Bartlet4America News Archive

Taking 'Wing' Again

With the campaign behind it, 'The West Wing' is bidding to reclaim its mandate

By Rick Kushman
The Sacramento Bee

Tonight, finally, we can start the national healing that's always needed after an election.

And, no, we're not talking about those pesky midterm campaigns for Congress and the California governor's office. Sure, those were as irritating and empty as always, but we've got something larger in mind: my favorite TV show.

Specifically, it's NBC's "The West Wing." And I'm saying right here that with President Jed Bartlet's re-election campaign about to conclude tonight (at 9 on Channel 3), that series can get back to being the wittiest, brightest, most intelligent and electric hour of television it's been for three-plus seasons.

I'm also saying the past two episodes, and especially last week's debate show, have been as good as any "The West Wing" has produced, which is to say as good as any hours on television.

Still, the experience of "The West Wing" at the start of this season is further proof of just how thin the margin is between excellent and merely very good, and how extraordinarily hard it is to make high-quality television, hour after hour, for years.

First off, let's clear away some clutter.

Despite complaints from some critics and viewers -- some of them very legit -- "The West Wing" is still the fastest, sharpest show on TV. By lengths. Nothing matches the wit or the volume of ideas and details that are loaded into conversations with rhythm and snap, and nothing comes close to the moment-to-moment rush that a "West Wing" in full flight can offer.

Having said that, ratings are down a bit. The show is drawing about 16.2 million viewers, roughly 1 million fewer than the series averaged last season.

That sounds a lot like the natural defection of viewers to newer shows, but it looks more harsh because it's almost 4 million viewers below the first weeks of the 2001-02 season when "The West Wing" was red-hot.

The series has also dropped in the prized 18-to 49-year-old demographic as other networks have counter-programmed with flashier, younger shows such as ABC's "The Bachelor," Fox's "Fastlane," CBS' "The Amazing Race" and WB's "Birds of Prey."

For what it's worth, "The West Wing" is still the top show on TV in another demographic sought by advertisers: people who earn $75,000 a year and up.

In any case, ratings are the business side of TV. Let's talk about quality.

Boiled down, the broad criticisms this season come down to two points: less thrilling and too preachy. Are they valid? At times. But "The West Wing" is also a victim of circumstances, its own success and those darn elections.

To deal with specifics, a show that's won a Peabody Award and three straight Emmys for best drama starts to drag around unreasonably large expectations.

Critics -- including the one right here -- are certainly guilty of piling those expectations high with the kind of praise that made "The West Wing" sound like it's produced on Mount Olympus (where, presumably, writers, not network suits, have creative control).

Those same critics, whether reasonably or not, are the first to turn on a show, in part because it's their jobs to re-examine everything and maybe because, you know, you always need another column.

Anyway, "The West Wing" is not the only series taking some critical jabs. HBO's "The Sopranos," the other Olympian drama of recent years, has been smacked around for, among other things, the crime of not being violent enough.

"The Sopranos" is its own complicated case, but both shows suffer at least some from those expectations, and just as importantly, from being familiar. The 60th time -- and we've watched more than 60 episodes now -- that we see press secretary C.J. Cregg (Allison Janney) being clever and elusive at a news briefing is far less thrilling than the first or second. The same is true of those rolling conversations and lyrical recitations of issues and facts. They may be as sharp as ever, but we take it in stride.

With all of that as a foundation, however, some of the complaints ring true, and now we get back to the original point: Making good television is very hard. Particularly TV that tells a continuing story.

Series creator Aaron Sorkin, one of Hollywood's most talented and nimble writers, said when the show started that his toughest job would be to develop stories and characters' lives that could sustain 100 or more hours of television.

The possible pitfalls in doing that are everywhere, and they multiply as a show ages.

Characters need to grow, particularly in a show like "The West Wing" that's grounded in a real, if somewhat alternative, universe. But if they grow too much, they risk changing from the original characters that made the show work. If they don't suffer some, the series can feel like a Disney special; if they suffer too much, we've got a daytime soap.

Even the normal rhythms of life -- say romance -- come with built-in problems. A romantic chase is always entertaining. Romantic bliss on screen is dull. But if characters always love and lose, they become thin caricatures -- think Ally McBeal.

There are other natural hazards. Send one story off line and the repercussions can be huge.

For instance, the death of the president's longtime secretary, Mrs. Landingham, set up a brilliant episode and some lasting, solidly human complications for President Jed Bartlet (Martin Sheen). But it also left a gap that needed filling and, unfortunately, the result was those too-goofy job interviews and a wacky introduction to Deborah Fiderer (Lily Tomlin, who's on board for 10 episodes this season).

More important than those blips has been the continuing election story line. If you have a show about politics, you're going to need elections, but in fake White Houses, as in real ones, elections dominate everything else.

Other stories, like the growing crises with the fictional Middle East nation of Qumar, have been overshadowed by the election, and they're being drawn out because they can't get playing time.

The thing is, elections aren't a lot of fun. Not even fake ones written by Aaron Sorkin. Elections are the pieces of democracy -- particularly as they are performed in modern America -- that most of us like least.

And, oddly enough, they don't fit "The West Wing's" tone. Sorkin has described his show as an old-fashioned Western, and the guys who wear the white hats come through in the end on the wings of their principles, hard work and earnestness.

But that gets lost when the plot is driven by a campaign. We mostly just watch people devising strategies, which not only goes nowhere, it ends up sounding like preachy moralizing, or even worse, like political cynicism.

When there were actual actions to take, as in last week's superb debate episode, we got back to the heroes coming through on brains and grit, and everything felt right in the world.

The TV world, anyway, and that's the other thing. Real life has not helped the "The West Wing" much. The real elections, which seem to be nastier and even more depressing than usual this year, have added to our distaste at watching fake ones.

And the change of real White House administrations has also changed a lot of relationships with the show that, a year or so back, was a national hour of healing.

When Bill Clinton was president, Jed Bartlet represented something better for almost everyone -- for Democrats, he was what Clinton could have been; for Republicans, he was at least an honest, moral man and he wasn't Bill Clinton.

Now, some Republicans see Bartlet as an argument against President George W. Bush, and many Democrats see Bartlet's hawkish outlook as support for the Bush position on Iraq.

We say, let it go. Sorkin has said since the start that Jed Bartlet and his crew are simply an argument for intellect and a thoughtful, well-intentioned approach to governing.

All of that, however, is irrelevant here. This is simply an argument that "The West Wing" is what it has always been, a masterpiece of flowing wit, of eloquence, brains, storytelling and romanticism.

Has it hit some bumps? Sure. Will it hit more? Undoubtedly. Is it still the best show on TV? Absolutely. Will critics still harp? Of course, for a while. Then we'll hear about the resurgence.

So, tonight, the elections start to end -- though we don't learn if Bartlet wins re-election until next week. (Any bets?) That means, tonight, finally, we can begin the national healing.

Posted by MorganG at November 6, 2002 05:53 PM