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Basic Facts:

Episodes: 22
Runtime: 42 min.
Aspect Ratio: 4:3
Premiered: 2000

Format:

Series

Genres:

Drama

Created By:

Aaron Sorkin

Actors:

Allison Janney, Bradley Whitford, Dule Hill, Janel Moloney, John Spencer, Kathryn Joosten, Martin Sheen, Richard Schiff, Rob Lowe, Stockard Channing

Made In:

USA

Premiered at:

NBC

First sea­son of The West Wing was a great suc­cess, both with audi­ence and crit­ics. For this sea­son series has won nine Emmys, and that is still the record for most won Emmys for a sin­gle sea­son. Later sea­sons were also suc­cess­ful, and every sea­son won many awards. As for sea­son two cov­ers Bartlet’s sec­ond year in office and fol­lows till the mid­dle of the third year until the announce­ment for can­di­dacy for the sec­ond term in office.

Sea­son 2 starts right after white suprema­cists opened fire at pres­i­dent, his staff and crowd gath­ered in front of the town hall. First two episodes deal with the post shoot­ing and search for shoot­ers, and with recov­ery of the pres­i­dent and Josh fight­ing for his life. These two episodes also use flash­backs to intro­duce first cam­paign. But, cen­tral theme for the entire sea­son (and impor­tant theme for the rest of the series) is the pres­i­dents mul­ti­ple sclerosis.

This sea­son cov­ers wide leg­isla­tive array and many issues in regards with hate groups. Also we will get to see more wins for the White House stuff caused by the rise of the approval rate.

Cast and Characters

Cast was not changed, but some of the char­ac­ters will get much more screen time. Beau­ti­ful Janel Moloney is now the cast reg­u­lar and her char­ac­ter Donna is defin­i­tively among the favorites of the entire series. Also, I really liked the per­for­mance of Kathryn Joosten in role of Mrs. Land­ing­ham, long term president’s sec­re­tary. She has a major role in the end­ing of the sea­son and amaz­ing cliffhanger two part episode.

It’s really hard to find bad per­for­mance from the main series cast, and the same goes for many of the guest stars or actors in some minor roles.

Pro­duc­tion

One of the ideas for this sea­son was to include many flash­backs through­out the sea­son to bet­ter show how the pres­i­dent staff has come together and how they won the first elec­tion, but it was to expen­sive to do, and we will get to see flash­backs in the first two episodes, and later in few episodes only.

Con­clu­sion

This is one of my favorite sea­sons of the series. Even if you are not that into pol­i­tics, this series is really much more.