My Mom and Me and The West Wing
By Gracie Larsen-Anderson
“Joy cometh in the morning, scripture tells us. I hope so. I don’t know if life would be worth living if it didn’t…” President Josiah Bartlet (a.k.a. Martin Sheen)
This is a quote from The West Wing, one of the greatest US TV shows of all time.
The West Wing is a political drama, but it’s often called a fantasy because of the positive relationships it presents between not only different political parties but members of the same party working in the White House. My take: it’s a fictional TV show; try to suspend some disbelief. The show centres on the staff who work in the West Wing during the presidency of Josiah Bartlet (played by Martin Sheen) and takes place in the late 90s blurring into the early 2000s. Part of what lends the show its esteem are the scripts, written in the notoriously witty style of designated-good-at-film-stuff Aaron Sorkin.
I first started watching the West Wing with my parents when I was 14-years-old. I would come downstairs after finishing any schoolwork I had and the pair of them would be in the living room mid-way through an episode. My dad would be laid out on the couch, in control of the remote, and my mom would have her knees pulled up to her chest in this white cushioned chair without arms to keep her from falling asleep (she can do this anywhere, at any time, it is both a blessing and a curse). I would roll my eyes and sigh: “Not the West Wing again.” And my dad would smile, and my mom would laugh, and the tone of the whole exchange can be summarised in four words: “Suck it up, buttercup.” I did not hold the power (i.e., remote control) and so, I would squeeze onto the edge of the couch and resign myself to the evening.
Although my first experiences with the West Wing were involuntary, there is something about it that captures you. By the time I was seventeen I would watch the show on my own, by choice (shocking, I know). I would watch episodes with them almost every evening as well, but found myself searching for the parts and characters that felt personally relevant.
I was a young woman, and as anyone who’s been there can tell you, that’s a difficult experience to navigate. I was drawn to the women in the show and the way they balanced a human awkwardness with impressive competency and easy femininity. Their quick wit and generally positive outlooks were something I aspired to. My observation of these characters when watching the show with my parents made it easy to draw comparisons between them and my mother.
Mine is a mother of 6 children, she’s been a lawyer for over forty years, has passed the Bar Exam in two states and DC, goes to the gym every morning , and, perhaps most impressively, is a joy to know whether you’re related to her or not.
There’s a character on the West Wing called CJ Cregg (Allison Janney) and on the outside she doesn’t seem much like my mother at all. She’s press secretary to the President. She remains unmarried for almost the entire duration of the show. And she’s about as liberal as they come. My mother, a career lawyer who’s been married at least as long as I’ve known her and definitely leans more conservative could not be more different, right? Wrong.
It comes down to poise and humour and sense of comfortability in one’s own skin which Allison Janney captures in her performance, but my mom captures in her life. I have never observed my mom living her life in a way that’s meant to impress or serve anyone else.
But she isn’t aloof or distant or mightier-than-thou; she’s down-to-earth and silly and genuine. In the same way that Cregg can go from lip-syncing Ronny Jordan to having the White House press room wrapped around her finger, my mom can pivot from off-key singing to the Beach Boys in our kitchen to bringing people who think they know more and know better than her around to her way of thinking with a few carefully placed words.
In the words of Charlie Young (Dulé Hill), “You’re a smart, savvy woman who could easily consider world domination for a next career move.” Who wouldn’t want to emulate that?
2024 marks the 25th anniversary of the West Wing, and February of next year will mark five years since my dad’s death.
The West Wing has been about a lot of things for me but in my mind, it starts and ends with family. I watch this show all the time, I talk about it even more (ask my flatmates), and I see my dad in every Shakespeare reference, in every look of disbelief, in every purposeful pause. But there was a while there where I couldn’t watch a single episode without bursting into tears.I remember a few months after he passed away, my mom and I decided to watch something together and out of habit we settled on the West Wing. We’ve seen it enough times that we didn’t fuss too much about doing anything in order and just decided to play the next episode that popped up on the screen.
My mom and I got about ten minutes in. We happened to stumble across the episode where (SPOILER ALERT!) Leo McGarry (John Spencer), the President’s Chief of Staff, dies from a heart attack. My mother, who had just lost her husband, and I, who had just lost my dad, turned the TV off, had a good cry, and, if my memory holds, ate some chocolate.I couldn’t watch any of it for a long time after that. Every episode seemed to remind me that even in fiction death finds you. To this day, I’m unsure if my mom ever watches the West Wing without me. Whether that’s because of the sad reminder or it’s because she hasn’t figured out how to navigate beyond Netflix on our television is beyond me.
But I found my way back and a lot of my reunion with the West Wing has to do with my mom. It was something that after a while we could share, even when we struggled to communicate about other, harder things. When I’m home now, we often curl up together in the living room, and watch an episode or two. Or, more accurately, I watch an episode and she falls asleep.
So, when I talk about my mom and me and the West Wing, I’m talking about how all three things entwine , how they serve to make me, me. I’m a product of my mom and my dad. In this day and age, I’m a product of the media I consume. I’m a product of tragedy. But, honestly, I’m pretty fond of what all this nonsense has made of me.