10 Terrible Episodes That Almost Ruined Great TV Shows
7. The West Wing: Access
The West Wing famously lost its creator Aaron Sorkin after the fourth season, and so a lot of fans feel that the show really declined from there. But while it was definitely sad to lose Sorkin’s voice, the last half of the show still had plenty of memorable moments and episodes, and the series was able to find a second wind by introducing the campaign storyline and the Matt Santos character.
But Access, an episode towards the end of the show’s middling fifth season, is a gimmick that just doesn’t end up working. The episode takes place entirely in the documentary format, with the premise being that we’re following a typical day in the life of C.J. Cregg. But the gimmick quickly becomes tiring, and the episode limits us to a frustrating degree. We don’t get much interplay between characters or scenes in the oval office, and so a lot of what we love about The West Wing is absent in this hour.
The writing style of the show just simply doesn’t fit with this format, and while it’s interesting to see something different at first, we’re quickly left just wishing we were watching a normal episode.