I read the transcripts for the 1st 14 episodes before watching this, so it was a little weird. It's different watching to reading it - the visuals were a little less flashy this season, also the lack of warmth amongst the cast members except Donna and Josh was noticeable. For instance, its great that Toby is off fighting gaol time but it would have been great to have him working on the Santos campaign. There are some bright additions to the cast but apart from Jeaneane Garofolo few of them get a chance to create much of a character - which means its interesting watching actors portray them to see what they do with them: the bright eyed girl who turns out to be a lesbian is a find, but the bland male model character is a bit irritating. For some reason Mary McCormack and Garofolo have serious eye shadow action going on. Indeed all the women are glammed up a bit.
There was a lot more romance this season: Josh and Donna (finally, in the last season - though when it happens they don't really get the most out of it), Will and Kate (two military nerds together), CJ and Danny, Santos and his wife (an interesting character since she doesn't really want to be there), Annabeth with a crush on Leo (which sounds kind of off but works), Barlett's middle daughter (Nina Siemasko giving a lovely performance, happy and pretty for once - as required by the script) and her fiancee (played by the guy who played Skipper on Sex in the City, playing basically the same character).
My fave episodes were the one about abortion (when it showed the difficulties of republican politics, quite fairly I think), the ones just prior to the election, the election itself (very exciting). Post election the show inevitably loses some momentum, and it sort of seems as if we're watching the pilot for a new series over the next few episodes, with Mary Louise Parker and Emily Procter and Rob Lowe coming back. I did like how we saw how the staff go about looking for jobs with the white house winding up.
As someone who has seen every episode of this series, I appreciated how they brought back some minor cast members at the end: Hoynes, Russell, Ginger (the sprightly secretary for Sam and Toby who was replaced by that older Latino woman who in turn disappeared - in one episod Ginger expressed interest in watching porn to Sam, which indicated a potential goldmine in the character that was never followed up), Ed and Larry, Ainsley Hayes, all three daughters, Carol the assistant press secretary. Aaron Sorkin even makes a cameo. Seven years is a long time - I don't mind admitting I felt a bit teary towards the end. Magnificent series.
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