The West Wing cast reunited! Again! To help one of their sisters! Not again!

It’s at times like this, particularly now that The Newsroom‘s on the air and offering a pale political shadow of its predecessor, that we wish Aaron Sorkin was still dedicating his life to giving us more episodes of The West Wing. The show that effectively predicted that a young non-white politician would soon be the president of the United States, it’s sorely missed and with a fall season of soon-to-be-forgotten dramas lined up for most networks and a stream of “WTF were they thinking commissioning that?” already polluting NBC’s schedules, one might be wondering why no one has thought of reuniting the old gang.

I say no one, but actually they have been reuniting quite a lot of late. Bradley Whitford was doing a walk and talk somewhere near Rob Lowe over on Parks and Recreation in April. Martin Sheen, Allison Janney, Dulé Hill, Joshua Malina, Melissa Fitzgerald and William Duffy got together for a public service announcement over on Funny or Die back in May.

Is that enough though? Hell, no. We want a full deck!

Thankfully, we’ve got something pretty damn close. In an ad to get Bridget Mary McCormack* elected to the Michigan Supreme Court and to explain how US voting forms work, we have Richard Schiff, Bradley Whitford, Allison Janney, Joshua Malina, Janel Moloney, Mary McCormack, Melissa Fitzgerald, Lily Tomlin and, yes, Martin Sheen, all recreating their The West Wing characters.

And you know what? It actually feels like the real thing. Woo hoo! Now get voting and/or writing to NBC and Aaron Sorkin.

* Yes, Bridget Mary McCormack is Mary McCormack’s sister, now you ask

Author

  • Rob Buckley

    I’m Rob Buckley, a journalist who writes for UK media magazines that most people have never heard of although you might have heard me on the podcast Lockdown Land or Radio 5 Live’s Saturday Edition or Afternoon Edition. I’ve edited Dreamwatch, Sprocket and Cambridge Film Festival Daily; been technical editor for TV producers magazine Televisual; reviewed films for the short-lived newspaper Cambridge Insider; written features for the even shorter-lived newspaper Soho Independent; and was regularly sarcastic about television on the blink-and-you-missed-it “web site for urban hedonists” The Tribe. Since going freelance, I've contributed to the likes of Broadcast, Total Content + Media, Action TV, Off The Telly, Action Network, TV Scoop and The Custard TV.