West Wing to end after this season

It's official. NBC has announced that this season will be the last for the West Wing. It's the seventh season for the show which went on the air in 1999.

The writing has been on the wall for a while. The series took a hit with the departure of Aaron Sorkin, who created the series and oversaw it for four seasons. It managed to stay afloat though, and they did put out some compelling shows after that. The move to Sunday nights led myself and others to believe NBC was sending the show off to pasture.

In November, NBC aired a live episode featuring a debate between Democrat Matt Santos (played by Jimmy Smits) and Arnold Vinick (played by Alan Alda). Any chance that new viewers would tune in for more shows was blown when the network didn't follow it with new episodes for a month. In any case, this season will mark the end of Martin Sheen's character Jed Bartlett's presidency. These events preceded the recent death of John Spencer, who played a primary character in Leo McGarry. When taken in sum, it just seems to make sense for the series to end now.

Prediction on how the show wraps up: The Santos campaign picks up steam in the coming weeks, but he will lose the election narrowly to Vinick, ending the series with an homage to the first Rocky.