Nathan has a passion for The West Wing. I don't care for it. I wish that the writers would go write some other show, maybe a comedy, because it would probably be brilliant. Besides that, I would love to see two of the characters (not the actors, I would want these specific characters) as maybe college professors. I think CJ and Toby would both be more appropriately suited to a university setting. In fact, I think WW would be much better if it dealt with the inner politics and workings of an Ivy League university. (But then, our government was created by Ivy Leaguers, Deists, but Ivy Leaguers nonetheless.)
Anyway, Bravo has been running WW marathons. I've been subjected to a lot of the show recently. Last night the episode ended with an incident at a place called Kennison State University in a city called Cedar Rapids. According to Mapquest, the only Cedar Rapids in the whole country is the one with which I am now intimately familiar. But there is no Kennison State University, anywhere.
I hate that sort of thing, which is essentially why I hate the premise of WW. Why take a real life office (the presidency), put it in real time (the present), and make up a lot of details? All these things together do not jive for me, especially as this show chooses to talk about "current issues".
It's like in seventeenth century literature when they say things like "Sir----- of ------" or "it was in ---5, I believe". For goodness sakes, either make something up that doesn't matter, or don't use it in the first place!
The idea that all contemporary fiction takes place in a universe parallel to ours but with different characters would be interesting if that's what they decided to do. However, I doubt that the final episode of WW will end with Leo McGarrety walking through a shiny port hole in the wall of the Oval Office to discover he is back in the real world working under George Bush (or whoever the president is by the time they finish the show). It would be a hell of an ending, and I would laugh, but it's just not going to happen.