On The West Wing:

Listening to Dire Straits got me reading old recaps of this show, and God, was it good. From about the middle of season 1 to the end of season 2, it was brilliant, and parts of early season 3 were almost equally good. So what happened? I know the loss of Sorkin didn't help, but honestly the show was more or less in the crapper by the time he left. It still has a brilliant cast, it didn't lose many (if any) writers over season 3, so why did it stop being so good?

It's really unfortunate. This show used to be one of the best things on TV (and if you don't believe me, watch the repeats on Bravo), and honestly the couple of episodes of season 4 were close to terrible. I firmly believe that the episode after the death of Mrs Landingham was the best hour of TV I've ever seen, and I'm not exempting Joe Millionaire here.

So why do things like this happen? Why do shows jump the shark? Sometimes, it's clear why, of course. To me, MASH began jumping when Trapper and Henry left and finished when Frank left. Before that, it was a very good black comedy, after that, it was a sitcom that was basically only about Alan Alda who is in fact kind of annoying. Newradio jumped when Phil Hartmann died ad was replaced by (?) Jon Lovitz. Who the hell thought that was a good idea? The Simpsons probably jumped when Conan and a couple of other writers left (Season 4?), though it hasn't really fallen so far, I guess. There are plenty of other examples where it's clear that a show stops being good because of external factors.

Sometimes shows can survive these drastic changes. I thought the Daily Show was going to start sucking with the loss of A. Whitney Brown and Brian Unger, but really it's far better now than the early seasons.

But West Wing hadn't had any major losses in the middle of season 3, but it started sucking anyway. And it's not like they ran out of things to say; God knows there are plenty of good stories from the last two years of news.

But so it goes, I guess. I should just be grateful for my year and a half of happiness. And endless repeats on Bravo.