What's next?

If you asked me to name my favourite band, or movie, or book, or colour, or pretty much anything, I'd hem and haw before giving a cop-out answer. The only exceptions are for breakfast cereal (white frosted Mini-Wheats) and television (The West Wing, unless I was trying to relate to you at a more populist level, in which case probably The Office).

I can't say for a fact that The West Wing is the greatest show in television history. I can say for a fact that it is easily the best show I've seen, and easily my favourite. Aaron Sorkin's excellent dialogue, the amazing ability of the cast, and a subject that some find boring but I most definitely do not all combine to create a perfect storm of awesomeness.

A group of people have started watching The West Wing from the very beginning and giving their thoughts on it. This isn't the first website I've come across along these lines (that would be the aptly-named Blogging The West Wing, nor is it the best (also Blogging The West Wing), but it does have one significant advantage - it's just started, so it's still being updated, whereas BTWW dropped off after about a dozen episodes.

The reviews at the newer site are definitely a little light on the "review" and a little heavy on the "summary", but hopefully that will improve over time. I considered taking part in the experiment, but not having the time to give to this pursuit at the moment (more on that below) ultimately forced me to bow out.

However, they're starting with the first episode, so I will take this opportunity to mention why I think The West Wing has the best pilot episode of any television show, ever.

It does what any good drama pilot should do - introduce us to the show, introduce us to the main characters, give us a couple of plot lines that will last longer than the episode. It does all these without being obvious about what it is doing.

It has plenty of opportunities to show that this show will be funnier than your average TV drama - among them, Leo's call to the New York Times crossword editor, "The President, riding his bike while on vacation in Jackson Hole, came to a sudden arboreal stop", and Toby using the word "flummox".

It shows just how perfect everybody is for their role - from Martin Sheen to John Spencer to Rob Lowe - and how willing they were to put egos aside to make a great show (apparently this was a big deal at the time).

And I firmly believe that there will never be a single character debut anywhere near as good as the first appearance of President Bartlet. You can see it in this clip (start around 3:10 if you're in a hurry, otherwise the whole thing's worth watching, as is the whole episode and, well, the whole series).

----------------------

"What's next?" is the closest thing The West Wing had to a catchphrase - it's what the President would ask whenever he was ready to move onto something else.

But what's next for this blog? I'll tell you.

As you can tell, I haven't exactly been able to keep up with the twice-a-week update schedule I was hoping for over the summer. Work and other extracurricular circumstances have left me with neither the time nor the motivation to update this more than every five days or so. That's not going to change.

That said, I am going to make a special appearance here in a couple of days. Hopefully.

You wouldn't know it from the lack of publicity around here, but the Gold Cup - that's the North American soccer championship, held every odd-numbered year - is taking place. Canada pulled off a minor upset in their opener, defeating the Jamaicans 1-0. Our next game is Tuesday night against El Salvador, and I'll be proving true the adage that "it's fun to liveblog anything" by liveblogging Canada vs. El Salvador. So check back here Tuesday night if you're interested in that.

--Ryan