Bartlet4America News Archive

Disgruntled voters bail on the chief

BY PHIL ROSENTHAL
Chicago Sun-Times

A banker named Aaron Buerge is wreaking havoc with Jed Bartlet and his administration, which just won the White House again in a landslide but is nonetheless sliding in the approval ratings among TV viewers.

NBC's "The West Wing" is down in the Nielsens by 20 percent over all from a year ago and, among the advertiser-coveted 18-to-49-year-old crowd, the numbers are off by almost a staggering 30 percent.

"Wing" auteur Aaron Sorkin may have made Gov. Ritchie seem like a ninny, but even Ritchie would recognize that's anything but fuzzy math.

Maybe Buerge and ABC's "The Bachelor" will stop siphoning off viewers after this Wednesday, if only because he is supposed to pick either Helene or Brooke and put his catfighting harem game show to an end.

But that doesn't necessarily mean happy days are here again for Sorkin's weekly civics class, which started faltering last season and has never really recovered. "The West Wing" remains an above-average series and draws a still-healthy 15 million viewers each week, but it's nowhere near as good or as satisfying as it once was.

The lessons seem preachier, the stories more labored and, well, you just don't get the same swell of emotion each week that you could rely on after nearly each episode in its first couple seasons. While most shows are hitting their stride in season four, "The West Wing" already is starting to falter.

Thanks to David Palmer's crisis mode on Fox's "24," Bartlet isn't even the most interesting president in prime time at the moment. Heck, Bartlet isn't even the most interesting politician in his White House as Rob Lowe's Sam Seaborn character is being written out of the show with a run for the House in California's archconservative Orange County.

It doesn't take much to fix things when you have a strong cast and an idea of where you want to go. Just look how "The Sopranos"--which had a lot of us itchy for something (anything) to happen--redeemed our faith by pulling many of its loose ends together in the last two weeks.

Unfortunately, it's not clear Sorkin has that overriding vision David Chase has on "The Sopranos." Sorkin's fly-by-the-seat-of-his-Dockers approach once gave this show a sense of spontaneity. Lately it's only given the program stories that lurch along in fits and starts for weeks only to end abruptly and too many supporting characters (and actors) to service.

The president is facing congressional hearings and no one sees a way out, then suddenly it's over as if there never should have been a crisis in the first place.

Press secretary C.J. Cregg is falling for a Secret Service agent, then he gets killed for a mistake the gang in the "Police Squad" movies wouldn't make.

Gov. Ritchie goes from being a formidable opponent to a straw man in the blink of an eye, as if a GOP candidate could get through the nomination process without being able to survive a mere debate.

You get the feeling that the only people less respected than conservatives on this show are the intelligent viewers who know, even if Sorkin and company resist, that drama comes from conflict.

Sure, there was no way Bartlet could lose his re-election bid--Martin Sheen has a fat new contract and there's too much money at stake for NBC and Warner Bros. TV--but Ritchie at least could have forced the president to reconsider his ideas and approach on an issue or two.

Making Bartlet and his White House staff right on every single issue is doubly uninteresting unless the opposing arguments are reasonable and have merit. This used to be a show about the exchange of ideas. Too often now it's a show about liberals slapping themselves on the back about how right they are ... about everything.

Well, we're going to find out just how smart these people really are because, in prime-time television, every night is election night and we're an electorate that can be as fickle as a bachelor banker from Springfield, Mo.

Imagine if ABC or the other networks, unlike Sorkin, gave us an intellectual equal to consider in the race.