Ive been watching a couple of the season 5 episodes, now that Sorkin is gone, you have to expect changes. What I'm hearing in the new episodes is dialog sparse and meaningless. Pauses and funny camera angles with no purpose. All the "punch" in the writing is gone and its a terrible loss. There are still some season 4 episodes i havent seen, so at least I can go on watching for a while longer.

Ep4 - the phoney speach that Wil and Toby come up with was as obvious as a shuttle launch at night that it would "come back to haunt them" later that same episode.

Ep2 - All the Horsey flashbacks with Zoey made no sense. "Name one thing my little girl's afraid of." Why are they taking 5 separate confusing flashbacks to say Zoey is a brave woman? The writers use a couple different scenes of raised voices to brutally beat a few emotions out of the painfully banal script.

I dont know why Sorkin left. this article suggests that Sorkin wanted to kill Zoey off in season 5 but that didnt jive with management.

Product placement! In an episode one of the phones had a big Cisco Systems logo on it and the camera wasnt shy about showing it. Oh how low they've sunk.

hard-core fansite I just found: bartlet4america.org