Bartlet4America News Archive

Disloyalty oaths

Viewers are griping about two of TV's biggest hits this season

Tim Goodman
San Francisco Chronicle

These are tough times for two of television's best, most popular and critically acclaimed series.

Entering their fourth seasons, "The Sopranos" and "The West Wing" are coming under the kind of fan fire neither is accustomed to. In the case of "The West Wing," that is resulting in a loss of viewers.

But the issues for both go far deeper. As two of the brightest lights in TV -- surrounded by a plethora of creatively weak, stylistically simple competitors -- it's almost insulting for them to be questioned, to be doubted. After all, in the realm of smart, sophisticated television, there's not much else out there.

Still, anecdotal evidence such as fan sites and water cooler chit-chat bear out the truth: Fans of those shows are disappointed this season.

It's harder to draw a correlation between people tuning out and people complaining. This season has seen many established series lose viewers. There are also more and better dramas this year, and the audience shift that occurs during so-called "good" TV seasons is taking place. "The West Wing" is on a tough night (so too is "The Sopranos"), and the political drama, despite its popularity, has less of a die-hard audience than the mob diary.

Loyalty to "The Sopranos" borders on insane. Besides, if you're paying for it (and a lot of people are paying for HBO precisely because of "The Sopranos"), you're going to watch it.

Audience approval is a widely varying thing -- even in its most acclaimed years, people have been open and vocal about their "Sopranos" disappointment. And the inability to make everybody happy has to be factored in. But the question remains: These people currently carping about down years on both shows -- are they right?

Here's a nice dodge -- it's too early. Many series often suffer creative lulls, then roar back. It's a long season. Let's not pass too much judgment yet.

Nevertheless, critically, there's certainly merit to "The West Wing" gripes, while "The Sopranos" is clearly a victim of impossibly high expectations and some people who either don't understand or can't dismiss creator David Chase's storytelling eccentricities.

While Aaron Sorkin has done a stupendous job making a hit out of a series nobody -- at any network -- thought would work, "The West Wing" has always been an implausible high-wire act. First off, politics divides. Unless you're really great at the writing -- which Sorkin has been on most occasions -- somebody is going to feel their nose is being tweaked.

This season it's been abundantly clear that President Bartlet (Martin Sheen) is battling a Bush-like Republican for re-election. That story line is bothersome to Republican viewers who have already given Sorkin a pass on this show about a liberal Democrat president who's three sex scandals away from being Bill Clinton.

And in addition to bucking the odds with a politicized show, Sorkin has for years tempted fate with another TV no-no: being too smart. It's true. The American audience does not like to feel stupid, doesn't like to be talked down to or lectured or made to feel in any way inadequate. When viewers want smarts, they go to PBS. On network television, they demand first to be entertained. If you can do that intelligently, great. But going Ivy League only annoys people. Sorkin is at his worst when he takes his characters -- already cut considerable critical slack for all talking the same way -- and puts them on soap boxes.

Is "The West Wing" still exceptionally fine TV? Of course it is. It remains smart and appealing. Once Sorkin gets back in a groove, improving the writing and storytelling, the show will return to form. That doesn't mean viewers will return, however. There's a sell-by date for every series and even if "The West Wing" isn't there yet, the downside of being politically polarizing is already apparent and is unlikely to be turned back.

"The Sopranos" is an entirely different animal. The easiest explanation for its perceived downturn is ridiculously heightened expectations. But that's a case that can be made every season, every episode, for this show. Just as critics give Sorkin a free pass for the repetitive speaking tone of his characters, so too does Chase get a lighter reprimand for his odd, disjointed story arcs.

Yes, plot lines come and go. Chase has proven, however, that most are not forgotten and eventually resume. By now everyone should know that he tells stories at his leisure, with no definitive clock for the viewers to watch. It's often unclear how much time has elapsed between episodes, much less seasons.

Character motivation has always been suspect as well. Viewers don't like when Carmela, for example, isn't acting the way she'd normally act. Is the fault in Chase's execution, or are viewers too impatient, raised on strict, formulaic network storytelling devices? Maybe a little of both, but again, "The Sopranos" is not a good series to dissect on a weekly basis. It packs a far bigger wallop and makes more sense as a whole, when the season ends.

It's easy to say that critical appraisal of "The Sopranos" has delved into the absurd, with Chase getting too much credit for creating high art or some momentous cultural accomplishment, when, after all, it's a TV show. But it's also true that standard interpretations of what television has offered over the years don't apply here.

Yes, "The Sopranos" is brilliant, but it's also different. And sometimes viewers have been either unaware or unappreciative of that difference. For example -- and this is an argument made many times here -- the most important element of this series is what's not said. Network television does not believe in long pauses. It doesn't allow viewers to read into facial expressions for more than a second. Network television -- particularly "The West Wing," by the way -- tells you how to feel or how the character's feeling. Not so in "The Sopranos," which remains daringly, originally, quiet and often lingers on scenes two or three times longer than network shows.

Two other things about "The Sopranos" that, for many viewers, oddly dilute the impact: First, Chase is not strict about motivation, preferring to imbue the characters and the series with a sense of real-life randomness. A lot of viewers, on the other hand, like plot points and action to click like cylinders -- it's a learned response from network television.

Secondly, "The Sopranos" has always been funny, and Chase, who apparently has one quirky sense of humor, routinely tries to fit humor into the flow. But some fans are so obsessively serious about "The Sopranos" that they view jokes as an irritant, a flaw that makes particular episodes weak. Episode three this season, which was not only loaded with humor but skillfully used selfishness as an overarching theme, was loathed by fans.

There seems to be a rush to judgment on both "The West Wing" and "The Sopranos," which is disconcerting. On the other hand, nobody's trying to start a national dialogue about "Boston Public" or "Dinotopia" -- which puts everything into perspective.