‘The West Wing Weekly’ Podcast Is The Next Best Thing To A ‘West Wing’ Reboot

I miss The West Wing.

None of the White House shows since the NBC drama ended its seven-season run in 2006 have balanced realism, aspiration, humor, relationships and loss — the episode where Donovan gets killed in the convenience store still destroys me — as well as The West Wing did.

Other White House shows have had the characters (House of Cards), the stories (Scandal), the pulse (24) or the humor (Veep), but not one of them has had all of it. Plus, in terms of pure verbal gymnastics, The West Wing is the best-written TV series of the modern era.

Until Aaron Sorkin reboots it — he will! keep hope alive! — a great new way to experience the show is by watching each episode from the beginning on Netflix and then listening to the corresponding episode on a great new podcast called The West Wing Weekly, hosted by actor Joshua Malina and podcaster/superfan Hrishi Hirway. It’s sort of a podcast version of Talking Dead or After the Thrones.

Malina and Hirway sat down with Decider to talk about their podcast, re-watching Season 1 of The West Wing, and the prospects for a West Wing reboot. And they have three words for you: President Sam Seaborn.

DECIDER: Had you seen much of the series recently before you started the podcast?

JOSHUA MALINA: I really am doing what we’re asking of the audience, which is to rewatch the show in anticipation of the next podcast episode. I have not rewatched the show since it first aired. I was a big fan of the show before I joined the cast, so for me this is a return to episodes that I originally watched 16 years ago.

HRISHI HIRWAY: I have seen them many, many, many times. It’s kind of my comfort food. Anytime I get sick or stuck at home, I watch a few episodes. It’s something I watch with my family and my friends and has been a part of my life since it originally aired.

Is your background in TV?

HRISHI HIRWAY: No, I’m a musician. I’m just a big fan of the show.

So you function on the podcast as the expert, and Josh functions as the insider?

HRISHI HIRWAY: Josh definitely functions as the insider. I don’t know if I function as the expert in terms of the show, but doing the podcast has taught me that there are people with vastly more knowledge about it.

How did the podcast come together?

HRISHI HIRWAY: I asked Josh if he’d like to do the podcast. I have another podcast called Song Exploder that I’ve been doing for about two years. It’s short episodes about how songs are made and has that same idea about what goes into the making of something.

Have you been able to tell how the podcast is growing from watching the traffic and the press you’ve gotten?

JOSHUA MALINA: It started out bigger than I had anticipated. I thought it would be a slow build as word got out that we were making the podcast, and we had a lot of interest through Twitter when we announced. Hrishi was the one who had the foresight that the podcast would be something that people would want to listen to. There’s so much love for this TV series that it was clear right away that people wanted to hear us talk about it.

Any particular platform where you’re seeing the most attention?

HRISHI HIRWAY: When we started the show in March and Josh tweeted about it, Entertainment Weekly picked that up and wrote a post about it. That got 20,000 shares on Facebook before we had even put out the first episode.

JOSHUA MALINA: On Tuesday evenings I can see anticipation on social media waiting for the next morning’s new episode, which is very rewarding.

I know that guests drive a lot of traffic on other podcasts. Have you seen that with West Wing Weekly?

HRISHI HIRWAY: We’re not pursuing guests with that strategy in mind, but that’s probably the case. We’re going after guests who were involved in making the show or were prominent fans of the show.

JOSHUA MALINA: Dule Hill was our first guest, and he has an enormous fan following on social media. He posted about our first episode on social media, which definitely helped raise awareness of the show.

And Janel Maloney has been on the show. Are there other people you’re planning on having on the podcast?

JOSHUA MALINA: There are a lot of people we’re trying to nail down. We’ve talked to Aaron Sorkin about coming onto the podcast, we’re hoping to get pretty much everybody from the cast over time.

HRISHI HIRWAY: We’re involving people from real-world politics too. Episode 9 has an interview with Ron Klain, who was chief of staff for Vice Presidents Biden and Gore.

I rewatched the pilot episode earlier today. I love the pilot and have seen it five or six times. Is it hyperbole to call it one of the five or six all-time best pilots?

HRISHI HIRWAY: I would sign off on that. What a pilot has to accomplish — the introduction of a large group of characters — is often its undoing because there’s so much you have to do before you can have a regular episode. There’s this guy, and this is what he does, and he likes this person. There are so many dynamics and relationships to establish that makes a lot of pilots clunky, and The West Wing hits the ground running.

The three things I wrote in my notes as I was watching it were “beepers,” “Rob Lowe looks 13 years old” and “this is where the word POTUS came from.”

JOSHUA MALINA: That’s basically what we talk about in Episode 1.

HRISHI HIRWAY: Clearly, you’re supposed to be watching the first episode wondering who this POTUS guy is who everybody is referring to. It’s amusing now that everyone knows what POTUS stands for because of the show.

The pilot and the show in general — the writing, the walk-and-talks, the cinematography — have been copied so much that it can watch now like a parody of itself.

HRISHI HIRWAY: I have talked to some people new to the show who have remarked on that. I don’t see that because I have no distance from it. I’ve been watching these episodes so regularly that I’ve never had the chance to remove myself and return to it.

JOSHUA MALINA: That’s why it’s comfort food for you.

Do both of you and most of the people you talk to feel like the Mandy story from Season 1 was a failure?

HRISHI HIRWAY: We’ve never encountered anyone who says, “You know who we wish we saw more of? Mandy.”

Why do you think that character was such a bust?

HRISHI HIRWAY: It’s kind of a great mystery of the first season. I’m not sure whether she’s supposed to be likable or not. She’s pretty unlikable. She’s supposed to be part of the team, but she’s an outsider. She’s kind of a foil. We haven’t cracked it.

JOSHUA MALINA: I think it may be that she was a casualty of a tight-knit group around President Bartlet that we come to love almost immediately in the first episode — Toby and Josh and C.J. and Leo and the president — and we’re immediately resistant to the idea of an outsider who’s a little bit caustic. I encountered some of that when I joined the show in Season 4. Who is this guy? You question the new person. Moira Kelly is a terrific actor, and I think it was probably just a resistance from viewers to letting somebody into the group.

Did the flap about Ted Cruz’s “New York values” comment several months ago make you think about the “New York sense of humor” comment near the end of the pilot, which Toby calls out as a Jewish slur?

HRISHI HIRWAY: Oh, definitely. That’s my favorite scene in the pilot, and it never gets too far from the front of my mind.

That sentiment has changed a lot on the Christian right in the last 20 years. There’s almost a pet-adoption mentality now between the far right and Jews.

JOSHUA MALINA: Israel, for want of allies, doesn’t look too close to motivation, which I think has a lot to do with the Christian concept of the end of times — that all Jews need to get back to Israel so terrible things can happen and we can get on with the end times.

Martin Sheen’s entrance in that scene is probably the thing people talk about most from that pilot. There are hints of the sanctimony in that scene that would later sink Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.

HRISHI HIRWAY: It’s totally different, I think. Studio 60 was a show about comedy, and the place for sanctimony in that context didn’t have the same resonance as it did in a show about people trying to change the country. In The West Wing, you needed a level of righteousness to feel righteous about anything.

It took over Studio 60 and came to feel like a writer on a soap box.

JOSHUA MALINA: Bartlet enters the room saying, “I am the Lord your God.” Aaron Sorkin created characters, and I think it’s a mistake to think that he’s the person talking. If you find a character sanctimonious, maybe it’s just the character.

How do you think The West Wing is aging in the context of TV dramas that have come out since?

HRISHI HIRWAY: Apart from the pagers, I think it’s remarkable how current it feels.

JOSHUA MALINA: I absolutely agree, and I wondered how I would feel about that going back to it.

HRISHI HIRWAY: In one of the early episodes, Rob Lowe’s character says, “Privacy is going to be the biggest issue in the next two decades. I’m talking about the internet. I’m talking about cell phones.” The idea that someone in 1999 could have predicted a privacy battle between the Department of Justice and Apple is pretty amazing.

Very few of the shows that have depicted presidents in the years since have really nailed the lived-in feel of working in the White House. Other shows have tended to make that very precious and over the top.

HRISHI HIRWAY: The episodes that aren’t as momentous — the ones that show that the business of governing isn’t all flash and drama — are some of my favorite episodes.

Josh, you were on Aaron Sorkin’s Sports Night right up until you were on The West Wing?

JOSHUA MALINA: I show up on The West Wing in Season 4. I was filming Season 2 of Sports Night as Season 1 of The West Wing was in production, and then I had a couple of lean years before I joined The West Wing.

Do you think the podcast will change when you get to the point where you’re much more familiar with what was happening from being on the show?

JOSHUA MALINA: We’ll see how my memory works. I’ll certainly be able to add more details and stories about the actual making of the series, but I hope that won’t change the podcast too fundamentally. I think the strength of the podcast is that we’re two friends and fans discussing the show.

HRISHI HIRWAY: I’m excited about getting to that point. I’ll be able to assume more of a role of being the guy who asks that questions.

JOSHUA MALINA: I won’t allow that to happen, so maybe will have some great conflict. [Laughs.]

The show won the Emmy the first three or four seasons.

HRISHI HIRWAY: The first four seasons.

Do you both have favorite seasons?

JOSHUA MALINA: I’m watching these episodes for the first time in a decade and a half, so I’m not qualified yet to pick a favorite season.

HRISHI HIRWAY: For me, Season 3 through the middle of Season 4 is maybe the finest stretch of TV ever made.

JOSHUA MALINA: So, ending right around when I joined the cast. [Laughs.]

HRISHI HIRWAY: That includes your episodes!

Hrishi, did the show ever make clear how Bartlet got the nomination?

HRISHI HIRWAY: You don’t see it on screen, but it was sort of a Bernie Sanders narrative where John Hoynes, who winds up becoming the vice president, was more the Hillary Clinton establishment figure. Bartlet runs as an upstart who’s running to make some policy points, catches momentum and overtakes Hoynes, but we never see it on screen.

Have either of you heard any recent noise on a West Wing reboot as a limited series?

HRISHI HIRWAY: I think about it every day.

JOSHUA MALINA: If we could whip up enough interest and excitement, maybe Aaron Sorkin will consider revisiting it. An hour long special — where are they now! [Laughs.]

If you found yourselves in the position of showrunning an eight-episode, one-shot reboot, what would you do with it?

JOSHUA MALINA: With HD quality, I don’t think you could go back and pick up where the show left off. We’ve aged.

David Wain and Michael Showalter did it with Wet Hot American Summer.

JOSHUA MALINA: That’s true. I think it worked better for them than it would for us. If Aaron Sorkin returned, I don’t think he would acknowledge anything after the point where he left the show.

HRISHI HIRWAY: In Season 4, Sam Seaborn [Rob Lowe] leaves the main story, which is around the time that Aaron Sorkin left. At one point, the president tells Sam that he’ll run for president one day, and Rob Lowe has said that he’d been down for doing a reboot if Aaron were involved. I think it could be about a Sam Seaborn presidency or bid for the presidency, and he goes back and recruits staffers from the Bartlet administration to work with him.

JOSHUA MALINA: I like it.

[You can subscribe to The West Wing Weekly on iTunes, Stitcher, Overcast and more]

Scott Porch writes about the streaming-media industry for Decider. He is also a contributing writer for Signature and The Daily Beast. You can follow him on Twitter @ScottPorch.