How to Be a West Wing Fan

Listen to your friends. Listen to your friends when they tell you there is this programme you should watch because it’s about politics and you would like it. Listen to them even though you don’t give a monkey about American politics.

Borrow a laptop. Maybe yours is broken, or the speakers are not working, or something. The reason is irrelevant and utterly forgettable. Eject the DVD that is in the drive. Note that the DVD you have ejected is, in fact, this American TV show that your friends won’t shut up about, even though your friends, like you, are British and they don’t care about politics of any kind, or at least not as much as you do, or did, back in the days when you did. Give in, even though American English hurts your ears and you have to listen hard to understand when they speak fast — which, as it turns out, on this show is always.

Note that this TV show actually seems quite good. It seems intelligent. That is something you did not expect. It also features a number of good-looking men, which you probably should have expected but nonetheless are pleasantly surprised by. Yes, the dialogue is fast, and you keep having to rewind to catch the words, but later you will learn to use the subtitles to make sure you understand and that will help a great deal. The dialogue is witty. The dialogue seems to have content.

Resume life at its usual pace. Fit in the occasional episode of The West Wing because now you know that it is worth it. Find yourself welling up sometimes. Find yourself gasping.

Pick up a pen. You will find yourself itching to write again, as you did prolifically in your childhood and your teens. Aaron Sorkin has shown you that English can be elegant. English can be powerful. English can, in the words of one of his characters, make your heart soar. You will recognise the bubbly excited feeling in the pit of your stomach as inspiration now. Start to write. Write a novel based in DC because, after all, the political world is what inspired you this time around.

Discover the world of fan fiction. You wanted more West Wing? It’s there. Alternative endings to episodes, theoretical out-takes, a fantasy Season Eight: all there. And while you’re hanging out online, make some new friends there. Hashtag #westwing and suddenly you connect with dozens of fans. Debate questions of politics, policy, and yes, romance. Jointly enthuse on the, ahem, aesthetic qualities of the show.

Visit New York City. And when your friend asks if there’s anywhere else you’d like to go, and you want to respond in all caps, WASHINGTON DC PLEASE!, be British about it: “I don’t suppose we could maybe…?”. You can, and her relatives will pay for a delicious dinner at Legal Sea Foods, and then take you on a drive around DC in the dark, where the lit-up monuments look just like they do on the TV and take your breath away.

Back home, continue to write your novel. Continue to dream of DC: you have fallen in love. Reach for Google and see, just see, if there is anywhere in DC where you can study creative writing: two birds, one stone. You could be there in time for the presidential election. It would be like living The West Wing.

American University will reject you the first time you apply, but like your favourite Sorkin character you have backbone and determination, so try again. They will accept you this time and later you will find out there were all kinds of weird things going on in Admissions the year you were rejected. Try not to feel too terrible about it. You can write. And if you can’t now, hopefully you will be able to by the time you graduate.

Dither and do some soul-searching. This is not nothing, this move. But listen to your friends. They have been right before. They are right now, when they tell you that you should just do it. Just go for it. Take the opportunity because you will never have it again. Okay, you say, okay, and later you will wonder why you ever hesitated at all.

You will wonder this on many occasions. You will wonder this when you get to meet your favorite actors, all dressed up in a tuxedo and wearing it extremely well. You will wonder this when you sit in rapt attention as your young and handsome speechwriting professor tells stories that begin “when I was working at the White House…”. You will wonder this when you stop to take your thousandth picture of the Capitol, surrounded by fall colours or springtime bloom. You will wonder this each time you walk past the White House — though walking past is a misnomer. You will be incapable of walking past. Every single time you will stop and look and wonder at its closeness, and that you get to live here, on the set of your favourite TV show, the TV show that has unexpectedly, improbably, changed your life.

But when they ask you, in America, how you ended up there, you will hesitate slightly. You won’t want people to think you are crazy. You won’t yet have learned that few people in DC think your path to be odd. That when you go to an interview in a Congresswoman’s office and confess to the reason for your interest in politics, your potential future boss will say, oh, that’s what got me into it, too.

In love with your new life, you will sometimes shake your own head and find yourself wondering: because of a TV show, seriously? Well, yes and no. But mostly yes.

*****

Excerpted from Walk With Us: How The West Wing Changed Our Lives, an anthology of quotes and essays by fans edited by Claire Handscombe