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This week's West Wing single-handedly justified its own prime time slot. The dramatic closing segment - with a military fleet buffeted by a lethal hurricane - confirms that there really can be more drama in the U.S. government than in the typical high-school cafeteria or executive boardroom to which we are inevitably subjected to during prime time. On top of this, the show still manages to capture, once again, what it's like to spend just another day in the West Wing.

The show does a superb job of developing multiple sub-plots. First, there is the visit of the Indonesian Prime Minister to serve up a surprisingly realistic dose of comic relief. The show intersperses the tension surrounding his arrival and the demands of a State Dinner in his honor, with several other high-level scandals all threatening to boil over at once. The theme of keeping up appearances while the foundations crumble plays out on several levels.

The West Wing gets the mood perfectly right - capturing the awkwardness of a paparazzi press corps covering the arrival of a foreign leader in the Diplomatic Reception Room. As the President and visiting Prime Minister stand still for the requisite photo-op, the President tries to offer some hearty chit-chat about the salmon served for the dinner - but receives no response whatsoever from the Indonesian leader. The wonderful tension surrounding the President being snubbed for his small talk, yet still forging forth to publicly honor and welcome the leader, speaks volumes about what really happens underneath the sound bytes and headlines. Then we witness the reappearance of the high-priced prostitute encountered by Rob Lowe's character in the first episode. She, of course, shows up with another guest at the State Dinner, and a dejected Lowe feels sufficiently moved to offer her $10,000 to come home with him instead. How romantic. The hooker's encounter with the First Lady illustrates the point that being at a State Dinner is just . . . well, really, really cool!

Amid all these mini-dramas, a Waco-like event is unfolding and Mandy -- the political consultant -- comes up with the fabulous idea of sending in a mediator. Sadly, the mediator is shot. The Chief of Staff then struggles to set up mechanisms to ensure that the line between political consultants and White House officials is never blurred this badly again. As we learned from Waco, the results of such incursions into government power can be disastrous.

On one critical note: the portrayal of high-level policy debates among the President's communications advisors becomes even more farcical this week. This episode offers senior advisors advocating positions on policy grounds with which they are intimately familiar -- right down to the most incidental statistic and obscure anecdote. Not that there isn't an impressive array of policy familiarity among all senior White House staff, but the show fails to capture what is an almost church/state-like separation between the communication and policy people in the real White House. The "spinners" know well that their role is to defer to the policy councils on all substantive matters -- a development that took root after the early days of the Clinton Administration. The most involved policy discussion you will wring out of the political/press team is usually framed in yes-or-no questions such as: "Quick! yes or no - can we say there are at least five single mothers around the country who now don't have to worry about their children's asthma?"

To which the follow-up tends to be: "Okay find one of them and have her come to the White House tomorrow. . . ."

The program's incredibly dramatic closing segment is sufficiently epic for the big screen. An exchange between the President and those in the military whose lives are in his hands, proves that no other prime-time narrative can compete with the lofty inner struggles and tensions of this show's protagonist-in-chief. In a scene revealing just how singular the moral life of the President must be, the President dutifully calls the commander of a military ship stuck at sea in the path of a major hurricane. He has a chilling conversation with a low-ranking communications officer, on duty even as his ship is being tossed about amid 80 foot waves; with water coming over the bow, a fire in the stern, and an aircraft carrier that cannot see them heading straight at them. The President -- on both knees by the phone and surrounded by his wife and staff -- pledges to stay on the line as long as the connection holds up.

One of the recurring themes of the West Wing is that a President is confronted with the highest order of every human drama and tragedy on a daily basis. He is not isolated from human suffering, or hermetically sealed inside the Beltway, although the humanity to which he is answerable is on a different order of magnitude. While he may not carry cash or buy his own groceries, the President is nevertheless immersed in the human experience --perhaps even more so than the rest of us.

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