Television: 'The West Wing: Inauguration - Over There' (2003) (Episode 4x14)

This is a joyous episode of 'The West Wing', as if Aaron Sorkin had finally put all the baggage of the election storyline in the past, and focussed on just making the best half-season of television possible before his departure. All the favourite supporting characters are pulled back in, Bartlet is indeed allowed to be Bartlet, Josh and Donna are getting lots of screen time, and my favourite character of Will Bailey is here, punching above his weight for just half a season and putting the departed Sam Seaborn into an almost instant forgotten limbo. Sam who? Rob Lowe who? It's Joshua Malina all the way to the end now, people! It must have been nice to not have Rob Lowe (reportedly) agitating for more screen time constantly. Oh, and Danny and Zoey are back too. It's almost as if season one is picking up all over again.

One of the continuing natural storylines of the series was that of Bartlet allowing himself to do the right thing, despite a lifetime of holding himself in due to the restrictions of his offices and of looking to the future. That was all the limitation we ever really needed in the show, with the rotten MS storyline being an extremely forced method to make re-election look like something less than an absolutely certainty. The daddy issues hampering him in the campaign a bit better, though. Here, we get the ultimate version of the Bartlet dilemma, where the standard policy of only intervening in overseas conflicts when Americans are endangered finally comes to a crunch, and needling from the newly arrived Will and some influencing from Laurel and Hardy finally push him into following his conscience. Thus, we get the best of Bartlet and the best of Will, against the backdrop of an inauguration and several balls, concluding in the formalization of Will's continuing role in the West Wing. It's classical, and there can never be too much of Stan and Ollie.

In other parts of the episode, we get things for absolutely everyone to do. CJ gets to bounce off of the returned Danny, Danny gets to bounce off absolutely everyone delightfully when he's in the party to get a wrongfully shamed Donna out of her apartment and into the balls, Toby and Josh get several wonderful moments of just hanging around and being brilliant, and Charlie gets to assert his love for Zoey Bartlet before realising the battle ahead of him. Everyone gets something to do. Everyone! Well, everyone except Sam Seaborn, who is inexplicably absent and promoted to non-existence at the end.

Ultimately, this could be analysed to death, but the secret to the wonder of this episode is that it's plainly joyous, and increasingly so as the episode goes on. The right thing was going to be done, we all knew it was going be done, and then it was. Tears of joy were shed. Brilliant, and if you weren't already in love with Donna, then here is occasion eighty-four for that to happen. All hail Janel Moloney.

O.