Bartlet4America News Archive

Can 'West Wing' without Sorkin survive?

by Tim Goodman
San Francisco Chronicle

There's no "West Wing" tonight, the show having wrapped up a messy and creatively hazy season exactly a week ago. That leaves barely enough time for you to stumble to your senses and ponder, as creator and writer Aaron Sorkin leaves his own show next season, how a once-great series has fallen so far.

The bigger question is, next September, on a Wednesday night at 9 p.m., are you still going to be watching?

While that may be up for internal debate, there's no question at all that "The West Wing" will be decidedly different next season and, based on what Sorkin dropped on viewers this year, that may not be as devastating as expected.

First, a step back. "The West Wing," once television's best and most intelligently written drama, has fallen on not only rough but also odd times. Ratings are down -- mostly a result of competitive counterprogramming, much of it reality-driven. But after a surprising free pass in the early years from Republicans in the demographic who watched the series without much judgment, that has all changed. Where once, during the Clinton administration, the fictional liberal Jed Bartlet was an idealized and improved version of the actual president, during the Bush administration both Bartlet's politics and the show's story lines appear hopelessly Hollywood and out of step with what are derisively called "the flyover states."

Did a more politicized "West Wing" commit the crime envisioned by decades of programming gurus who had passed on just such a show -- namely, alienate 50 percent of the potential audience? Probably not. But obviously NBC wanted to do something with "The West Wing" that Sorkin and Thomas Schlamme, another executive producer and architect of the series, couldn't abide. About the only public explanation of the disagreement between the two sides was that Sorkin's desire to write almost every episode often led to costly production delays.

That couldn't possibly have been the only divisive issue. But maybe it was, because the other plausible one -- NBC wanted Sorkin to dumb down and sex up the show -- had already been accomplished by Sorkin himself.

A gifted writer with a penchant for exact, if narrow, character portrayal and lively, smart substance, Sorkin nonetheless has a weakness for season- ending melodrama. To say he hasn't given NBC plenty of soap, after spending 20 or so episodes trying to be issue-oriented and important, is nonsense. An assassination attempt and a killing ended two previous seasons, each diminishing what preceded it.

Worse, this year Sorkin backed himself into an impossible situation by having Bartlet's re-election campaign dominate the series, when anyone with a fraction of TV industry knowledge knew that Bartlet was not going to lose. After getting out of that quagmire -- by obliterating a Republican candidate whose metaphorical similarities to Bush were so obvious even Steinbeck would have passed -- Sorkin steadied the series only to fall back, yet again, on a few ridiculous season-ending episodes.

Another sniper shot into the White House? The president's daughter kidnapped? The vice president resigning after having an extramarital affair? Unnecessary and ludicrous, not to mention sudsy. The kicker was having a Republican speaker of the House (John Goodman, uncredited in the episode to keep it a secret) take over the presidency when Bartlet, fearing that he'd be

irrational about his daughter's kidnapping, invokes the 25th Amendment.

Despite the earlier, thinly veiled Bush-bashing as Bartlet defeated a Republican candidate, Sorkin has tried almost too hard to shift "The West Wing" into the modern political arena. Some Republican-tinged story lines popped up (even favorable ones), and yet another Republican do-gooder lawyer was hired (of course, this just allows a Democratic administration to seem charitable and kind).

But setting "The West Wing" in motion as a battleground between competing parties and having Goodman be some kind of snorting bull looks more like a clunky patch job than a stroke of genius. So, with Goodman playing a belligerent political opponent of Bartlet's, it's clear he's not going to give back the presidency without a fight. Does this make "The West Wing" more in tune with the country's political situation?

No, it makes it frothier.

Remember, Sorkin did this. Not his replacement(s) for next season. Also lost in the political machinations of the season finale was an almost surreal surfacing of cheap love stories. Toby and Andy and the proposal that went wrong? Charlie and Zoey potentially rekindling their relationship? Amy and Donna coming to terms with their feelings for Josh?

What is this, "Friends"?

So did NBC push Sorkin to produce these cookie-cutter twists? After all, "The West Wing" has never been about sex and relationships. It has been, since the beginning, about the inner workings of the White House, period. Maybe these capitulations to standard, boring TV storytelling were Sorkin's way of trying to appease the NBC brass. Or maybe Sorkin was running out of ideas. A little of both, probably.

Even if Sorkin were not leaving, "The West Wing" would be in trouble, based solely on these season-ending tricks. Here was a drama that, in seasons past, didn't need to tart up story arcs by creating faux drama. "The West Wing" worked because of the passion it had in making politicians and those who work for them as ideologically driven as the doctors in "ER" or the dedicated mobsters on "The Sopranos." Sorkin created a world that, despite his quirkly speaking styles (where nearly everyone sounds the same), viewers wanted to enter. Politics suddenly seemed interesting. There were precious few tawdry story lines, and when they did pop up (the assassination attempt), they seemed manufactured and creatively forced.

It seems that the implosion now evident on "The West Wing" may have been unavoidable. Most network presidents would never have green-lit a pilot about politics. It's just one of those off-limits premises that never seem to fly. And when, inexplicably, people of both political parties -- and critics, too --

flocked to the series, it became a hit, defying all kinds of conventions along the way. Perhaps it was only natural that the series is feeling the effects of forces that were expected to sink it four seasons ago.

Now the show is at a crossroads. With Sorkin out (he wrote all but one of the episodes), who will replace him? And will those writers ape his idiosyncratic style? If they don't, will "The West Wing" still be "The West Wing" as we know it? And if they do, will the series seem like a cheap knockoff of itself?

More troubling, for real enthusiasts of what "The West Wing" initially tried to become, is this emphasis on soap. Wednesday night is likely to mimic "WWE Wrestling" as Goodman's overbearing character takes command of the White House (like taking candy from babies?) and Bartlet's loyalists fight back valiantly. Mixed in, we'll probably see Donna make a move on Josh and, honestly, can a bedroom scene be too far away?

Maybe this is all too much navel-gazing and sour grapes. After all, who hasn't voted -- with a remote or not -- and then thought, as the second term began, "This isn't what I signed on for"?