Moira Kelly was one of the biggest stars on Season 1 of “The West Wing,” alongside Rob Lowe and (obviously) Martin Sheen. Her character, Mandy, is a specialist in public relations and new media, and as such, basically always takes the most politically advantageous position in any argument (as opposed to what might have been the most ethical one). “The West Wing” creator Aaron Sorkin has received a fair bit of criticism (per Variety) in the past decade or so that his female characters are poorly written, and Mandy is definitely a great example of his failure to understand and write varied, three-dimensional women characters.
She is loud, irrationally argumentative, and basically always the one advocating for the rest of President Bartlet’s staff to ignore their better angels. It’s also annoying how often the male staffers in “The West Wing” talk down to the women around them, and Mandy’s childish reactions and tantrums are only exacerbated by this dynamic.
The characters on the show barely humor her, the people watching the show hated her (via Reddit), and she still grates even after several rewatches. Mandy is such a failure that Sorkin didn’t bother to resolve her story following the mass shooting in the Season 1 finale of the show. There isn’t even confirmation that Mandy survived the shooting. Not a single person mentions her ever again, not even in flashbacks to the campaign on which she supposedly worked with them.
