Nov 13, 2017

I’ve been working on sewing kitties a lot lately (the grand total including a handful that have already sold is now 46 completely finished with at least 23 more already partially made–so far no two exactly alike) and, as a result, I’ve been listening to a lot of podcasts.

Up until today I had mainly been listening to Awesome with Alison (which I heartily recommend), but I’ve sadly caught up with the most recent episode, so now I have to wait for the next one in real time. So tonight I filled the void by starting a podcast Bryan keeps telling me about: The West Wing Weekly.

It’s quite possibly the nerdiest thing I’ve ever done, but I shamelessly confess I really enjoy it. I’m about as into real politics as a head of cabbage, but The West Wing is a whole different ballgame. Bryan and I started watching it together in our first year of marriage on a recommendation from his older brother and our sister-in-law, also fairly newly married. This was almost 10 years ago now, pre-Netflix, so we’d check out the DVD’s two or three at a time from the LRC at the BYU library. There was one DVD that had a scratch and always skipped.

In fact, I distinctly remember that we started watching The West Wing the day before (or maybe the weekend before) I started my new job teaching preschool at a Montessori school because I called in sick on my first day and ended up watching more West Wing all day. For the record, I think I really was sick to some degree, but mostly I think I was just dreading going to workaround my first real job after college (an unfortunate foreshadowing of how awful that particular job turned out to be).

Anyway, we now own seasons 1-4 on DVD (all bought for me as gifts by Bryan–maybe all on various Christmases? I can’t remember) and we’ve watched those first four seasons countless times. It’s the first four seasons that are written by Aaron Sorkin and, admittedly, after that it goes downhill into what my brother-in-law once referred to as “fan fiction,” but, honestly, it’s still West Wing and it’s still amazing. You just have to muddle through that chunk of episodes in season 5 where it feels like nothing compelling is ever going to happen again.

All this to say, a podcast where former cast member Joshua Malina (who plays Will Bailey on the show) and his friend who’s a major West Wing fan go through the entire series episode by episode talking about different scenes and characters and plot lines and behind-the-scenes antics is laughably right up our (my husband’s and my) alley. The hosts have been re-watching each episode before the podcast to prep for their discussion on it, but I need no such prep to fully appreciate everything they’re talking about. In fact, I remember a few years ago when we had moved to a new state and I confided to my sister-in-law that a lot of things in our lives were not going well she told me, “Watch West Wing! It’ll make it feel like home!”

So, listening to hour-long podcast episodes rehashing 45 minute-long television episodes that aired 17 years ago is all fairly pointless, I admit, especially compared to the self-improvement driven podcast I just came off of, buuuut it is pretty delightful.