Their conclusion - and it is deliciously ominous - is they've been too concerned with Bartlett being a two-term president , of kowtowing to powerful right-wing forces and special interest groups. Starting right away - or next Tuesday, at least - President Bartlett and his staff will take the bull by the horns and put their ideals into practice. I'll be watching and, hopefully, so will the already beleaguered Geoff Gallop.

By far the best thing on television at the moment, The West Wing hosts an explosive season finale in tonight's timeslot but just as we were bemoaning the loss of A-class drama from our screens, a hint of hope has been unveiled. Perhaps the show will follow in the footsteps of WIN Television's surprise hit family drama Judging Amy and run immediately into the second season. Please, oh please ... They can't leave us wondering who, if anyone, gets shot in an assassination attempt during a presidential town hall meeting with the public. With the president, his daughter Zoey (the subject of some daunting hate mail in recent episodes) and most of his senior staff members in attendance, anything could happen. In comparison to most episodes, this one is played at half pace, the frantic conversations and brief mid-corridor strategy meetings replaced with a more personal agenda. The aim is to build steadily to the moment when shooters open fire on a crowd of people greeting the president following his Q&A session. It's superbly done with moments of drama offset by humorous interludes and more than a little emotion. It's impossible not to enjoy this show.

Although there's no bedroom action on the immediate horizon of The West Wing, the explosive finale of season one and last week's wrenching premiere of season two, has taken us deep into the hearts of the president and his staff, lifting the show to another level of excellence. This new-found emotional depth continues tonight as Josh fights for his life after being hit during the attempt on the president's life, a shattering event that has triggered a series of flashbacks in which the staffers recall how they became involved in the Bartlet campaign. Sadly, Nine has shifted the modestly rating show to the 10.30pm timeslot. But this is a minor inconvenience for keeping President Bartlet and his smart, passionate, hard-working staff in office.

Meanwhile, back at the White House, CJ is attempting to choose the most photogenic of two turkeys for the President's annual Thanksgiving turkey pardon. Two things here: these people are Democrats, so no turkeys will die; and it's at moments like these that we gain a fuller appreciation of just what it is that series creator Aaron Sorkin gets from his well-publicised fondness for psychotropic fungus. This is an episode that also reintroduces the loony religious right for another paddling, this time over school prayer, and has the president set Chinese asylum seekers free to wander the hinterland of northern California. Then there's the business of the Paul Revere carving knife. Have another mushroom, Aaron.

A tense mind-drama that shows this superb show at its best. Tough times for deputy White House Chief of Staff Josh Lyman as he attempts to deal with the ghosts of a bungled assassination attempt.

Plausibility, despite a strong dash of dramatic romanticism and White House banter, has always been the strength of The West Wing, but now the executive staff has egg on its face after a string of misjudgments, leaving its Republican opposition aware that dirty work is still the best political game in town. If this idealistic White House is the one many Americans might prefer, Aaron Sorkin's drama deliberately pumps up the fiction by running two years out of sync with the real political calendar. So the next presidential election is still 22 months away and this is the start of a year in which the mid-term elections have put the Republicans in control of both Congress and the Senate, a situation that existed for the last six years of the Clinton Administration. A bipartisan breakfast meeting has been called and at this point The West Wing temporarily slips off the rails with the silly fireplace incident, perhaps for the sole purpose of allowing one smart throwaway joke as President Bartlet (Martin Sheen) is awakened in the dead of night. Then there is the curious, perhaps dubious, incident of Donna's misplaced underwear at a gathering at which a prominent New York Times columnist was present. I see what this may be getting at at least, I think I do after replaying the fast-spoken scene four or five times but have taken to blaming the sound on the preview tape to cover my confusion. The interesting Ainsley Hayes (Emily Proctor), the Republican lawyer who joined a Democratic White House staff, now seems to have been banished to her basement office. However, the search for glamour goes on and we now meet the Republican majority's ambitious chief of staff, played by Felicity Huffman.

It's a pretty subpar episode of a show that seems to be battling some sort of midlife crisis of late. Symptoms: too much character based schmaltz and not enough politics. Anyway, tonight the gang, Josh in particular, are made to look smug and heartless by a 78yearold senator so desperate to have something of deep personal value set in legislation that he keeps his feet for more than eight hours in a filibuster that has the White House scratching its head. Why is this guy doing this? What's his game? Donna, of course, works it out in the end, but I'm sorry, the whole setup is so clunkily obvious that asking us to believe that the answer to this show's central and driving question would have evaded the sharpest political minds in the Western world until the dramatically strategic moment is like, stretching it.

However, the personal and the political collided in spectacular fashion in last week's episode when it was revealed that the president might have defrauded the American people when he ran for election without alerting them of his multiple sclerosis. President Bartlet is adamant that he has done nothing illegal. However, when Toby Ziegler, the communications director and senior political adviser, learnt about this impeachable offence he was outraged, opening the way for some of the most wrenching clashes in The West Wing's two-year history. The tension cranks up even further in tonight's show (Nine, 10.30) when Leo orders the president to spill the beans to White House counsel Oliver Babish (played with wonderful gusto by Emmy nominee Oliver Platt), a straight-shooting bear of a man who, over the next few weeks, upsets everyone in sight, including Bartlet himself, in assembling information to defend Bartlet. This is the best series of episodes yet in a justly lauded drama and the perfect time for late-comers to cast their vote.

Of course, Bartlet is a highly idealised figure, as is the rest of the cast of The West Wing which features what must be the most dazzlingly intelligent, wondrously articulate lot ever to appear on a mainstream television drama. Astutely, creator and chief writer Aaron Sorkin has, in recent episodes, shown us that Bartlet is a mere mortal after all with the shocking revelation that he may have committed an impeachable offence by lying to the American people about his multiple sclerosis. The pressure mounts in tonight's penultimate episode (Nine, 10.30) as the shell-shocked staff struggle to work out the best way to inform the nation, a problem compounded by a crisis brewing in Haiti. Series three of The West Wing has yet to begin in the United States. Like much of the autumn season of US television it was put on hold by the appalling events in New York. When it does return, it will be interesting to see how The West Wing, which feeds off current political reality, will respond not simply to the attack on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon but what is shaping up to be a prolonged war of retribution. Sadly, this is a great show that may be rendered irrelevant by an unthinkable reality. Or it may respond and become something quite special, providing education and an uplift for the American people.