I am watching "The West Wing" from beginning to end for probably the sixth or seventh time. When the series first ran, I hated it. But I got hooked the season that Zoe got kidnapped and now, I think that, taken as a whole, it's probably as good as American network television ever got or likely ever will get. It took me a while to get past the frequent gaffes (there is no "Mural Room"; that room is based on the Diplomatic Reception Room and it's really on the south side of the building on the ground floor; it's also oval shaped; people just don't wander into and out of the White House, so the notion that anyone, Congressperson, Senator, or staffer, could just pop into a West Wing office unannounced is absurd) and cliches (the times I was inside the West Wing, I never noticed senior staff running madly around the halls talking to one another), I came to appreciate the quality of most of the writing. Particularly as the series aged, I came to admire how the writers captured the "feel" of Inside-the-Beltway Washington. I thought the final season, setting the excitement of the campaign off against how the White House became increasingly sidelined, was brilliant.
Another thing that amazes me about the series is how prescient it is in so many respects. It's as though the writers had been gifted with glimpses of the Obama years. In one of the episodes from about the middle of the first season, Toby goes off on a rant about how their poll numbers are falling, they can't do anything right, and how he doesn't want to be part of the gang that couldn't shoot straight. Ever wonder how many people in the West Wing today feel exactly that way?