Polite, that is. The West Wing - the first 2½ seasons, all I've seen so far - is infectious, intelligent, kitschy, touching, daring. Especially the latter. Picture it: We have a Democrat president, good-looking, Southern-twanged, not unintelligent - failing. So someone writes up a better president right then, in a movie, first somewhat non-descript as an interesting widower, with good dialogue and interesting supporting characters. And some time later the same man (WW's creator Sorkin) decides to show the US what a really good Democrat president could be like - in a hit TV series: Sheen's role as the nerdy, cool and inobviously handicapped president, who is discovered as chanceless candidate by a team of expert communicators/lawyers, who - surprise! - all believe in the social Democrat ethic to a tee. And wins. And becomes the focal point of the most powerful soap ever.

Sheen's president Bartlett, who to me looks somewhat like JFK might have at 60, captains a White magic House, that goes boldly through themes and events, and is powered by a lovable cast making even better dialogue, preferrably while on the move in long corridor walking marathons. These "drives" through the glassed-in freneticism of America's inner sanctum of power are cinematographic tours-de-force, that must be seen to be believed; files are constantly put down or picked up, conversants disappear to the left or to the right, only to be replaced by new ones continuing the talk if not the content, takes often taking up to half a minute or longer. The dialogue reminds me a lot of riveting Hawksian dialogues of earlier cinema, e.g. of His Girl Friday - quite astonishing, since that movie is as old as this president! Is the secret of WW's success this grand sense of "retro"? The States we could have had?

The most astonishing episode was the one done just after 9/11. It's a "what if" loop out of the sequence, and all main characters mirror the terrible event, commenting on it, on what's to be done, and - most importantly to me - how to see the perpetrators (paraphrased: the "KKK of Islam, not its mainstream"). I was blown away.

But in the end the series is too good - and naive, e.g. of the influence of the Pentagon in U.S. foreign policy - to be true. And it walks a dangereous path. It is like a far-removed spaceship with a sympathetic, but very powerful captain, who can save the world if he beats the odds again and again, who is kept on the true path by courageous "spin boys" and one girl, that aren't afraid to stand up to him when he gets too carried away. However, it plays in a world too similar to ours for us not to confuse the two, and wish we were in the TV, ever more since we see every day how far the real incumbent draws away from the fictitious one. Finally, in spite of good writing and interesting acting, it's a TV soap and follows the rules of soaps in this setting, inescapably trivialising it.

Absolute power portrayed as a TV series corrupts absolutely my power to not find the characters' behaviour supercilious, inhuman and, in the long run, well, trivial. The series takes itself seriously, in the majority of scenes, and that's my problem with it. My love and my hate of it.

I've managed to extricate myself after the first few episodes of the third season now. There are 4½ seasons to go; it just ended a few months ago. I'll have to think it through a bit, first. Or perhaps wait for another most powerful human on Earth more fitting to the TV role to be voted in before continuing, so as to prevent occasional attacks of nausea...