the previous episode, and I thought it was covered more than sufficiently. I was hoping for a little more Josh time. For me, the series was about his journey, especially given that his work on the Santos campaign quickly took priority away from the last months of the Bartlet administration. So it was annoying to see him in such a minor role.

Similarly, while I liked the father/son moment between Bartlet and Charlie, a relationship sorely missed in recent seasons, I wish that there had been a little more, especially with regards to Charlie and Zoey. I’ve always liked the idea of those crazy kids getting together, and it looked like that was the intention. Maybe they couldn’t get the actress for the finale, but it was a missed opportunity for closure.

I think that will be the one thing most people will complain about. Too much was left to assumption. OK, so Josh and Donna are clearly a couple, so apparently Josh answered Donna’s challenge in a favorable way. But why should the audience have to assume it? There was no closure at all for Will and Kate, though I’m not so concerned about that.

Not everything has to be answered, of course, because this is dramatization of “real life”. To invoke the “Babylon 5” analogy, this is not unlike “Objects at Rest”, the penultimate episode of that series. That episode left a few things up in the air, but there was enough contextual information from previous episodes to fill in the blanks. But “Babylon 5” had its “Sleeping in Light”, which hit the emotional high notes far more effectively, because plot points didn’t need to be handled in the same hour as the farewell.

That brings me to the final annoyance. I found the idea of Toby’s pardon as Bartlet’s final act in office a neatly poetic moment. That said, if it was the only item left on the agenda, it would have been intrusive, since Toby wasn’t around at all for the rest of the hour. We know the fences are mended within three years or so, but is that enough? It was made a bit worse by the needless inclusion of that train accident in New England. It wasted time better spent on character closure.

Lest anyone think that this episode did nothing but annoy me, I must point out that these were minor offenses from my point of view. The bulk of the episode struck exactly the right tone. I just think there will be a laundry list from nearly every fan of what was missing and what they wished could have been there, and I had one of my own.

I’m glad the final scene was a Bartlet scene, and while I wish Josh was more prominent, who could resist the final Santos scene, where he asks, “What’s next?” Talk about a nice touch! Sam was underused, leaving his character with little or no closure, but his very presence accomplished enough in my book. There was no bookending flash-forward, but as soon as the episode began, I realized that it would have been out of context. And as much as the Bartlet/Charlie and Josh/CJ scenes kept a lump in my throat, that final hit with “Bartlet for America” nearly did me in.

This is the part where I would usually launch into a discussion about the season and series as a whole, but I’m doing things a little differently moving forward. The “West Wing” post-mortem/requiem will be the main focus of a special edition of “Dispatches from Tuzenor”, a new podcast started as an expansion to the written reviews conducted every season, so I invite anyone interested to drop by the archive site (www.entil2001.com) and click on the link. (It’s also available on iTunes.) I hope to have this particular episode finished at the end of the month.

Writing: 2/2
Acting: 2/2
Direction: 2/2
Style: 2/4

Final Rating: 8/10

(Season 7 Final Average: 7.7)