West Wing, The: The Complete Series (2021/RPKG/DVD)

One of the greatest TV series ever produced. From the opening episode the cast was fully realized and never missed a step. Martin Sheen is the perfect actor to play the President. Aaron Sorkin is one of the best writers ever.

The series itself is perfection in writing, directing, acting, and content. The West Wing transports the viewer to another political era of sanity, ethics, integrity and patriotism. The problem I encountered is technical. This West Wing DVD Series package is Season 6 disc Closed Caption/Subtitle setting DOES NOT WORK - the disc is permanently set at French language although English is clearly selected. I've tried dozens of times but still can't get English captions/subtitles. I didn't encounter this problem with Seasons 1- 5. The whole Season 6 Disc useless to me since (the sound quality of both my new Samsung TV sets is awful) I have to view everything with the captions ON in order to understand the rapid-fire West Wing dialog. I tried viewing Season 6 disc1 on a second DVD & TV. Still unable to set up/turn on Captions. I haven't tried the rest of Season 6 nor Season 7 yet (I'm too frustrated right now) Thank goodness the actual vocal dialog is in English so every few spoken lines I get a general idea of what's said, and I recall some of my high school French from 60 years ago! I DON'T RECOMMEND buying this Complete West Wing DVD Series package from this Supplier, despite the authentic-looking packaging.

This review is primarily about the series, but I can make a few comments about this packaging. It is better than what I found in some other "Complete Seasons" packaging. All seasons are in a uniform format, even if the disks are simply lifted from yearly issues. The file folder styie is decent, relatively easy to remove and re-insert disks, unlike most jewel box containers. But, there are some errors in the labelling of the contents of the disks on the back of the folder, and in season 1 and season 2, the scene selection seems to malfunction. In order to select the beginning, the second scene needs to be highlighted. But on to the story.I really like to see this series, even with its huge cast and many, many different issues, as the story primarily of Josh Lyman and Donna Moss. The pilot opens with a controversy centered on Josh's disrespecting a member of the conservative right Christian fundamentalists. Two of the emotional high points, one at the end of season 1 and one at the end of season 5 involves serious injuries to Josh and Donna respectively. Josh has his ups and downs throughout the series. His low point comes in episode 5 of season 5, when it seems no one wants to be seen with him in the Democratic party, after a Democratic senator switches party due to Josh's intimidation. Josh's star starts rising when the First Lady asks why Josh isn't part of the negotiations over the budget, and Josh orchestrates a stunt which allows Bartlett to pull a big victory out of the hat over the budget. Virtually all of Season 6 and 7 are devoted to Josh's managing the presidental campaign of Matt Santos, and the parallel fortunes of Donna, in the campaign of Santos' democratic rival. Donna and Josh have the two best scenes in the last episode, where Josh (with Sam Seaborn) takes his position as Santos chief of staff, and Donna is shown her office as chief of staff to the new first lady, in an Old Executive Offfice Building office which seems bigger and grander than the Oval Office, a far, far cry from her cubicle in the bullpen of The West Wing. The last few episodes finally resolve the romantic tension between Josh and Donna.What makes The West Wing so impressive is when one watches other shows which deal with similar circumstances. The Sigourney Weaver headlined show, "Political Animals" seems detached from reality in comparison. The characters are not smart, fast talking, and not diverted by relatively trivial matters such as sex. In The West Wing, power and responsiblity seem to trump mere sex at practically every turn. Josh skirts sexual laisons with various characters (three at least), and they all pale and are undermined by political position and power.I can't think of any series which has such a rich mixture of great characters and great dialogue and innovative direction as this. Even relatively minor characters, such as John Larroquette as the White House council in one episode is memorable, as is David Huddleston's brief appearance as a Republican senator. The king of The West Wing guest appearances is John Goodman's playing the Speaker of the House, Glen Allen Walken, who takes over as president for three days.It is also worth mentioning that with the cost of this set, each episode is half the cost of downloading it from Amazon, 1 dollar versus about 2 dollars.

One of the Best TV Series of all time.

Firstly, The 5 stars are both for the series itself, and the product itself. If you've never seen The West Wing, you're missing out on one of the best ensemble dramas there is. Not to mention it's a great insight (however fictional) into how the presidential office runs, and contains episodes with incredible story lines and issues (gov't shutdown? Homosexuals in the Military? A dictator causing mass genocide? Islamic Fundamentalists?) that sometimes end with the office 'winning' and sometimes with them losing. Whether you're a liberal or Democrat (the party of the president in the series) or not, you can appreciate the struggle and conflict inherent in running the nation. Plus there is an incredible cast.Secondly, this product is incredible. Over the summer I managed to watch the entire series, and so I had started to buy the DVDs, starting with season 1. Since that's all I had, when the complete series came on sale at $75, I couldn't resist. There are seven seasons spread over forty five discs in all. You get the screenplay for the pilot episode, and an episode guide, and of course the discs for all seven seasons. There doesn't seem to be any extra special features than what are already on the previous release, so if you're buying this to replace the 7 seasons in other format, it's probably not worth the money. All of the discs are packaged into thin cardboard folders, one for each season, so that everything fits into the box. Faux-leather is wishing a little too much, but the box is a sturdy paper covered cardboard with a magnet closure and looks great.Now, onto the issues other reviewers have encountered.When I received the series, the first thing I did was open it and make sure I had all the discs and check for scratches. Once that was done, I spent a weekend playing all 45 discs. Tedious? Very, although I simply skipped through by chapter to make sure the audio and visual played, then continued on. But I surmised that all of my discs were playable, and only 3 out of the 45 had scratches. Yes the paper envelopes hold them closely, and scratches are pretty probably because of that, but a few small scratches aren't cause for alarm, and people forget you can fill scratches and it's generally still playable. If you take them out carefully, and make sure dust/sand don't get into the envelopes, I can't see this being a problem.I've also read a few reviews about missing discs, blank discs, missing other things, and can only assume someone was buying them from a 3rd party seller who wasn't honest, but selling on the cheap. Always read those seller reviews! I bought directly through Amazon and the product came brand new, shrink-wrapped, with adequate padding and no damage whatsoever. Perhaps there was at one point someone who was selling these for a sham on Amazon, but Amazon itself is selling the real deal.And a bonus feature-the first few seasons of The West Wing were packaged on double sided discs originally when they were released, which causes playing problems (like my original season one). This set has everything on one-sided discs, and I haven't caught any lags, pixelated bits, or problems so far that I have on a few of my other season one discs (found after the return period ended). To me this is worth the set rather than the individuals.On the whole, I'd definitely buy this product from Amazon. I got it for $75 during the pre-black friday sale, so the price was perfect for the product and I'm very pleased.