To My Youngers,
With the cooler weather comes the return of my TV-watching evenings. It started with Torchwood, Season Two (now finished, awaiting season three), with a bit of Murder She Wrote thrown in there, but the real jewel in the crown, the centerpiece is, as always, West Wing. We're up to season five (I can't believe I still have two seasons to go! Two seasons I've never seen! Two WHOLE seasons! Two seasons? ONLY two seasons!?!) but I've been watching them with El, and only an episode or two a day is sometimes not enough, so re-watching earlier episodes often follows... Now with DVD commentary! Love it! Its so neat (neato, yes, I get cheesy when enthusiastic about something) hearing the actors and Sorkin and Schlamme talking about writing, shooting etc... but especially when they get the giggles, or they gasp or sigh- right at the same places we do (or where I do anyways...)! So neat. Neato. Awesome even! I love it!
But what I love even more than the commentaries, even more than the show as a whole, is Joshua Lyman.
Back when I used to watch West Wing the first time 'round, back in university, I completely adored Josh. I realize that he's a character, and usually one would say the actor's name ("I love Brad Pitt" not "I love Tyler Durdin") and that's applicable here as well, I do adore Bradley Whitford, but its not like I know much about him. Josh, I know- or know as well as anyone knows any fictional character... like how I 'know' Poirot or Samwise Gamgee..., but its the character as specifically played by Bradley Whitford that I adore. Yes adore. "Like a fat kid loves cake." Like a really fat kid loves really amazing cake. Which is to say, a lot. Still.
Now you go through phases in your life in many different ways. One of those ways is in who you have crushes on. For some people it was Joey from New Kids on the Block, or Tom Cruise in Risky Business... I don't remember ever having crushes on stereotypical guys like that. For me it was Jerry O'Connell (in Sliders, and before that in My Secret Identity), Scott Bakula (in Quantum Leap) or Joseph Gorden Levitt (in Angels in the Outfield), later Billy Boyd or Sam Roberts... but all of these crushes have varied over time- ebbed and flowed- and generally waned at least a little bit.
But not so with the Josh-love. The Josh-love is just as strong as it was back when I watched it the first time through. And I'm not gonna lie; its a bit odd...
Seriously though, As soon as he comes on the screen, particularly in a josh-driven-episode, Its like I'm back in 2001, sitting in my residence room, swooning over the way he walks. Or the way he raises his eyebrows. Or clenches his hands. Or ... well really everything to be honest. And when I watch those episodes, even when I watch episodes I haven't seen, all of that just comes back as strong as ever. Its weird. And awesome. And a little bit like time travel.
It doesn't seem to have stuck for anyone else in the same way. Maybe because he is actually an adult (clearly I don't still swoon over a twelve year old JGL the way I did when I was eleven...), maybe because he is the origin of my 'but even just the way he WALKS is sexy!" (confusing to almost everyone to whom I try to explain it...), maybe because he gets to talk in Sorkin-isms all of the time... What ever the reason, I'm pretty sure I'll still love him just as much when I'm old and grey as I do now, or did the first time I saw the show. Sorry future-real-life-love-of-my-life, Bradley Whitford [as Josh Lyman] got there first ;o)
...though he may soon be joined by John Green and Mark Sasso... only the time will tell!
-E
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