Bartlet4America News Archive

Why has The West Wing stopped dodging bullets?

Show that once embraced its characters is now embracing doomful plot devices
Scott Feschuk
National Post

Wednesday, April 30, 2003

Most of what happens on The West Wing (NBC/CTV) happens in the White House, the centre of American political and military power, a building from which magnificent armies can be deployed, arrogant foreign leaders intimidated and, if you happen to be the President, tasty sandwiches ordered. The possibility of world-altering, pants-wetting drama is inherent in every ring of the telephone and every solemn frown of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

For years, creator Aaron Sorkin and his writers demonstrated remarkable willpower in resisting the easy, doomful plot device. Sure, there was the assassination attempt that concluded the show's first season. But even by then Sorkin had established that he cared too much for his characters -- for their lives and especially for their efficient manner of speaking his eloquent, witty words -- to let them be obscured each week by apocalyptic crises and gun-toting wingnuts. Many of The West Wing's finest instalments have been about nothing -- or rather, about the relative nothingness of contrary viewpoints, benign workplace chatter and small gestures of loyalty. The stage was big, but the drama didn't need to transpire on an epic scale to resonate.

Alas, when the phone rings these days in the Oval Office, one senses that Jack Bauer, Kiefer Sutherland's death-dodging counterterrorism agent, will be on the other end of the line. The West Wing has gone all 24 on us. A Secret Service agent is gunned down! Air Force One is in grave peril! The President's personal assistant is in jail! In last week's episode alone, shots were fired at the White House, a U.S. spy plane crashed in Russia and it was revealed that, a few weeks earlier, the United States had only barely averted nuclear war with North Korea. All that, and one other appalling act against the American people: Matthew Perry was brought in as a guest star! (I'm kidding: He was actually quite good, and he's back tonight.)

I want you to know that I tried to get to the bottom of this. I boldly stood up and brazenly asked the obvious query: "Why has this quality program so enthusiastically embraced such crude dramatic devices, and in doing so abruptly shifted the narrative emphasis from the lives of the characters that Sorkin and company worked so hard to make indelible in the first place?" But my crafty television -- it dodged the question, and by way of reply instead tried to convince me that attractive, exotic women would find me dead sexy if only I switched to drinking Blue Light.

Perhaps Sorkin has finally burned out (no shame there: During the past four years, he's written more TV than anyone this side of David E. Kelley. Or, for that matter, that side of David E. Kelley). Perhaps he and his staff reckon bullets and bombs are the creative ordnance that will recapture the millions of viewers who have abandoned the show during the past two seasons. But the fundamental appeal of The West Wing has always been the way in which the main characters react to developments, comic or grievous, and interact with each other. Weekly calamities reduce a cast of talented actors to an hour of looking bummed and whispering gravely among themselves. Worse still, the threat of a president or his people facing perilous peril never seems less perilous than when similarly perilous peril was faced only seven days earlier.

Somehow last week, amid tales of nuclear panic and sounds of automatic weapon fire, Sorkin and company worked in a subplot about eggs -- specifically, about the notion that, at the precise moment of the vernal equinox (and only then), it is possible to stand an egg on its end. It was, for this drama series, a routine mining of quirky lore for the purposes of character development and humorous banter. (The fact is, it's not too hard to find an egg that will stand on end at any time of the year, though I fear that by revealing this I'm telling you too much about the state of my social life. I sense an Ecklerian five-part series coming on: Musn't ... use ... first ... person ...)

But don't you think the ending of the episode would have been far more satisfying and clever if, instead of seeing C.J. (Allison Janney) -- who throughout the episode had been ridiculed for believing in the upright potential of the egg -- successfully stand one on end, we'd instead glimpsed only her face as she fiddled with the egg? A determined expression and then, finally, a smile. Upbeat, positive, but still somewhat cryptic. It's a minor thing, a beef smaller than an overcooked minute steak. But it's yet more evidence that this is a program whose makers have developed a sudden preference for closed endings over open endings, and big, booming plots over small.

C.J. spoke of faith last week -- faith in her colleagues, faith in the future and, yes, faith in the egg. Her faith was ultimately rewarded. Perhaps there's time yet for Sorkin to rediscover the faith he had in The West Wing as he first envisioned it.