The West Wing Is the Only Thing That Helps Me Sleep Right Now
Almost every night, I fall asleep watching The West Wing. With everything going on in the world right now, it soothes my nerves to witness a functional (albeit fictional) White House in action, where people earnestly say things like, “The public will not forgive a President who withheld information that could have helped them or saved lives.”
But even more so than the dream of a competent, compassionate (and yes liberal) Commander in Chief, one who is trying to do what is best for all citizens even when he doesn’t succeed, my anxieties are calmed because I know how the story will play out. I'm not on the edge of my pillow, much less upright in a chair.
And while there are more than a few cliffhangers over the course of the West Wing's seven seasons, this isn’t my first binge of the Emmy-winning political drama. I doze off unworried that I might miss something because I’ve seen it all before, many times over.
It's the television equivalent of comfort food. I know exactly what I’m getting and it goes down easy.
The West Wing isn’t perfect, by any stretch of the imagination. It's a product of its time, and there's plenty to complain about, from Aaron Sorkin's sometimes sexist depiction of women to the show's almost entirely white cast. I'm not thrilled about President Bartlet's continued influence on the Democratic party, despite being a fictional president (and having politics that have gone a bit stale over the past two decades). But right now, it's helping me sleep when few other things are.
I know which episodes to skip to better ease into a REM cycle, bypassing scenes with gun shots or sirens because I know they might wake me up, and steering clear of storylines that frustrate me (that post-9/11 bottle episode about terrorism comes to mind), and characters I don't particularly like (here's looking at you Mandy).
And I rarely ever make it to the series finale. No offense to Jimmy Smits, or Alan Alda, but once I’m well into the season seven Santos storylines, I roll it back, and start again from the beginning.
Even before the coronavirus pandemic consumed our every conversation, the concept of the "fall asleep show" was emerging, born of a new streaming economy.
Some people tune in to The Office as they drift off. Others opt for Gilmore Girls, or Parks and Recreation, all long-running, episodic shows that exist in a far less scary version of our own world. It helps that they're on Netflix... at least for the time being. These shows don't get your heart racing and they don't make you think too hard. And in this current climate that's as good as a dose of melatonin.
I'm still watching plenty of other shows right now; it's in part how I've chosen to fill these quarantine days. But right before I close my eyes, I cue up my version of a TV lullaby: the one with a soaring melody and a presidential fantasy.
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