Bartlet4America News Archive

Broken Wing

The strange drama behind the sudden exit of West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin
By Mary Murphy and Mark Schwed
TV Guide

For Aaron Sorkin, the end was fittingly presidential.

His coworkers were gathered on the Oval Office set, preparing to shoot the most dramatic moment in The West Wing's four-year run--the swearing in of a new president--when word came down to stop what they were doing and adjourn to the Roosevelt Room.

Sorkin, their Emmy-winning commander in chief and the man who had single-handedly written 87 of the show's 88 episodes, walked in minutes later and delivered a bombshell: He was leaving the show. Right now.

"There was a stunned silence," recalls actor Joshua Malina. Martin Sheen finally spoke: "Oh, my God." Then came the sobbing. "It was an emotional holocaust," says Bradley Whitford. "It was agony for all of us."

Asked what he would do next, Sorkin said, "I honestly have no idea."

Sorkin's abrupt resignation ended a tumultuous four-year journey with the show. There were many high points, including three Emmys for Outstanding Drama Series and the attention of the show's real White House counterparts, who treated the cast like heads of state when they visited Washington, D.C., two years ago. "It was about a journalist who gets one piece of information wrong, and everyone else picks it up," says director Thomas Schlamme, who is leaving as well.

But there was also an exhaustive work schedule and a humiliating drug arrest in 2001, when Sorkin was caught boarding a flight to Las Vegas with cocaine, marijuana and hallucinogenic mushrooms in his luggage.

At the time, many in and outside Hollywood worried that Sorkin's past addictions had returned. The writer had done a 1995 stint at Hazelden Institute, a Minnesota rehab clinic, to kick a freebase cocaine habit. Before he had entered rehab, Sorkin told TV Guide, he was smoking crack every day.

Once out of the hospital, he said, he stayed sober for two years but then began drinking and using drugs again. Although he and his wife of seven years separated after his 2001 arrest, for which he received probation, Sorkin claimed to have conquered his drug problem for good. "And the way we know that," he told TV Guide that year, "is that I am frequently and randomly drug-tested at a court facility. That'll go on, I'm assuming, for the duration." (Sorkin's probation ended in December 2002.)

However, if Sorkin straightened out his personal life--and by all accounts, drugs were not an issue in his departure--he never seemed to have dealt with his workaholic habits or his need for control. He was known to put in 17-hour days, writing virtually every word uttered on screen. In Hollywood, where TV shows are usually written and produced by committee, that is as rare as a Honda in the parking lot of Morton's.

Eventually, the crushing load began to catch up with Sorkin, and the quality of the writing suffered. According to one West Wing insider, who asked not to be named, Sorkin had only two weeks after the end of last season to begin writing this year's episodes. [Sorkin] got lost in the woods and couldn't produce pages, and he was depressed," the source says.

Sorkin's penchant for turning in pages at the last minute sent The West Wing $3.8 million over budget for the season. No small sum for one of the most expensive television shows to produce, at $2.8 million an episode. The production delays were aggravating, to say the least.

"In the past, the cast and crew would be ready to shoot and there would be no script, and everybody would be told to go home," recalls one West Wing insider. "They were told that they wouldn't be able to start shooting for a day or two."

Warner Bros. Television, which bankrolls the show, was running out of patience. Although The West Wing stands to make a profit of approximately $100 million a year by its fifth season, the budget overruns were coming out of the studio's pocket.

Adding to his troubles, Sorkin was under pressure from NBC to change the emphasis of the show. Sources say that network believed the characters were too liberal for a country that had seemingly veered to the right in recent years. NBC also reportedly wanted juicier story lines. Although The West Wing had once been a Top 10 staple, its audience dropped by nearly four million viewers from the 2001-2002 season and it was facing intense competition from ABC's The Bachelor and The Bachelorette.

Sorkin apparently tried to give the network what it wanted. He wrote parts for guest stars like Matthew Perry and concocted a riveting May sweeps story arc that saw Vice President Hoynes, played by Tim Matheson, resign because of a sex scandal. And in a dazzling season finale, President Bartlet (Sheen) chose to step aside following the kidnapping of his youngest daughter. Bartlet was succeeded by the Speaker of the House (John Goodman), a Republican.

But in the end, none of it was enough and Sorkin was out. In a farewell conference call to his writing staff, he was circumspect, telling them that he was presented with a situation in which he had to choose budget over quality and that he didn't want to do that.

After Sorkin's departure, executive producer John Wells was quickly given day-to-day control of the show and has already begun hiring writers for next season. The force behind NBC's ER and Third Watch, as well as the executive producer of numerous films, including "Far From Heaven," Wells has an extraordinary track record. But Sorkin will be a tough act to follow, and there is a tremendous amount of money at stake. West Wing fans will have to wait until this fall to see if their show can survive the loss of its original creative voice.

If nothing else, the show's cast and crew will at least have an easier time of it, according to a source. "Theye're going to get their lives back."

Invoking the 25th a good way to air the scary stuff

By JOHN DOYLE
The Globe and Mail

Tuesday, May 20, 2003 - Page R2

To get the lay of the land in the United States -- finding those political and social trends and ideas coming to the surface -- you just have to watch prime-time American TV.

I know some people think this is a crock.

Network television is commercial entertainment, they say, so it can't be taken seriously as an indicator of anything. But the fictional stories on TV shows reflect and suggest, sometimes guardedly, ideas and feelings that aren't spoken aloud yet.

Elsewhere in this section today you'll find me and some other people speculating about what will happen on the season finale of 24 tonight. It's all blather. The really interesting aspect of 24 this season has been the use of the 25th Amendment as a plot device.

It became even more interesting when, last Wednesday, the 25th Amendment was also used as a key plot device on the season finale of The West Wing. The 25th Amendment, which allows the president to lose his power to function as president, but does not remove him from office, has rarely been used in reality and rarely talked about, but now it's everywhere on TV. There's something happening here, and what it is has become clear.

For the same obscure amendment to be used twice in prime-time TV shows is more than an interesting coincidence. The 25th Amendment has become such a popular plot twist that I was surprised not to find it used in the finale of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Seriously, both 24 and The West Wing tell stories about American politics and the threats to the U.S. from other countries. Now, both shows suggest that a sitting president can lose his power lickety-split. I'd suggest that this is all connected to Hollywood disgruntlement with George W. Bush and the weird way he won the last presidential election without actually winning the vote.

Remember Michael Moore's speech after he won an Academy Award? Standing with the other nominees from the best documentary category, he said, "We like non-fiction, yet we live in fictitious times. We live in a time where we have fictitious election results that elect a fictitious president. We live in a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons."

Some people in the audience cheered, some booed and when the booing started, the cheering got louder. After last week's season finale of The West Wing and the last few episodes of 24, I'm starting to think that Moore's idea about "fictitious times" and "a fictitious president" have taken hold.

What is suggested in both 24 and The West Wing is that the American president can be snatched away from office in an instant. It might be a palace coup, as happened on 24, or it could be a wild convergence of personal and political reasons, as we saw on The West Wing.

The upshot is this: George W. Bush became president in a wildly unreal scenario of an almost-tied vote, contentious ballots in Florida, and a Supreme Court intervention.

The previously solid institution of the presidency is now a malleable thing, almost fictional in its elasticity. Add to that the widespread belief that Bush is manipulated and influenced by people and forces the public knows little about -- oil companies, right-wing zealots and the shadowy advisors with secret plans for world domination and locking up oil supplies. In the Bush presidency, even Vice-President Dick Cheney could be called a "shadowy presence."

What you've got, in the minds of Hollywood writers, is a paranoia about government and the forces that shape events in Washington. What you end up with on TV shows like 24 and The West Wing is no longer an idealized White House, but a dystopia. There is no didacticism at work on either show. But both -- with their plots about vague terrorist threats and presidents losing their powers by anything other than votes -- are nightmarish visions of the contemporary American power structure.

Real events feel fictitious, so the fiction on TV reflects them as outrageous, absurd and sinister. In Hollywood, some people are both scared by the Bush administration and deeply cynical about it. Whether it's an oil-company plot on 24 or a Republican good ol' boy suddenly becoming president on The West Wing, using the 25th Amendment is just a trick for tying up the loose ends of all that cynicism about what really happens in Washington.

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"?

Just how airworthy will a no-Sorkin 'West Wing' be?

By Brian Lowry
LA Times

Nothing offers a better microcosm of the TV season that officially concludes tonight than the madcap farce played out at 9 p.m. Wednesdays -- a how-the-mighty-have-fallen tale subtitled " 'The Bachelor' and the Bartlet-knockers."

At center stage stood ABC's dating show, which helped systematically siphon younger viewers away from NBC's "The West Wing," a three-time Emmy winner for best drama that dared eschew sexual politics in favor of arcane questions of governance.

Because many were eager to see the latter show get its comeuppance, the cause of its dwindling ratings was pored over in minute detail. Truth be told, various factors contributed to "Wing's" ratings decline as well as series creator Aaron Sorkin's decision to depart at season's end, leaving oversight of the Bartlet administration to fellow executive producer and "ER" patriarch John Wells.

As always in television, the impact of ratings can't be overlooked. It's hard to imagine Sorkin being badgered about late script delivery and related budget overruns had viewership stayed aloft; that it didn't doubtless played a part in this changing of the guard. After all, such excesses are more easily excused as the cost of dealing with an auteur when the payoff is unbridled success.

Sorkin has rejected all my interview requests since those days when every "West Wing" story was a paean of praise, which is ironic because the show itself exhibits such a keen grasp of the press' role in the political world. For what it's worth, my sense is he established a strong enough foundation for the series to carry on without him, even if a writing staff under Wells' capable guidance won't always match his operatic highs.

Still, what do I know? So a few weeks ago -- before this season's cliffhanging finale -- I asked readers whether "West Wing" would benefit or suffer from the absence of its creative center and what might be done to rekindle interest. The thoughtful responses underscored why NBC remains enthusiastic about a series that remains, as NBC Entertainment President Jeff Zucker told media buyers last week, "by a long shot, not even close, the most upscale program on television" in terms of median viewer income and education levels.

The letters also highlight the program's potential to engage both intellectually and emotionally. In that respect, those blinded by their desire to view it politically -- first through the prism of the Clinton years, now the Bush presidency -- underestimate the fascination in glancing behind the curtain of a White House occupied by intelligent and dedicated personnel grappling with maddeningly difficult issues.

" 'West Wing' can never be the same without the writing skills of Aaron Sorkin," wrote Dom Caristi, an associate professor of telecommunications at Ball State University in Muncie, Ind., who fears the show will descend into burlesque. "After succeeding with a Matthew Perry guest role, they will 'up the ante' by having political figure guest stars including Bill Clinton (since the '60 Minutes' gig didn't work), Monica Lewinsky (since the 'Mr. Personality' gig didn't work) and Cher (she has nothing else to do now)."

"The problem with 'The West Wing' as we know it is not too much politics but too much Sorkin," said Norm Levine of Santa Monica. "Every character is a version of Sorkin himself. The program begs for a wider range of sensibilities and nuances in confronting the issues of the day."

"The series will get better with Sorkin gone," agreed Terry A. Bass of Torrance.

"It will dive quickly," said Craig A. Meyer of Pasadena. "The show was the mouthpiece of Aaron Sorkin and without him might not have much to say. Secondly, if they'd really been thinking, they would have let the Republican win in last year's election and started a whole new show. Same concept, a totally different cast. It's worked for 'Law & Order.' But I'm just a viewer."

So is Pat DePetrillo of Corvalis, Ore., who reached a different conclusion. "Whatever direction the show takes, it has to be better than the last two seasons. The show has become a bit pompous, as Sorkin put more emphasis on the president rather than on his staff, and repetitious as he recycled the 'witty' dialogue of episodes past. My recommendations for improvements include returning to the show's original premise, with more time devoted to the behind-the-scenes maneuvering of the White House staff."

DePetrillo also advocated bringing back Rob Lowe, "but that will never happen." As "ER's" Sherry Stringfield can attest, never say never, but for now Lowe has a job on a new NBC drama, "The Lyon's Den."

One missive suggested spicing things up by adding an "American Idol" twist.

"Given the current political landscape, the series might benefit from a shift in the ultra 'progressive' ideology that is the hallmark of Mr. Sorkin's writing," observed Dean Butler of Los Angeles. "Going a step further, Warner Bros. could add a reality element to the series and allow the audience to vote in an online election featuring President Bartlet against a truly compelling candidate from the other side of the aisle. I know they've already done an election, but this is TV -- run another election. All the season's action would lead to a huge 2004 election three-part cliffhanger featuring electronic ballot scandals and court challenges, set in May sweeps, of course."

Others were indignant the question was being asked at all. "What exactly needed to be fixed?" wrote Ron Wells of Corona del Mar. "In television's never-ending search for the lowest common denominator (anyone for a stupid woman questioning a bunch of moronic men in masks?), we have to say goodbye for now to one of the great television writers of our time. Along with 'The Sopranos,' 'Six Feet Under' and the original 'Law & Order,' what are educated and discerning viewers to watch?

"Aaron Sorkin will do just fine without television, but I can't say the same for those of us who were amazed at his intelligent dialogue, multiple story lines, and a definite point of view in regard to politics.... Now we will get John Wells, who has already made a mess of the once-respectable 'ER,' and I'm sure he will find a way to 'up the numbers' while destroying the quality of this show too. Mr. Sorkin needs no defense from me or anyone else; the quality of 'Sports Night' and 'West Wing' speak for themselves."

With that we close the polls for now, giving the last word to Sorkin, who foresaw what was to come when he accepted his first Emmy in 2000. "Well," he said as he took the podium, "there's going to be no living with me now."

Brian Lowry's column appears Wednesdays. He can be reached at brian.lowry@latimes.com.

The Networks Decide to Rearrange the Furniture -- or Toss It

By Lisa de Moraes
Washington Post

Friday, May 9, 2003; Page C07

Is Superman being shoved aside to make room for Tarzan on WB's schedule?

Will CBS's touchy-feely Sunday movie bite the dust?

Can "Angel" battle the dark forces at play between WB and 20th Century Fox TV, and emerge for another season?

Does anyone care whether "Becker" comes back?

Is anyone home at ABC?

Hollywood -- at least the TV portion -- was atwitter yesterday as the broadcast networks' prime-time schedules for next season began to jell.

CBS is kicking around the idea of moving its movie franchise out of Sunday night. CBS is the only network still clinging to the if-it's-Sunday-it-must-be-movie- night model once favored by NBC and ABC as well.

CBS's Sunday movie is down to about 10 million viewers this season -- a decline of nearly 20 percent compared with the previous season -- and ranks No. 57 out of 177 shows. The CBS Sunday movie is also a very old-skewing franchise; more than half of those 10 million-and-change viewers are 50-plus.

WB is mulling whether to move freshman hit "Smallville" from its Tuesday night berth after "Gilmore Girls" to pass the time slot along to its new "Tarzan in the City" drama series. Most speculation has "Smallville" moving to Wednesdays at 8 p.m., replacing canceled "Dawson's Creek."

Unless Fox reconfigures its broadcast pattern for "American Idol" next season, this would eventually be a total downer for the hordes of teenage girls devoted to both "Smallville" and the Fox singing competition series. (Fox won't have "American Idol" on in the fall because it would just get all messed up by baseball playoffs, a fall-schedule destroyer to which Fox suits shrewdly committed through 2006.)

But hey, here's some good news for fans of "The Practice." There are still some fans of "The Practice," right? Odds of this David E. Kelley show returning were not good until ABC suits started looking at their drama development for next season and discovered that a lot of it is loads worse than "The Practice." Given ABC's batting average with new dramas this season -- that would be 0.000 -- the future of "The Practice" was much rosier yesterday, some sources reported. In fact, ABC's drama development for next season may also ensure that the network has more comedies on its fall schedule than any other network, the sources said. One person said that ABC, having finally noticed that its once-successful Friday TGIF comedy block is no longer on the schedule, may try to bring it back.

Ultimately, the future of "The Practice" may come down to money. In the life of a TV series, it is unfortunate that the drop in ratings is usually inversely proportional to the increase in production costs (aka star salaries).

It may be the same with the WB series "Angel," which like "The Practice" is among the shows said in Hollywood to be "on the bubble," which is the same thing as "on the fence," only less Midwestern.

NBC suits, who announce their new lineup to advertisers first, on Monday, continued to knock around which new drama series to put where.

Under discussion was the notion of keeping "The West Wing" on Wednesdays at 9 p.m. instead of moving it to Sundays, but taking it off the air for nine or 10 weeks during the season to air "WW" alum Rob Lowe's new attorney-in-Manhattan drama, "The Lyon's Den."

This is a great idea, if only because if you remove all "West Wing" reruns from the TV season, the series's season average will shoot way up and the media will write about the comeback of "The West Wing." Kind of like what they did in the 1999-2000 TV season when ABC gave the "NYPD Blue" time slot to "Once and Again" in the fall. "Blue" didn't debut until January and then ran rerun-less; its season average soared compared with the previous season.

"West Wing" will need all the help it can get, because with the chronic deadline-busting executive producer Aaron Sorkin having been driven off the show he created and on which he wrote nearly every episode, the White House drama is sure to come in on time and under budget every week -- but it's not sure to be, you know, good.

Having "WW" and "Lyon's Den" share the Wednesday time slot would free up an hour on NBC's new schedule, which makes it more likely we'll see "Boomtown" on the fall lineup. NBC is trying hard to bring back that critically acclaimed drama series; Vanessa Williams has been signed to star in multiple episodes if it is picked up for its second season.

Meanwhile, having decided not to pick up a Heather Locklear sitcom in which she would have played a divorcee whose kids were trying very hard to keep apart from their dad -- no, that's not a mistake; it was a comedy -- NBC has asked Locklear whether she would like to join the cast of its dead sitcom "A.U.S.A."

Locklear is known as a show saver, having revived "Melrose Place" and "Spin City" by joining the cast. This would be her hardest assignment yet.

Cerebral Vortex

How Aaron Sorkin, the brains behind TV's smartest show, got the last laugh

By Richard Just
The American Prospect Online

Web Exclusive: 5.16.03

Over the years, a lot of people have called The West Wing -- the NBC drama that concluded its fourth season this week -- a liberal fantasy. To be sure, the show's politics are explicitly liberal, but those politics have always been secondary to the program's central message: that intelligence and moral purpose are the two most important attributes we ought to expect from our political leaders. In the last season, and particularly in his final episode Wednesday night, series creator Aaron Sorkin managed to turn his show into a meta-statement, not just on what's wrong with American politics but also on what's wrong with American entertainment.

How ironic, one of my friends recently pointed out, that the creator of a show devoted to lamenting the lack of intelligence and seriousness in American leadership is now out of a job because his show was . . . too intelligent and too serious. In the last scene of Wednesday night's episode -- the final scene Sorkin wrote for the show -- the intellectual President Bartlet (Martin Sheen) invoked the 25th Amendment and handed power to the buffoonish and unserious House speaker (John Goodman). This has to go down as one of the least subtle -- and most daring -- middle fingers ever thrust at a television network on its own air time. The idiots will take it from here, Sorkin seemed to be telling his viewers.

On some level it was a self-indulgent and unfair ending to what has been a brilliant four-year run for Sorkin: self-indulgent because, on the surface, it seemed to be more about his own squabbles with NBC than about the show itself, and unfair (at least to viewers) because Sorkin left so many important plotlines to be resolved next fall by a successor who cannot possibly be up to the task. But on another level it was a brilliant ending, because it resonated with the suspicion held by many Americans that the idiots are very much in charge -- not just at NBC but in Washington as well.

That may sound partisan, but I don't mean it in an ideological way, and I suspect Sorkin didn't, either. After all, what has set Josiah Bartlet apart from his fictional Republican rivals -- and from his real-life counterpart in the White House -- has been less his politics than the intellectually and morally serious way he approached his job. The means that Sorkin used to distinguish Bartlet from his adversaries were -- contra the widespread perception of the show as a liberal fantasy -- almost never ideological. In the penultimate scene of last season's finale, Bartlet clashed with his opponent in the coming general election, not over politics but over the question of whether intelligence in public life is a virtue or a vice. Earlier this season, when Bartlet's advisers began preparing him to debate his challenger, their strategy came down to a decision over whether to show off the president's considerable intellect or to muffle it in an effort to have him appear more in touch with average Americans. They opted to put the real president -- brains and all -- on display; he trounced his opponent in the debate and in the subsequent election.

Once again, this past Wednesday night, the differences between Sheen's president and Goodman's House speaker had little to do with the policies they favored to respond to the episode's terrorist kidnapping. Both characters were prepared to use force; the difference was in how they prepared to use force. Sheen's character ordered American troops to ready for an attack on Qumar (the show's fictional stand-in for Saudi Arabia), but he did so after weighing the options with what appeared to be an appropriate sense of the ethical weight of his decision. Goodman's character, by contrast, burst into the Oval Office and announced that he'd shoot his "mama" out of the sky if need be -- he was all macho flippancy and no serious consideration. Sheen's character is certainly not a pansy: We've seen him use force before, and we know he'd do it again. But we also know that when he does order military action, he does it the right way. You wouldn't catch President Bartlet saying, "Feels good," as George W. Bush is reported to have said after ordering the U.S. attack on Iraq to begin in March. Bartlet would more likely be praying for the lives of those he has just ordered into combat, and hoping against hope that the decision to go to war -- which is, after all, a human decision and therefore fallible -- proves to be the correct one.

In that sense, I've always thought that the media overplayed The West Wing's ideological component. Of course there were policy differences between the Bartlet White House and the Bush White House, but the real fantasy for most viewers wasn't in imagining that the president was liberal -- it was in imagining that the president had more ethical scruples than Bill Clinton, more intelligence than Bush and more seriousness of purpose than both put together.

You could say that the show -- in its worship of intelligence and superhuman selflessness -- was elitist, but I think that would miss the point. The implication was not that Sorkin wanted a president who was a know-it-all (although Bartlet does sometimes come off that way, as Prospect contributing editor Garrett Epps pointed out last year). It was rather that presidents ought not to merely ask the best of Americans but also to ask the best of themselves. And in that context, an open disdain for intelligence or intellectual sophistication doesn't seem like something we should want in a leader -- no matter his stance on the actual issues.

In the end, however, The West Wing hasn't been a good series because of what it had to say about politics; it's been good because it was smart TV. The use of camera work, of metaphor and of symbolism often elevated the show to an artistic level that's usually the domain of independent films and the occasional Hollywood movie, but almost never seen on network television. Some of Sorkin's best themes had nothing to do with politics: The importance of fathers and fatherhood was a running obsession of the show and, with the notable exception of a subpar episode this past winter about Alzheimer's, was usually employed to solid dramatic effect. When the show was firing on all cylinders -- which was not always, but often enough -- it had the sophistication of literature. And that was Sorkin's meta-statement: His was a smart show whose central message was about the virtue of intellectual passion. In its rise, it demonstrated that there is an appetite for intelligent, popular art among a wide swath of Americans -- and in its ratings decline, which led to Sorkin's well-publicized feuds with NBC, it has illustrated how fickle that appetite can be.

The show's genius was so particular, its narrative voice so distinctive, that it's hard to believe it will even be worth watching next fall with Sorkin out of the picture. True, his final show did not provide the dramatic resolution viewers were hoping for -- the kinds of dramatic resolutions that Sorkin had dreamed up in his thundering climaxes to the last two seasons -- but I suspect that was part of the point. The ending was so blatantly dissatisfying, so guilty of weirdly comical stunt casting (if the people I was watching with were any indication, viewers all across America started laughing when, at a moment of great dramatic tension, the camera revealed the House speaker to be none other than the boorish-looking Goodman), that I wonder if Sorkin didn't intend it that way. The idiots have control of American entertainment, he seemed to be saying; now, let them have my show.

Still, if it was a cynical statement, it was a rare one for The West Wing. And it can be forgiven because of what Sorkin gave us the past four years: a smart show that celebrated not intelligence for its own sake but intelligence moderated and spurred on by the highest of ideals. In its final hour, the show was not just smart about its values; it was also smart about its own inherent fragility as a smart show. Aaron Sorkin may have let buffoonery triumph in his final episode. But his remarkable success during the last four years has proven, against long odds, that it need not always win.

Richard Just is the editor of The American Prospect Online.

'Wing' and a Player

by Liz Smith
Newsday

May 14, 2003

HAD A LONG CHAT with the President of the United States yesterday - oops, I mean the fictional president, Martin Sheen of "The West Wing." This marvelous actor, who has already played John and Robert Kennedy and heavens know how many fabled other acting roles, has become a lighting rod of activism. His TV president remains a kind of candlelit beacon for faltering Democrats and out-of-style liberals.

Martin and his "West Wing" troops are a bit on the ropes, what with the departure of the show's creator Aaron Sorkin and director, Tommy Schlamme. He says, "We felt a bit like we'd been orphaned for a few days, but after the initial shock, we determined to regroup and get behind our producer John Wells and carry on."

Do they have hard feelings at the Sorkin-Schlamme departure? "No, it was always true that Aaron was drawing to a very difficult phrase. His style, and the way he wrote - well, he almost couldn't do it on demand, and yet he did it, over and over. His work was so intelligent, so incredible.

"But we have a solid staff. We still need a new head writer, and there is no other Aaron Sorkin. He was 'The West Wing,' but we will find our way. We are on for two more years should it continue, and I'll stick around for as long as it does."

I kidded Martin about spending most of his time in jail because of his activist causes. He laughed. "I'm never comfortable unless I'm uncomfortable," Sheen said. "But I think it's important for this show to go on. I try now to keep a rather low profile, because my work on the show is more important than making some statement. If the voice of 'The West Wing' is ever silenced, we'll all be the poorer for it. Many people seem to be against what we stand for, but many others depend on us and are backing us up."

When I asked this actor-activist who he is supporting politically, he said, "Howard Dean. He is not afraid to lose."

Martin Sheen goes with his family to Tipperary, Ireland, next week to celebrate what would have been the 100th birthday of his late mother. Her relatives are all coming together as Irish-Americans. "That's positively Kennedy-esque!" I said, as I bid my favorite president goodbye.

House proud in the West Wing

Sydney Morning Herald

May 14 2003

The West Wing's Bradley Whitford takes Michael Idato on a tour of the show's spectacular set.

"You need to be real enough to be believable but you don't necessarily have to be real enough to be real," says Bradley Whitford of the uncanny replica of the White House's Oval Office on the set of the political drama The West Wing.

We're far from prying eyes, tucked away in a soundstage on the Warner lot in LA's San Fernando Valley (best known for its warm climate and porn industry). Unlike most sets, which are made up of two or three free-standing walls clustered in a soundstage, the White House West Wing is reproduced faithfully - not just the Oval Office, but the corridors leading into it and the rooms and terraces off those corridors. The attention to detail is spectacular and the scale is grand.

Walking through it you might not even know you're on a TV set, except there are cameras everywhere and at one point Stockard Channing, better known as First Lady Abigail Bartlet, wanders past in a towelling dressing-gown, coffee in one hand, script in the other.

The West Wing focuses on the presidency of Democrat Josiah Bartlet (Martin Sheen). Whitford, our guide for the day, plays deputy chief of staff Josh Lyman. At the show's heart, explains Whitford, is an exposition of the issues that politicians have to deal with.

"The only way I can describe it is a mixed metaphor," he says. "How dirty do my feet have to get, without disappearing in the mud, in order to get an inch of what I really want done? How do I make progress and not lose myself?

"In politics, it's an ugly game. It's easy to be [environmental crusader] Ralph Nader and stand on the sideline with a clean uniform when you've never been elected and say, 'You guys are dirty, you're compromised'. The fact is, it's very difficult to make real progress."

When The West Wing began in late 1999, it was an instant hit with critics and viewers alike. In its first year, it won nine Emmy Awards, including outstanding drama series, an award it won again in 2001 and 2002. It has also won a Peabody Award, Golden Globe nominations and Television Critics' Association awards.

Nearing the end of its fourth season, it continues to exhibit rare depth for a television show. Whitford believes it has matured over the years, allowing the actors to hone their performances. "The longer we do it, in a weird way, the purer the acting experience seems to be," he says. "In film, you think about whether or not the story works, whether or not the character works and whether or not the audience will accept it. Here, all of those are taken care of and you can focus on making a scene work."

This season, however, some cracks have started to show. Ratings in the US have softened and co-creators Aaron Sorkin and Thomas Schlamme recently confirmed they will quit at the end of the season, leaving executive producer and third co-creator John Wells alone at the helm. For a show that flourished under the hand of three passionate producers who also wrote and directed, the loss of hands-on involvement will be profound.

Sorkin, in particular, will be sorely missed. "I think his achievement, in terms of how prolific he has been, the quality of scripts he has come up with over the last 3 1/2 years and the size of his aspiration, is unprecedented in my experience," Whitford says. "One of Aaron's unsung attributes is his ability to sense what an actor can do and then exploit it, in the best sense of the word. Aaron knows how to write for people in a way that makes them look like they own it. As a result, a character like Josh is always a very comfortable character to get into."

A peculiarity of The West Wing is that the actors attend a group read-through of each week's script, a technique usually confined to sitcoms where rehearsal time is much shorter. In drama, scripts tend to be in pieces and actors read and rehearse individual scenes, but Sorkin prefers a more collaborative approach.

For the actors, it is an invigorating and challenging process. "All through my career, which has been a fortunate one as a working actor doing lots of different stuff, I always felt a little humiliated by the fact that, as an actor, I felt like I was never using all the cylinders," Whitford says. "This is challenging and it's still very challenging four years later. There is an intense technical demand, there is a real rhythm that Aaron hears that is very specific that you have to be aware of. There is a lot of emotional and intellectual depth to it."

Having said that, Whitford admits he secretly dreams of other - weirder - roles.

"I wanna be a fop in a restoration comedy with a Pekinese on a leash behind me," he laughs. "Yeah, I have that fantasy a lot. I have fantasies about doing all sorts of things, but I can't imagine a job that would satisfy me like this one does."

The West Wing airs on Nine on Tuesdays at 10.30pm.

A Whiff of Camelot as 'West Wing' Ends an Era

By ALESSANDRA STANLEY
New York Times

May 14, 2003

NBC can resist everything except temptation. Diane slept with Sam on "Cheers," Niles married Daphne on "Frasier," and even in the busy emergency room of "E.R." no doctor ever went unloved for more than a season. This network, which has only one season left of "Friends," plans to introduce a sitcom called "Coupling" in the fall. On that show six single friends have a lot of sex.

"The West Wing" broke many conventions when it began on NBC in 1999, but one of the most startling was its chastity: a man and a woman could be hypnotically drawn to each other for months, even years, and never consummate their passion.

Like the dialogue on screwball comedies written under the decency restrictions of the Hays Code, language on "The West Wing" took the place of lovemaking. Josh Lyman and his assistant, Donna Moss, would bicker, banter and tease, their volubility rushing in to suppress vice. It was the same for C. J. Cregg, the White House spokeswoman, or Amy Gardner, the women's-rights lobbyist. Like characters played by Rosalind Russell or Carole Lombard, both women wisecracked their way around their feelings. The only impulse that was regularly acted on in that White House was principle.

Idealism was the sex of "The West Wing," an élan vital that drove even small-minded people to mad acts of ethics.

It was the most romantic show on television.

That will change next season. Aaron Sorkin, the creator, writer and executive producer of "The West Wing," is not returning to the show, and neither is another executive producer, Thomas Schlamme.

NBC, concerned about this season's drop in the ratings, declared that the show would go on under the guidance of the third executive producer, John Wells, who also oversees "E.R." and "Third Watch." Jeff Zucker, the president of NBC Entertainment, assured advertisers that "The West Wing" was still a good buy, with the "most upscale audience" of any show on television.

Given Mr. Wells's other work, the show's episodes may become easier to follow: plots are likely to be ripped from the headlines, not from history books or Shakespeare, and if Mr. Zucker has any say, someone is certainly going to have sex besides the uxorious President Bartlet.

The dialogue is likely to be less richly woven, and the cultural allusions more accessible than St. Augustine, Gilbert and Sullivan and Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto. There may be sharper contrasts among the characters: the people in Mr. Sorkin's world were a little like the puppets in the movie "Lili," different expressions of their creator's vision.

Even bit players brought in to provide some mischief, like Ainsley Hayes, the blond Republican firebrand, cannot resist the lure of democratic virtue. She quickly proved as high-minded and chaste as all the other workaholic, sexually repressed Democrats working in the Bartlet White House.

Mr. Sorkin's "West Wing" was a boy's vision of the true Camelot: knights at the Round Table and Guinevere safely upstairs and locked in her chastity belt.

Certainly the show will be less literate. It is hard to believe that in a Sorkinless "West Wing" a young White House aide will sarcastically refer to a French rival as Tartuffe.

Mr. Sorkin, moreover, leaves his successors with something that President Bush's aides never faced when Bill Clinton left office: a dignified exit. Since earlier this month, when Mr. Sorkin announced he was leaving, the subsequent two shows have been dazzling, as witty and suspenseful as any of the episodes that earned "The West Wing" so many Emmy awards. The surprise ending in tonight's finale is just as rewarding. (The writing is as delicate as ever: a kidnapping subplot gives Bartlet a chance to deliver to Toby the most sweetly understated expressions of fatherly love likely to be found on television.)

Mr. Sorkin's "West Wing" ends the way it began, with honor, not lust, quickening the pulses of his characters. Two weeks ago Vice President John Hoynes was found out to be having an extramarital affair with a Washington socialite, who leaked his classified pillow talk to a newspaper in preparation for a tell-all book.

Any other show would have given viewers a glimpse of this executive-branch seduction. On "The West Wing" not only are the adulterous couple not shown together, but the socialite is never seen.

Instead viewers witness a tantalizing tussle between principle and self-interest. The chief of staff assures the vice president that he can "weather this," and so does the president.

"Apologize and move on," Bartlet says. "Accept responsibility."

The vice president, however, takes the noble route and resigns. "The truth is," he says, "I took an oath, too."

In the finale, President Bartlet faces an even more wrenching decision than the vice president does, and Mr. Sorkin leaves NBC with a tough act to follow.

Will "The West Wing" go south?

After this year's ratings slide and the departure of creator Aaron Sorkin, NBC's long-running White House drama is headed for major changes. That's not necessarily a bad thing.
By Heather Havrilesky
Salon

May 14, 2003 | What happens when a master chef leaves his four-star restaurant to highly trained associates who, although just as experienced, may not share his unique talents in the kitchen?

That question is at the heart of "The West Wing's" future. On May 1, creator Aaron Sorkin announced that he and director Tommy Schlamme are leaving the show after an unexpectedly tumultuous season. Fans can't help wondering if their favorite Wednesday night fare will taste just as good next fall, with a new cook whipping up the wonkish banter and moral one-upmanship that regulars have come to know and love.

While President Jed Bartlet and his ethically irreproachable minions are raked over the coals with clocklike regularity, the staff and crew of "The West Wing" can relate these days, having dangled closer to the fire than your average ballpark frank. (This year's final episode is Wednesday, May 14 at 9 p.m., on NBC.) First, there was the departure of Rob Lowe after salary disputes. Then, the show came up against "The Bachelor" and lost a lot of its younger viewers to the dating show's fluffier, far less strenuous fare. Add to that tense renewal negotiations with NBC, Martin Sheen's controversial antiwar comments and Sorkin's missed script deadlines -- which reportedly cost Warner Bros. millions of dollars -- and the flames of Hollywood hell were licking at "The West Wing" like never before. But it was still a shock to those involved with the show when Sorkin announced his departure, particularly since he had just begun to incorporate some racier, more suspenseful story lines, in accordance with the network's wishes.

Of course, Sorkin has a long history of refusing to play nice. In addition to the trouble caused by his arrest for possession of cocaine and hallucinogenic mushrooms in 2001, his annoyance with NBC hasn't exactly been a secret. In a 2002 interview with the New Yorker, Sorkin expressed dismay over NBC's special "The Bush White House: Inside the Real West Wing" -- hosted by Tom Brokaw -- which he called a "valentine to Bush." As an industry executive told the Washington Post, "He's always been a gigantic pain."

But what does it mean to be a gigantic pain in the mixed-up world of television, where an exceptionally talented writer, widely acknowledged as a master of his craft, must answer to network executives focused on the bottom line? Ask any TV writer about the kinds of notes and insights they receive from their network, and they'll tell you five stories about the morons in charge, then top it all off with the "I'm paid to do a job, just like anyone else" philosophy that keeps their groundsman in rubber boots. Being "difficult," in this world, can be translated roughly as "having a pulse."

Before I add my voice to the din that's discussing where "The West Wing" may have gone astray, let's first take half a second to acknowledge the obvious: This is one of the best dramas on television, with writing so intelligent and dialogue so strong it laid the groundwork for the current generation of great TV dramas. Furthermore, while most TV writers are willing to grapple with politics or science as little as is necessary to make it through the next predictable courtroom or autopsy scene, Sorkin has taken on incredibly difficult subject matter with enthusiasm, presenting the bizarre twists and turns of policymaking with humor and no small amount of suspense. Of course now we take for granted that watching a bunch of administrative staff members could be riveting, unpredictable and even touching, but before "The West Wing," making a fictional TV version of the White House office warren look romantic seemed almost unthinkable. Sorkin has a unique style, voice and vision; on almost every show, there's an innovative plot device or a revelatory moment that maximizes the drama of an otherwise dry subject.

Despite its clear place at the top of the heap, though, "The West Wing" has had some pretty obvious flaws for a couple of seasons now, and it's not surprising that "The Bachelor" and "The Bachelorette" could eat into its ratings. Four seasons in, are we any more familiar with C.J. (Allison Janney) or Leo (John Spencer) or Josh (Bradley Whitford) than we were after the first season? Plots focusing on the main characters' personal lives would be easy enough to weave into the mix, yet Josh and Donna (Janel Moloney) continue to flirt openly and do nothing, Toby (Richard Schiff) is so private he's downright boring, and Sam Seaborn (Rob Lowe), mysteriously likable and ripe for the romantic picking, was ignored to the point of blatant negligence. And why? So C.J. and Josh could stride down the hall for the umpteenth time, trading the same rapid-fire quips that feel more outdated than a battery-operated monkey singing the macarena?

And then there are those precision-guided moral navigational systems with which every character on "The West Wing" seems to be outfitted, to the detriment of the show's dramatic impact. Why must everyone, from stoical, holier-than-thou Toby to shocked, "I can't even hear this" C.J., be so damn good, so morally upright and so self-righteously shrill, that they spend most of their time one-upping each other on questions of ethics instead of getting their hands filthy in each others' moral mud pies, like the real people in politics? Maybe I'm excessively jaded about the subject, but I don't buy the naiveté with which these staffers approach the assassination of the leader of fictional Qumar, or the paroxysms of disgust they experience upon discovering their boss has an illness he hasn't disclosed. What rock did these morally pure creatures crawl out from under and, more important, how do you go from innocent millipede to White House staffer without becoming soiled or disillusioned by the dirty realities of politics along the way?

As original and distinct as Sorkin's writing style is, "The West Wing" has needed some new, more exotic flavors to spice up its old standby formulas for a while now. Throwing Ainsley Hayes (Emily Procter) into the mix during the second season definitely added a kick to the show, but she always felt underused. In fact, with every compelling personal subplot, the show always seemed to stop short, like a delightful appetizer followed by ... the check.

Until the last few episodes of this season, that is, when "The West Wing" seemed to veer into some unlikely territory. "Friends" star Matthew Perry steps into Ainsley's shoes and somehow pulls off the standard "I know more than you think I do" stunt that all the president's badasses are required to perform, this time with surprisingly understated grace. Meanwhile, the vice president (Tim Matheson) is revealed to have been conducting an illicit affair, and Charlie (Dulé Hill) directly confronts presidential daughter Zoey Bartlet (Elisabeth Moss) about dating some creepy French guy instead of him.

The surprises culminated in last week's riveting episode, when suddenly Toby was having heartfelt discussions with his pregnant ex-wife Andy (Kathleen York), Amy (Mary-Louise Parker) was blurting at Donna, "Are you in love with Josh?" the creepy French guy was slipping ecstasy into Zoey's drink, and Taye Diggs, the hot guy who helped Stella get her groove back, turned up as a Secret Service agent charged with protecting Zoey, mostly by marching around and screaming into his walkie-talkie. By the end of the show, which gained momentum with unusual cross-cutting and an eerie score, Toby was emoting openly, Donna and Amy were having a real conversation, and Zoey, aka "Bookbag," was kidnapped out from under the noses of her personal army. Is this really "The West Wing" -- or some mind-bending hybrid of "Six Feet Under," "24" and "Law & Order: Criminal Intent"?

Whatever it is, I like it -- which makes it all the more frustrating that Sorkin is leaving the show just as he's starting to deliver exactly the kind of mesmerizing but appealingly personal plots that might win back a younger audience. Still, by leading the show into uncharted territory before exiting, he's certainly made it easier on next year's writers. Instead of being charged with mimicking the same lightning-quick banter we've seen for years (which they'll undoubtedly attempt to do regardless), Sorkin is demonstrating how to take the show in a new direction without compromising its quality. While hardcore "West Wing" fans are probably horrified with such dramatic moves away from the show's bread and butter, more viewers are bound to wake up and take notice.

Will the show barrel downhill without Sorkin and Schlamme at the helm? It's impossible to say. But a source close to the show points out that with John Wells taking over as show-runner -- Wells helped bring "ER" to the small screen and made the show a hit well after Steven Spielberg and Michael Crichton left -- it's a good bet that "The West Wing's" quality won't suffer all that dramatically. Sure, the general flavor of the show might change, possibly to include more sensational or personal plots in line with other popular dramas. But at this point, frankly, "The West Wing" could use a little more salt in its stew.

salon.com

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About the writer
Heather Havrilesky is Salon's TV and entertainment correspondent. She created the cartoon Filler with illustrator Terry Colon. She's a regular contributor to NPR's "All Things Considered," maintains the rabbit blog and is writing a novel.

UPFRONT MAY 2003: NEW FALL 2003 PHOTOGRAPHY

NBC Press Release

NBC unveiled a new primetime schedule for the 2003-04 season that will bring three new comedy series and three new dramas to America’s number one television network. Joining the network’s current lineup, which consists of some of TV’s most popular series, are such marquee stars as Alicia Silverstone, Rob Lowe, Whoopi Goldberg, Ryan O’Neal, John Larroquette, Christine Baranski and James Caan.

The announcement was made today by Jeff Zucker, President, NBC Entertainment, at NBC’s annual Sales Presentation held at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City.

Zucker told advertisers, “NBC maintains the stability of a schedule that has been number one among 18-49-year-olds for three consecutive years and seven of the last eight. We’re thrilled with our efforts to develop the next wave of hit comedies and dramas.” He added, “This is a balanced lineup that will continue NBC’s legacy as the leader in quality, scripted programs.”

The new comedies include: “Coupling,” starring Emmy Award winner Rena Sofer (“General Hospital,” NBC’s “Ed”), Colin Ferguson (“The Opposite of Sex”), Sonya Walger (“The Mind of the Married Man”), Jay Harrington (“The Division”), Lindsay Price (“Beverly Hills, 90210”) and Christopher Moynihan (“The Fighting Fitzgeralds”); “Happy Family,” starring Emmy winners John Larroquette and Christine Baranski, and “Whoopi,” starring multi-talented Oscar winner Whoopi Goldberg (“Ghost”).

The new dramas are “Las Vegas,” starring an ensemble including Oscar and Golden Globe nominee James Caan (“The Godfather”) and Josh Duhamel (“All My Children”); “The Lyon’s Den,” starring Rob Lowe of NBC’s “The West Wing,” and “Miss Match,” starring Alicia Silverstone (“Clueless”) and Ryan O’Neal (“Love Story”).

The new schedule kicks off Mondays with the hit reality series “Fear Factor” (8-9 p.m. ET) followed by a fast-paced new drama, “Las Vegas” (9-10 p.m. ET). It replaces “Third Watch,” which moves to 10 p.m. to start its fifth season. Hit drama “Crossing Jordan” (currently airing at 10-11 p.m. Mondays) will return to NBC’s schedule for its third season in January, after series star Jill Hennessy gives birth to her first child.

On Tuesdays, the network re-invigorates it’s comedy lineup from 8-9 p.m with the new comedies “Whoopi” and “Happy Family,” followed by the night’s anchor, multi-Emmy winner “Frasier” (9-9:30 p.m. ET). Freshman comedy “Good Morning, Miami” moves from Thursdays to Tuesdays at 9:30 p.m. and the gripping drama “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” - now entering its fifth season - moves to Tuesdays at 10 p.m., replacing “Dateline NBC.”

Remaining completely intact is NBC’s Wednesday drama lineup - which many critics have hailed as the best night of drama on television.

The legendary “Must-See” Thursday schedule - which will feature the final season of the classic comedy “Friends” - also remains the same, except for the 9:30 p.m. addition of the sexy singles comedy “Coupling,” based on the hit British series of the same name. Zucker also announced a two-year deal for “ER,” ensuring that the Emmy-winning drama will remain on NBC another three seasons.

Fridays usher in the new Alicia Silverstone drama “Miss Match” (8-9 p.m. ET), created by Darren Star (“Sex and the City”). Following “Dateline NBC” (9-10 p.m. ET), Peabody Award-winning critical favorite “Boomtown” travels from Sundays to Fridays at 10 p.m., and carries on the fine tradition of NBC crime dramas in the time period (including “Miami Vice,” “Homicide: Life on the Street” and “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit”). Additionally, Zucker announced that Vanessa L. Williams (“Eraser,” “Soul Food”) will join the cast of “Boomtown” in its second season.

Saturday remains the night for major theatrical films on NBC, with a lineup this season that will feature the network television premieres of “Traffic,” “A Perfect Storm” and “Shrek.”

The growing Sunday lineup continues to feature “Dateline NBC” (7-8 p.m. ET), freshman hit “American Dreams” (8-9 p.m. ET) and the surging “Law & Order: Criminal Intent” (9-10 p.m. ET). The new drama “Lyon’s Den,” starring Rob Lowe, inherits the Sunday 10 p.m. time slot.

Zucker also announced that “The Tracy Morgan Show,” starring “Saturday Night Live’s” Tracy Morgan, will debut later this fall. The reality series “The Apprentice,” from Mark Burnett (“Survivor”) and featuring business tycoon Donald Trump, will premiere in early 2004.

Zucker stressed the following points concerning NBC’s current successful lineup:

NBC has now won three seasons in a row (includes projected ratings for 2002-03) in adults 18-49 and seven of the last eight years.
NBC maintains strength across the schedule, with top-30 shows on six nights of the week. NBC has 11 of the top 30, more than any other network.
NBC’s schedule boasts the top four comedies, two of the top three dramas and the top two newsmagazines in adults 18-49.
NBC has five of the top six scripted programs.
NBC is #1 or tied for first in key demographics in the six major dayparts (prime time, late night, daytime, morning news, evening news and Sunday morning public affairs), something no other network has ever accomplished.

Following is NBC’s primetime schedule for the 2003-04 season, followed by show descriptions. (Titles are “working titles”; all times are Eastern Time):

NBC PRIMETIME SCHEDULE FOR 2003-04

*New programs in CAPS

MONDAY 8-9 p.m. “Fear Factor” 9-10 p.m. “LAS VEGAS” 10-11 p.m. “Third Watch” (new time)

TUESDAY 8-8:30 p.m. “WHOOPI” 8:30-9 p.m. “HAPPY FAMILY” 9-9:30 p.m. “Frasier” 9:30-10 p.m. “Good Morning, Miami” (new day and time) 10-11 p.m. “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” (new day and time)

WEDNESDAY 8-9 p.m. “Ed” 9-10 p.m. “The West Wing” 10-11 p.m. “Law & Order”

THURSDAY 8-8:30 p.m. “Friends” 8:30-9 p.m. “Scrubs” 9-9:30 p.m. “Will & Grace” 9:30-10 p.m. “COUPLING” 10-11 p.m. “ER”

FRIDAY 8-9 p.m. “MISS MATCH” 9-10 p.m. “Dateline NBC” 10-11 p.m. “Boomtown” (new day and time)

SATURDAY 8-11 p.m. “NBC Saturday Night Movie”

SUNDAY 7-8 p.m. “Dateline NBC” 8-9 p.m. “American Dreams” 9-10 p.m. “Law & Order: Criminal Intent” 10-11 p.m. “THE LYON’S DEN”

Following are program descriptions for NBC’s new series.

NEW DRAMAS

The Lyon’s Den -- Rob Lowe (NBC’s “The West Wing”) stars in this Washington D.C.-based drama as Jack Turner, the maverick, idealistic son from a political dynasty who must handle the cases and inner workings of a 150-year-old law firm which may or may not be hiding some dark secrets. Matt Craven (“The Life of David Gale”) plays Riley, Jack’s more practical friend and partner in the small pro-bono clinic of Lyon’s, Lacross and Levine, which will be closed unless Jack accepts an ultimatum to leave the clinic and become managing partner at the firm’s headquarters. The cast also includes Kyle Chandler (“Early Edition”) as competitive and cynical attorney Grant Rashton, Elizabeth Mitchell (“Santa Clause 2”) as Ariel Saxon, an attractive attorney struggling with alcoholism, David Krumholtz (“Big Shot: Confessions of a Campus Bookie”) as Fineman, James Pickens, Jr. (“Traffic”) as Terrance Christianson and Frances Fisher (“Glory Days”) as Brit Hanley. “The Lyon’s Den” is a production of 20th Century Fox and Brillstein-Grey Television. Remi Aubuchon (“24,” “From Earth to the Moon”) is the writer and executive producer; Rob Lowe, Brad Grey (“The Sopranos”) and Bernie Brillstein (“Just Shoot Me”) are executive producers. Rod Holcomb (NBC’s “ER”) serves as director and executive producer.

NBC to Add 3 Comedies, 3 Dramas for Fall

By Cynthia Littleton and Nellie Andreeva
Reuters/Hollywood Reporter

Mon May 12, 1:48 AM ET

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - With NBC's bubble shows, "Ed," "Boomtown" and "Good Morning, Miami," all snagging last-minute full-season pickups, NBC will introduce six new series this fall, sources said -- three comedies and three dramas.

The network has given 13-episode orders to the untitled Tracy Morgan and Whoopi Goldberg (news) comedies, and adaptation of the BBC ensemble comedy "Coupling," an untitled Las Vegas drama starring James Caan (news), an ensemble legal drama with Rob Lowe (news), and the dramedy "Miss/Match" toplined by Alicia Silverstone (news).

NBC is said to be going for changes on six nights, up from three last year. Staying intact is this season's Sunday lineup of "Dateline," "American Dreams," "Law & Order: Criminal Intent" and "Boomtown," sources said.

On Monday, "Fear Factor" continues as the anchor at 8 p.m., followed by the untitled Las Vegas drama while "Third Watch" is said to be moving to 10 p.m. from its current 9 p.m. slot.

On Tuesday, the Goldberg and Morgan comedies are expected to lead into "Frasier" at 9 p.m. and "Good Morning, Miami," which is moving from Thursday 9:30 p.m. to Tuesday 9:30 p.m., though sources said another scenario under consideration would have "Miami" Tuesday at 8:30 p.m.

Larry Wilmore, the Emmy-winning writer-producer who inked a deal at NBC Studios following his much-publicized exit from Fox's "The Bernie Mac (news) Show," has been tapped to serve as showrunner/executive producer of the Goldberg comedy alongside Kris Turner, another "Bernie Mac" alum, and series co-creator Terry Turner (no relation).

As for the pickup of "Miami," sources said NBC opted to pick up the show regardless of whether producers can persuade Heather Locklear (news) to join the cast, something NBC was pushing for late last week. The former "Spin City (news - Y! TV)" actress met with the show's producers Friday and is expected to make a decision in the next few days. But one "Miami" cast member who won't be returning for Season 2 is Suzanne Pleshette (news), sources said.

On Wednesday, Lowe's new legal drama will land at 8 p.m., making it the lead-in to his old colleagues at "The West Wing (news - web sites)," which is believed to be staying put at 9 p.m. along with "Law & Order" at 10 p.m.

The only new addition to the Thursday lineup is understood to be "Coupling" in the 9:30 p.m. berth behind "Will & Grace (news - Y! TV)."

On Friday, the buzz-worthy dramedy "Miss/Match" would lead off at 8 p.m., followed by "Ed" and 10 p.m. dynamo "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit."

In a surprising move, NBC is said to be keeping Saturday as a movie night but in a scaled-down 8-10 p.m. slot while the Jill Hennessy (news) starrer "Crossing Jordan" would move to the 10 p.m. berth in its third season. However, there was speculation that "Crossing Jordan" might be held back for midseason in part because Hennessy is pregnant.

NBC's other midseason orders were still hazy on Sunday. Sources said the Christine Baranski (news)-John Larroquette starrer "Happy Family" was still a contender, along with drama "Homeland Security."

Freshman series that didn't make the cut for a second season include the comedies "In-Laws," "Hidden Hills," "A.U.S.A." and drama "Mister Sterling."

Reuters/Hollywood Reporter

'West Wing's' Whitford Talks in the Oval Office

by Kate O'Hare
Zap2it, TV News

LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com) - It's late on a Thursday, and "The West Wing" star Bradley Whitford has come in on his day off to do an interview. It wasn't originally his day off, but the production schedule was pushed back and back until it became his day off.

All in all, it's a typical day on the NBC drama about a Democratic president, which recently saw the departure of creator and chief scribe Aaron Sorkin and principal director Tommy Schlamme after four seasons.

The series ends its current season on Wednesday, May 14, at 9 p.m. ET, with an episode called "25," in which President Bartlet (Martin Sheen) must take drastic measures in the middle of a crisis.

But on this April afternoon, all that is still in the future, and Whitford drops onto a striped couch in the Oval Office set to praise his character and his bosses -- both on-screen and off.

Regarding his character, Deputy Chief of Staff Josh Lyman, a political savant with a wretched personal life, Whitford says, "He's an emotional cripple, that's true, and a fool. He has many good qualities. He's very passionate, and I think he's willing to go through the unsexy, unglamorous work of partisan politics, where you're faced, every episode -- and for him, every day -- [with the question of], 'How do you get your feet dirty without disappearing in the mud in order to get an inch of what you really want done?'"

"That's one thing I love about this show, and that's one thing I love about this guy. There's a lot of standing on the sidelines and finger-pointing at politicians and horror when they compromise. You really have to look at it on a case-by-case basis."

"I always thought it was very easy for Ralph Nader to point and mock. The guy's never held elective office, and of course, you have a clean uniform."

"But aside from the political stuff, I love that he's unable to connect with these women."

Regarding Sorkin, who came to TV after a career as a playwright ("A Few Good Men" ) and screenwriter ("The American President" ), Whitford says, "I met him during 'A Few Good Men' on Broadway. I was probably his biggest admirer before this show began, and I never imagined he could pull this off."

"But I have to say, we're a step above carnival barkers. I'm an actor. I'm a desperate extrovert. Aaron has a desperate need to entertain. That's what we went into this with. The reason this show works, more than any other political show, is because Aaron is not somebody who has any political agenda. Aaron's a floppy guy who really wants to be entertaining."

"He's taken what has previously been seen as dry material ... but each decision has huge consequences, which makes it really dramatic. But it's not Aaron trying to serve anybody their vegetables."

While "The West Wing" has remained a critical and Emmy favorite, its ratings have been slipping. Some credit this to the success of ABC's reality show "The Bachelor," while others point to Sheen's political activism, including his vocal opposition to the recent war with Iraq.

Whitford has a unique perspective. "There is this premium that is set on this intangible thing," he says, "does somebody seem presidential? It's the question you assume that undecided voters are asking after each debate, before they go into the booth, 'Do they seem presidential?'"

"All of Martin's activities recently and for about 30 years come directly from his [Roman Catholic] faith, which is genuine and a very real part of his life. I've felt very protective of him. I was raised as a Quaker, stood next to Martin and introduced him at two events in Los Angeles."

"Martin, as interested as he is in these humanitarian issues -- which is the way he looks at them, not political issues -- Martin will be the first to admit that he would be a lousy president. Within five minutes of spending time with him, you would know that."

"But apparently Martin seems presidential, and I'm here to tell America that -- and I love Martin, I swear to God I would let him raise my children -- but he'd be a lousy president."

"And the relationship between seeming presidential and what I really believe is the capacity to be a great president, that relationship is so casual, it's wearing cutoff dungarees."

Asked what he'd wish for Josh in the coming year, Whitford says, "OK, maybe we can't do it in the nonfictional world, but at least in the fictional world, I'd think it'd be great if we could make sure all children are insured. That's all I'm saying. That's my policy wish."

"For my character, I would just like to see him go into the bedrooms of as many beautiful women as possible."

As to what his wife, "Malcolm in the Middle" star Jane Kaczmarek, thinks of that, Whitford says, "Jane loves to see me on television in romantic situations. She thinks it reflects very well on her, because she got me, which she did."

Will "ER" medicine help or hurt "The West Wing"?

by Gail Pennington
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

05/08/2003 12:00 AM

Tonight, "ER" marks its 200th episode on NBC, with the end nowhere in sight. Unfortunately, that's not true for another NBC drama, "The West Wing."

Although the three-time Emmy winner will be around at least two more years, the series as fans know it came to a de facto end last week when Aaron Sorkin announced that he would walk away after this season.

Sorkin created the richly detailed world of "The West Wing" and has written almost every word of every episode to date. The characters speak in his infectious rhythms. The story lines echo his passions and his peculiarities.

Exiting with Sorkin is Tommy Schlamme, who set the visual style of the show. He's best known for those long, sweeping camera shots, down hallways, around corners, everybody walking and talking, but Schlamme is also a master of the lovely, quiet, almost painterly scenes that balance the show's frantic activity.

They leave a "West Wing" that has lost its oomph. Once a staple of Nielsen's Top 5, it has fallen out of the Top 20 this season, and last week's episode trailed both "The Bachelor" on ABC and "Bernie Mac" on Fox.

From being a critical darling, "The West Wing" has also lost much of its media support, beginning with a backlash that followed Sorkin's special post-Sept. 11 episode, widely panned as preachy. Fans still defend the show as one of television's best, and rightly point out that recent episodes have regained some of their old form, but the watercooler buzz of the first two seasons has pretty much vanished.

With the show (recently renewed for two more seasons in a deal between NBC and Warner Bros.) looking vulnerable, the network began hunting for fixes. Sorkin apparently found himself under increased pressure to improve his work habits. He's infamous for turning in scripts long after deadline, getting further and further behind as the season goes on, causing cost overruns and staff anxiety.

Sorkin's other habits have also caused problems. Two years ago, he relapsed on drugs and (after an airport arrest) was sentenced to therapy. His marriage broke up. A prostitute went public with reports of a past relationship.

Of all those who are hard on Sorkin, however, he's always been hardest on himself. Clearly, the stress has taken an increasing toll.

In a private conversation at an NBC event in Los Angeles in January, Sorkin was unusually subdued. Needing a haircut and looking thin, with particularly dark circles under his eyes, he was most interested in talking about his daughter, Roxanne, 2, pulling pictures of her out of his wallet. Told that she looks just like him, he said, "People say that, and I can't believe there's any of my DNA in her."

Asked whether his feelings were hurt by the backlash against the show, he said, "You know, they are, sort of. The negative stuff just keeps coming. But every day there's a positive, too." He mentioned that three cast members had come to his office that week to praise the current script, that Mary-Louise Parker (who plays feminist Amy Gardner) had slipped an encouraging note into his pocket, and that Helen Hunt had "gone to the trouble to write" a letter about the show.

But clearly, he wasn't having fun anymore, so it was no real surprise when he began hinting (first, in an interview on the "Today" show) that he might leave the series after the fourth season. More problems piled on in the months that followed, including the war in Iraq, which made the fictional "West Wing" political issues seem increasingly irrelevant and sparked controversy over star Martin Sheen's anti-war activism.

Last week's announcement that Sorkin would, in fact, depart and that Schlamme would go with him was momentarily shocking, but then seemed inevitable. Taking the reins is John Wells, the show's third executive producer, whose other series include "ER," "Third Watch" and the defunct "Presidio Med."

A "West Wing" under Wells will almost certainly be a very different "West Wing." In a statement, Wells said, "Sadly, we always knew this day would come and have been assembling a talented group of writers, directors and producers to assist in this transition." In other words, "The West Wing" will now be written by committee, as most TV dramas are.

Without a single person handling every script, "The West Wing" will be more efficient. The bottleneck that was Sorkin is gone, and one script won't have to be finished before another is started. Wells is much praised for keeping shows on time and under budget, and he'll do the same with this one. Unfortunately, efficiency and economy don't add up to magic.

But under Wells, "The West Wing" could actually wind up being a more popular show. It's fair to expect multiple storylines in each show, lots of action and regular shocks. Sorkin gave President Jed Bartlet multiple sclerosis; Wells might have cut off his arm with a helicopter blade.

Expect, also, an increased emphasis on the personal lives of the characters. From being a plot-heavy drama in its early seasons, "ER" slid into soapy territory, and that fate could also await "The West Wing."

In a conference call to talk about the "ER" 200th episode, just days before the "West Wing" announcement, Wells spoke of the "natural evolution towards character" on "ER."

"Not that many medical things could happen in the emergency room," he said, "and once people had seen it and experienced it, they had seen it and experienced it, and they were interested in getting other things from the show."

For a writer, he added, "The fun is writing about the characters and how they interrelate," and seeing what the actors can do. And speaking of actors, Rob Lowe is unlikely to be the last star to depart "The West Wing." On "ER," a changing roster of players is the rule rather than the exception.

After nine seasons, "ER" isn't winding down, Wells said. But maybe, with Sorkin leaving office, "The West Wing" should call it quits after four. Even if this new administration turns out fine, things won't be the same in "The West Wing."

NBC's Comic Opera

By Lisa de Moraes
Washington Post

Thursday, May 8, 2003; Page C07

It's Upfront Time again, that annual orgy of denial in which the broadcast networks rent lavish halls in Manhattan where they unveil their this-time-we-got-it-right prime-time lineups for hordes of advertisers, and everyone pretends that the networks didn't give exactly the same speech last year.

After each presentation, network suits, advertisers and show stars retire to a sumptuous party at some hot spot and try hard not to notice the large elephant in the corner with "New Series Not Scoring Big by October Get Yanked for Reality Show by November Sweeps" tattooed on its hide.

The brave men of NBC go first again this year; their presentation is scheduled for Monday afternoon at the Metropolitan Opera House. They will have to work hard to put a positive spin on their 2003-04 TV season, which will be the absolute positive last season for "Friends" -- without the network having yet developed the next "Friends." Also in the bad-news column: NBC and Warner Bros. TV have driven Aaron Sorkin, the creative genius behind "The West Wing," off the show, which has experienced steep ratings declines; so have "Frasier" and "ER."

There is much speculation in Hollywood this week that NBC may move "The West Wing" from Wednesdays at 9 p.m. and replace it with a new lawyer drama starring "West Wing" escapee Rob Lowe, which really would be thumbing the old peacock beak at Sorkin. (Lowe's show is now called, preciously, "Lyon's Den"; hopefully that will not be the case next week.) There is talk that NBC may move "West Wing" to Sunday night, following "Law & Order: Criminal Intent." That would certainly give the White House drama a bigger lead-in audience than did "Ed" on Wednesdays for much of this season. On the other hand, moving an older show to help its faltering ratings almost never works.

Wednesdays at 8 p.m. NBC is said to be considering a new dramedy from "Sex and the City" creator Darren Star. "Miss Match" is about an attorney/matchmaker, to be played by Alicia Silverstone.

NBC also plans to tell advertisers that it has finally found the next "Friends." It's called "Coupling" and it's about the sexual exploits of -- three hip young guys and the three hip young gals they hang out/shack up with. But it's set in Chicago so viewers won't confuse it with "Friends."

"Coupling" is actually the U.S. adaptation of the BBC comedy of the same name that, oddly, was the U.K.'s answer to "Friends." A little like a dog chasing its tail, isn't it?

This week NBC Entertainment President Jeff Zucker started planting little "Coupling" buzz seedlings; he told reporters that the show was way too sexy for 8 p.m. That, the New York Daily News pointed out, was ironic, since NBC is the network that declared the so-called family hour dead when it put "Friends" at 8 p.m., way back when Zucker was executive producer of the "Today" show and probably going to bed before "Friends" was on.

(He'll look pretty silly if HBO's syndication division succeeds in selling reruns of super-sexy "Sex and the City" to TV stations nationwide to air before prime time even starts, at 7:30 p.m. According to one source with knowledge of that situation, HBO has been quietly talking to large station-owning companies about such a deal.)

Even so, most industry watchers speculate that "Coupling" will get NBC's Thursday 9:30 p.m. slot and could be its only new series that night.

Flailing "Frasier" will probably be surrounded by three comedies again this fall -- only this time they'll be three really good comedies -- possibly the best new comedies NBC has ever developed, maybe even the best ever developed for any network ever.

One would star Whoopi Goldberg and another Tracy Morgan. The third Tuesday comedy contender as of late yesterday was "Happy Family," starring John Larroquette and Christine Baranski.

For Friday night, NBC is kicking around a lineup of drama series contenders including "Ed," "Boomtown" and a Vegas-set drama.

Saturdays, NBC most likely will continue to have no schedule, filling the night by burning off feature-film inventory and rerunning "Law & Order" episodes.

Sundays will continue to be dominated by one-hour programming, including "Dateline," "American Dreams," "Law & Order" and possibly "The West Wing."

Williams in 'Boomtown' series

by Nellie Andreeva
The Hollywood Reporter

May 08, 2003

Actress-singer Vanessa Williams has inked a deal to star in 10 episodes of the NBC drama "Boomtown," should the show be picked up for a second season. "Boomtown's" pickup prospects are looking better, according to industry sources. Speculative NBC schedules making the rounds Wednesday had the NBC Studios/ DreamWorks TV series staying in its current Sunday 10 p.m. berth or possibly moving to 9 p.m. Friday. NBC on Monday is set to kick off a week of fall schedule unveilings by the major broadcast networks. Other contenders for "Boomtown's" Sunday 10 p.m. slot include "The West Wing," the untitled Las Vegas project and the legal ensemble "The Lyon's Den." In what would be an interesting twist, "Lyon's Den," starring "The West Wing's" Rob Lowe, also is being considered for "West Wing's" Wednesday 9 p.m. slot as a midseason replacement for that show or as a fall starter if "West Wing" moves to Sunday.

'West Wing' under new administration

by John Kiesewetter
Cincinnati Enquirer

Presidential speech writers have come and gone through history, but none may be missed more than Aaron Sorkin.

He wrote for the acting president, Josiah Bartlet (Martin Sheen), and everyone else on NBC's The West Wing.

Sorkin, 42, creator and executive producer, will leave the White House drama after four years with the two-part season finale beginning today. Director and executive producer Thomas Schlamme also will depart.

With Sorkin goes the vision and voice of the three-time Emmy-winning drama, the mad genius that elevated dry political debate into theatrical art. John Wells, executive producer of The West Wing, ER and Third Watch, will take over day-to-day duties next year.

How will the new administration change the Bartlet White House? That's what everybody wants to know.

All I can say is that the style of each man couldn't be more different. How that translates on the screen is anyone's guess.

It's been clear to TV critics that Sorkin, the free-spirit, and Wells, a by-the-book producer, have been on a collision course since the start. Wire reports indicated the resignation came after Sorkin was warned about production delays and budget problems (not the ratings decline from competition with ABC's The Bachelor).

Sorkin was notorious for delivering scripts just hours before table readings. And rather than plotting out an entire 22-show season, Sorkin worked by the seat of his pants, impulsively adding new twists to characters, such as Bartlet's multiple sclerosis or first lady Abby Bartlet (Stockard Channing) being a physician.

"When the script comes out, it's usually warm - like bread from the oven," actor John Spencer, who plays Chief of Staff Leo McGarry, once told me.

Sometime long after midnight, Brad Whitford's home fax machine will start spitting out new pages for later that day, said Jane Kaczmarek, wife of the actor who plays Deputy Chief of Staff Josh Lyman, when I profiled the couple three years ago.

Janel Moloney, who plays Lyman assistant Donna Moss, once said Sorkin would "stroll around the set like a crazy man" in his pajamas. Whitford described him as looking "like a plasma donor" soliciting suggestions from actors on the set for his next script.

When TV critics toured The West Wing set in January that first year, Sorkin offered this insight into his creative process:

"Before I came over here this (Thursday) morning, I finished the second act of the script we start shooting on Monday. I have a certain degree of confidence of what's going to happen in the third act, and less about what's going to happen in the fourth act. And no idea what's going to happen in the next episode after this."

Cast members said they didn't mind the late scripts because Sorkin's work was brilliant. They have been as stunned as viewers by their characters' surprise twists and personal revelations.

"The way he writes, we sort of never know what's coming," Spencer said. "He doesn't set up an arc, so you know what happens five episodes down (the line). So it's always an intense surprise for us, too."

Making it up as he went along has been Sorkin's style since his first meeting with Wells, before the pilot was shot. When they sat down to lunch, Sorkin realized that Wells was expecting the screenwriter (The American President, A Few Good Men) to pitch a TV idea. Having been fascinated by his research inside the Clinton White House for The American President, Sorkin asked Wells: "What about the White House?"

From their first session with TV critics in 1999, Sorkin and Wells have joked about their contrasting work habits.

"John Wells Productions is a very, very tight organization and they issue a lot of pieces of paper. One of which gave me a schedule for outlines and first drafts, then second drafts (and) polished second drafts," said Sorkin, while everyone in the room - including Wells and Sorkin - laughed at the notion.

When asked how they could work together, Wells said that day: "Well, I try to get him to be more like me, and he tries to get me to be more like him."

At that initial press briefing, Sorkin also explained why he preferred to add character traits and details only as needed:

"When I do it the way I do it, it comes up naturally... and all of the sudden, in episode 11, you have learned something about one of these people that you didn't know before. And the dramatic effect for the audience is that... you sit forward in your seat a little bit."

Now The West Wing fans will be on the edge of their chairs all summer.

Replacing a show's original executive producer hasn't necessarily been a bad thing. Wells' ER, The Simpsons, Wonder Years and Roseanne thrived with new "show runners." On the other hand, L.A. Law, Northern Exposure, Murphy Brown and Dallas lost their way.

Loyal West Wing and Sports Night fans also will admit they knew when a show wasn't written by Sorkin. Conversations lacked the clipped cadence or dense content. (I call it pseudo-Sorkin.) Nobody has been able to replicate Sorkin's "chatty, glib and talky" style, as he calls it. But Wells will try.

"Sadly, we always knew this day would come and have been assembling a talented group of writers, directors and producers to assist in this transition, " Wells said.

But can all the president's men replace one Aaron Sorkin?

Next week on The West Wing ... erm

by Oliver Burkeman
The Guardian

With its machinegun dialogue, crackling wit and political savvy, The West Wing has dominated American TV drama for almost four years - and become a cult hit in the UK. But now Aaron Sorkin, the mercurial genius who created it is leaving, hard on the heels of one of the show's biggest stars. So, Oliver Burkeman asks, is it all over for the world's favourite American president?

Wednesday, May 7, 2003

There was a time - not many years ago, though it often seems that way these days - when the White House of The West Wing was considered to be so much in tune with the White House at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue that the fictional version began to take an active role in policy development. Members of Congress wanting to test the water on planned legislation, it was rumoured, would submit their proposals first, not to focus groups or to Washington Post correspondents, but to Aaron Sorkin, the creator, writer and all-round deity of the award-winning television series. If the avuncular, public-spirited administration of Josiah "Jeb" Bartlet could only be persuaded to take an idea on board, the reasoning went, that guaranteed it a public airing and an intelligent mulling of its benefits - more, perhaps, than it might be assured in the real world.
Now, though, there is a decidedly anachronistic feeling to a White House where the president seems never to sleep, or where his staff openly revel in the exchange of witty barbs with the press corps (Typical Josh Lyman: "I'm not your girlfriend, I'm not your camp counsellor, and I'm not your sixth-grade teacher you had a crush on. I'm a graduate of Harvard and Yale, and I believe that my powers of debate can rise to meet the Socratic wonder that is the White House press corps." Typical Ari Fleischer: "I'm not going to comment on that.")

Martin Sheen is as likely to be mentioned in the media as a result of his famous - and in many circles deeply unpopular - opposition to the war in Iraq as for his role as President Bartlet, the thoughtful Catholic from New Hampshire. The vocally liberal presidential aides of The West Wing, holding meetings as they walk at improbable speeds down the corridors are, in the real world, off writing memoirs, or waiting in a holding pattern at Washington thinktanks until a Democratic president is elected. In the Bartlet White House, reproach is most frequently delivered through bitter sarcasm, delivered at machinegun speed; in the Bush administration, former staffers have said, late arrivals are greeted by the rather more sinister and only half-joking, "Missed you at Bible study."

It is not just the changing times that seem to be to blame for the news this week that Sorkin is to leave The West Wing at the end of this season, severing his connections with the series that he dreamed up and for which he wrote 70 pages of dialogue a week, dominating the writing process in a way unheard of on team-based shows such as Friends or The Sopranos. According to sources on the show, there were missed budgets, missed deadlines, and extremely well-paid actors kept waiting for scripts they then couldn't memorise in time, thanks to the often stunning complexity of Sorkin's trademark crackling dialogue. Then there were the recurring disputes over actors' pay, including the rancorous departure of Rob Lowe, and Sorkin's high-profile drugs bust - a development less embarrassing than if Bartlet had not made clear his contempt for the war on drugs, perhaps, but hardly helpful for the NBC network.

While ratings continued to soar, though, it seemed that executives there were content to tolerate Sorkin's famously close-to-the-wire working methods, which often echoed the crisis-to-crisis long-hours culture of the Clinton White House. Comparing his working methods to those of the writer of Ally McBeal and The Practice, David Kelly, Sorkin described how Kelly told him: "'Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday I write Ally McBeal, Thursday, Friday and Saturday I write The Practice. Sunday, I'm with my wife and kids.' And I thought, I have a real schedule, too. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, I freak out 'cos I haven't thought of what next week's show is. Thursday I start yelling at people because I haven't thought of what next week's show is. Friday, I go, 'Oh my God, there's going to be half an hour of dead air ...' and then it finally gets done."

But The West Wing never left the top 10 in the United States until this season, where it now languishes at number 23. This time last season it attracted an average 17 million viewers; this season the figure has plummeted to 13.5 million. The same tolerance, it appeared, could no longer be extended. "This has been the experience of any writer's dreams," Sorkin said in a statement. "I had the best job in showbusiness for four years, and I'll never forget that."

But behind the scenes, exasperation was setting in. "Was it a dysfunctional family? Sure," a West Wing insider told the Guardian yesterday, speaking on condition of anonymity. "It wasn't really just money why Rob left - it's tough to be an actor and wait around for scripts. It was very costly. Aaron is brilliant, and I'm sure they'd have wanted him to continue with the show, but the problems were pretty well known for everyone involved."

Not that Sorkin seemed to have lost the support of Sheen, whose publicist would say only that "Martin loves Aaron and wants to do what he can to help him out".

At the height of its success, The West Wing's links to the real-life corridors of power were genuine - Clinton chiefs of staff John Podesta and Leon Pannetta both acted as advisers to John Spencer, who plays Bartlet's sharply intelligent aide Leo McGarry - and the cast made little secret of where their political sympathies lay.

The show is what viewers "hope life is like in the West Wing, because these are all good people, trying to do the right thing, and I think they really want it to be what it's like", Alison Janney said of the Clinton administration at the time, discussing her role as CJ. "And from the people that I've personally met in the West Wing, I would say that we're pretty right on track. They're pretty great, wonderful people that work in the White House in this administration. I mean, it's the only one I've met or had the opportunity to get close to, but they all seem like really wonderful people who really care about their jobs and what they're doing."

Bradley Whitford, who plays Lyman, said that while reading George Stephanopoulous's memoir All Too Human, an adrenaline-sodden and deeply personal account of the Clinton White House, he privately retitled it "Everything Brad Whitford Needs To Know To Do This TV Show."

The only slight problem was that Sorkin seemed to operate his punishing weekly schedule, producing script after script redolent with optimism and hymns of praise to public service, side-by-side with a fairly serious drug habit. After cocaine and hallucinogenic mushrooms were discovered in his suitcase at Burbank Airport in Los Angeles in April 2001, as he was preparing to take a flight, he pleaded guilty to two felonies, paid a fine of $7,000, entered rehab and embarked on a round of public contrition. "I'm really no longer going to be the guy who wrote A Few Good Men," he told the now-defunct Talk magazine, referring to the play, later a film, that first propelled him to fame. "I'm going to be the guy who got into drug trouble."

Earlier, when writing the 1995 movie The American President, his schedule of round-the-clock writing and little sleep had been fuelled by cocaine smoking, he told Talk. "There was no way to hide it. I had cut off the entire world. Literally, I would just sit in the hotel room and close the curtains and put the Do Not Disturb sign on the door. I wouldn't be with anyone. Wouldn't talk with anyone on the phone. You couldn't get me out for a slice of pizza."

But it was not just the drugs, or the change in the political colours of the real White House that left executives feeling the show had lost its touch: more central was the transformation in the political atmosphere that followed September 11. Rapid-fire witty dialogue - Sorkin's true genius - could no longer occupy quite the same central place in the show's scripts, for a start, and moreover, the episode, Isaac and Ishmael, written hurriedly to respond to the attacks was widely interpreted as condescending and saccharine. Terrorist crises, malfunctioning presidential planes and snipers outside the White House now seem to occur pretty much every week under President Bartlet - a resort to the stereotypical high drama of political fiction that The West Wing had earlier triumphed by avoiding.

On top of that, Rob Lowe's departure - in a dispute over pay, though cleverly disguised in the current series as necessitated by Sam Seaborn's decision to run for Congress - seriously injured the show in the ratings. "They lost the guy whose major appeal was to the younger audience," says the show insider, noting how The West Wing has been losing out to reality television such as American Idol and Survivor. "The others, these older guys, were not going to pull in that audience." As for Sorkin, the source said, "he was the West Wing. God knows what it's going to be without him."

NBC PRESENTS ITS NEW SUMMER SEASON WITH ORIGINAL AND RETURNING UNSCRIPTED DRAMAS, COMPETITION SHOWS AND TALENT CONTESTS

NBC Press Release

Published: May 5, 2003

Summer Lineup Will Feature Original Programs on More Than Half of Schedule

BURBANK, Calif. -- May 5, 2003 -- NBC will program more than half of its summer schedule with original programs and a new attitude in “NBC’s New Summer Season” - featuring a mix of new and returning series, including the premieres of “Last Comic Standing: The Search for the Funniest Person in America,” and “Fame,” among others. The announcement was made by Jeff Zucker, President, NBC Entertainment.

Summer will also see the return of Dick Wolf’s “Crime & Punishment,” “Dog Eat Dog,” and “Meet My Folks.”

“We are serving notice with this move that NBC intends to compete 12 months a year,” said Zucker. “In addition, we want the majority of our programs to offer something new to viewers who are accustomed to looking elsewhere for entertainment when the days grow longer.”

Following are NBC’s new unscripted programs schedule to air pre-Fourth of July:

DOG EAT DOG (premieres with back to back episodes Tuesday, May 27, 8 - 9 p.m. ET and 9 - 10 p.m. ET) - This in-studio game show returns for a second season and combines extreme stunts and outrageous dares with smarts and strategy, is a mixed breed from both the producer of NBC’s hit reality series “Fear Factor” and the producer of the reality game show “Weakest Link.” Brooke Burns (“Baywatch”) hosts each one-hour episode that pits six players against one another in a game in which the final “top dog,” the winner may actually be the biggest surprise. Each week, six new contestants begin the game by spending a day together, undergoing various tests of intellect and brawn, so that as a result they may judge each other’s strengths and weaknesses. Re-convening the next day on the elaborate “Dog Eat Dog” stage, they then set out to find the top dog - someone who could walk home with $25,000 in prize money. “Dog Eat Dog” is a production of NBC Studios in association with BBC-Worldwide, and Matt Kunitz (“Fear Factor”) and Stuart Krasnow (“Weakest Link”) are the executive producers.

FAME (two hour premiere Wednesday, May 28, 8-10 p.m. ET) - The “Fame” series will chronicle host Debbie Allen’s attempts to recruit multi-talented performers (ages 16 and up) from across the country, followed by an intense “boot camp” drill by Allen. As the group hones its skills and routines in front of celebrity judges, family and friends, the field is narrowed. Viewers at home will determine who ultimately travels the path all the way to “Fame.” “Fame” is produced by MGM Television Entertainment and Stone Stanley Entertainment with David G. Stanley, Scott A. Stone and multiple Emmy-Award winner Jeff Margolis serving as executive producers.

CRIME & PUNISHMENT (premieres June 1, 10 - 11 p.m. ET) - Dick Wolf, creator and executive producer of NBC’s powerhouse “Law & Order” franchise, and Bill Guttentag, 2003 Oscar winner for the documentary “Twin Towers” (an honor he shares with the producing team at Wolf Films), return to San Diego for season two of the critically acclaimed unscripted drama series “Crime & Punishment.” Hailed as “riveting, addictive and well told” by Time magazine, this real-life look at the world of criminal justice chronicles actual cases brought to trial by the San Diego County District Attorney’s office. Filmed in high-definition video, the series combines cinema verité footage - going behind the scenes with prosecutors as they investigate crimes and prepare for trial - with three-camera courtroom coverage, giving it the look and feel of a fictional drama series. “Crime & Punishment” achieved increased visibility for several important toll-free numbers offering assistance to viewers in dangerous situations similar to those explored on the show. At the close of related episodes, the numbers for ChildHelp USA, the National Child Abuse Hotline, the National Domestic Violence Hotline, and the National Sexual Assault Hotline were run, with each organization registering over 100% increase in calls following the broadcast-and in the instance of the National Sexual Assault Hotline, a 650% increase in the first 24 hours. “Crime & Punishment” is produced by Wolf Films, Shape Pictures and Anonymous Content in association with Universal Television Distribution. Wolf, Guttentag (who also has an Oscar win for the documentary “You Don’t Have to Die”) and David Kanter (“Traffic”) are co-creators and executive producers. Peter Jankowski (“Law & Order”) also serves as executive producer.

FOR LOVE OR MONEY (two hour premiere Monday, June 2, 9-11 p.m. ET) - In this new unscripted drama series, 15 beautiful girls come for love but are surprised to learn in the first episode that there is also a million dollar prize at stake - but the winner and the bachelor will not know that she ultimately must choose between the man of her dreams or $1 million. Jordan Murphy (“Boston Public”) hosts the six-episode series, guiding the contestants through numerous twists and turns as they try to win the heart of a handsome and charming Dallas defense attorney. Though the bachelor is unaware of the $1 million incentive, the women know from the beginning that the lucky girl he chooses will win the money - prompting viewers to wonder if they’re really pursuing him “For Love or Money.” “For Love or Money” is a production of Nash Entertainment & 3 Ball Productions. Bruce Nash (NBC’s “Meet My Folks,” “Mr. Personality”) is the executive producer, along with J.D. Roth (“Endurance,” “Moolah Beach”), Todd Nelson (“Endurance,” “Moolah Beach”) and John Foy (“The Martin Short Show”).

MEET MY FOLKS (premieres Monday, June 9, 10-11 p.m. ET) - NBC’s hit relationship show, returns with new episodes, including two special two-part episodes. One features five men competing for a trip to Australia with a gorgeous swimsuit model. In the second two-parter, five competing girls are surprised to learn they have to get up stage and sing at a popular nightclub - and even more shocked to see where their “bad facts” are revealed - as they try and win a trip to Greece with a handsome California college student. Making a return appearance will be Giancarlo Maniaci, whose appearance as a contestant on the show last summer generated so much viewer mail that he was asked to come back to the show -- but this time, three women will compete to win a trip with him. Another summer episode features three men vying for a trip to Hawaii with Janelle Matulich, a cheerleader for the San Francisco 49ers football team. Viewers can also expect to see more outrageous “secret tasks,” more shocking revelations about each player’s past and the notorious “lie-detector” tests. "Meet My Folks" is from NBC Studios and Nash Entertainment. Bruce Nash (“For Love or Money,” “Mr. Personality”) and Scott Satin ("The Most Outrageous Game Show Moments," "Extreme Gong Show") are the executive producers.

LAST COMIC STANDING: THE SEARCH FOR THE FUNNIEST PERSON IN AMERICA (premieres Tuesday, June 10, 9 -10 p.m. ET) - “Last Comic Standing: The Search for the Funniest Person in America” is hosted and executive-produced by actor/comedian Jay Mohr (“Mohr Sports”). The new series has an eight-episode commitment and will provide a new spin on alternative programming as it features a nationwide talent search for professional and non-professional comedians (both male and female). Once the selection process is narrowed to 10 finalists, after the semi-finals in New York and Los Angeles, the program will then follow the comedians as they live together in a house and compete for the ultimate prize-an exclusive talent contract with NBC. “Last Comic Standing” is from Peter Engel Productions in association with NBC Enterprises and Giraffe Productions. Peter Engel, Jay Mohr and Barry Katz are executive producers. Rob Fox is co-executive producer.

Sorkin a casualty of prime-time ratings warfare

By JOHN DOYLE
Globe and Mail

Monday, May 5, 2003 - Page R2

News of the departure of Aaron Sorkin from The West Wing got a lot of attention last week, mainly because the show really matters to media people. The coverage tended to concentrate on declining ratings and rumours of budget problems, and the speculation was that these were the main reasons for Sorkin's decision to quit.

Those aren't the reasons. Sorkin is a victim of the system, a casualty in the increasingly strange jungle warfare of the prime-time TV ratings game and, in a way, he's collateral damage in the American war on terrorism and against Iraq.

First, however, Sorkin's departure compels us to look at how series television is being made these days for the American networks. As the creator, main writer and keeper of the creative light, Sorkin was burned by a brutal system that works against enduring artistry.

Dramas and comedies made for the big broadcast networks are created in an extraordinary environment right now.

It is an environment in which a network executive can blithely admit that the people who run the networks are addicted to the crack cocaine-style ratings boost that results from one lurid, gimmicky reality-TV series.

It's also an environment in which the entertainment offered by broadcast networks is being outclassed by shows made for HBO and other pay-cable companies. The Sopranos, The Wire, Six Feet Under, The Shield and Monk are shows that have startled viewers by being so clearly aimed at adults. These shows have an often-merciless clarity about the contemporary United States.

They present a challenge to the over-the-air networks, but the networks cannot rise to the challenge. Network TV itself, so dependent on advertisers and using the fossilized creative procedures that quench invention and originality, makes it outright impossible to suddenly raise the standards. It's the economics of the system but it's also indecision and it is fear.

In this TV world, fraught with doubts about change and full of shameless addiction to sameness, Sorkin's core creative assets make him an alien force. Those assets are: an ear for the rhythm of talk, a gift for writing intricate dialogue and devotion to an often solemn, Democratic Party view of the United States.

In the past year, the intricacies of The West Wing drama (so smoothly directed by Thomas Schlamme, who also departs along with Sorkin) began to look highly complex when compared with the moronic talk and activities on Joe Millionaire, The Bachelor and The Bachelorette. A show that often seemed smart suddenly looked enormously complex. Next, American politics shifted seismically. Sorkin has always said that the White House on The West Wing existed in a universe parallel to the real White House. After Sept. 11 and under an inflexible George W. Bush administration, the fictional Democratic administration of Josiah Bartlet on TV looked less like a parallel world and more absurdly out of synch with the overpoweringly raw reality.

The problem of connecting the fictional drama on The West Wing to the all-too-authentic real drama of the current Bush White House might have been dealt with eventually by Sorkin, but I suspect that after writing the majority of the scripts for four seasons, he was simply tired of the pressure. American network TV is about endurance -- keeping the show going for as long as possible, even after its relevance and value have long since diminished.

The voodoo economics of TV production mean that every last episode has to be squeezed out. But for a creative writer like Sorkin, the solace of endurance is clearly not enough. The problem of enduring with any integrity and spark is not just a problem for Sorkin and The West Wing. It is evident in so many long-running TV series. It is glaringly obvious in the case of the traditional sitcom.
Everybody Loves Raymond (CBS, Global 9 p.m.) was available for review in advance this week because it is Sweeps period. Naturally, at this time of the year, even long-established, hit sitcoms try to do something special.

Tonight's Raymond episode is built around one joke. Robert asks Ray if he can borrow a suitcase. Ray tells him that he and Debra recently went on a weekend trip and since then, they have been locked in a strange, absurd battle of wills over who is responsible for putting the suitcase away. Robert thinks Ray and Debra are being idiotic, but Ray's parents Frank and Marie relate to the petty battle of wills and offer their advice.

Things work out in the end, of course. Ray backs down, to some extent, and says to Debra, "I'm sorry things got so nuts."

At that point you can hear the studio audience sigh with audible pleasure. Some people might gag at the obviousness of it all and at the tired jokes that are dusted off and paraded out for the audience. But Everybody Loves Raymond is merely adhering to the standard American network format. It is precision-made predictable. The show doesn't have to change much in order to survive. It just keeps chugging along with hoary old marriage and in-law jokes.

Everybody Loves Raymond is a nice, sweet show.

It's what attracts some people to work in television. But it also represents a system that drives others away from it.

And I suspect that one of those people driven away by the system is Aaron Sorkin.

'The West Wing' loses its founding fathers

BY MATT ZOLLER SEITZ AND ALAN SEPINWALL
Star-Ledger Staff
Star-Ledger

Friday, May 02, 2003

There was a major shakeup at the White House yesterday -- the Bartlet White House, that is.

After four televised years in office, NBC's political drama "The West Wing" will continue without its two most senior advisers, creator-head writer Aaron Sorkin and producer-director Thomas Schlamme.

Both men told the show's cast and crew that they would be leaving the show at the end of this season, which is close to wrapping production.

"Aaron's brilliant writing and Tommy's gifted direction and leadership have been the cornerstones of 'The West Wing's' remarkable critical and ratings success," said a combined statement from NBC and the Warner Bros. television studio, which produces the show.

The announcement marks the most significant creative upheaval since the show's debut in 1999.

Sorkin is an acclaimed playwright and screenwriter who has written or rewritten virtually every word spoken by Martin Sheen, Allison Janney and the rest of the "West Wing" cast. Schlamme isn't a household name to the same degree as some theatrical filmmakers, but his signature style -- rich, contrasty lighting; fast-gliding camerawork and rapid-fire patter -- revolutionized television, and was showcased on "The West Wing." Schlamme got two Emmy nominations for directing "West Wing" episodes and won both times; Sorkin was nominated three times for his writing and won once.

"ER" and "Third Watch" boss John Wells has always been listed as the third "West Wing" executive producer, but has been largely hands-off. NBC has asked him to take "a more active role" during the transition to a new creative team.

Ironically, Sorkin and Schlamme are leaving only a few months after the show's future was secured by NBC, which renewed it through season six, with an option for a seventh. That option would take the drama through the end of the Bartlet presidency, which viewers joined partway through its first term.

The renewal may have been the only good news of the year for "The West Wing." Since its premiere during the waning days of the Clinton administration, the series was one of the most closely watched and lavishly praised of network dramas. Its mix of melodrama, screwball comedy and uplifting liberal speechifying drew favorable comparisons to a diverse array of populist political storytellers, including one of Sorkin's heroes, Frank Capra ("Mr. Smith Goes to Washington").

Both Sorkin's scripts and Schlamme's camerawork aspired to more than "good enough for TV" drama -- they wanted to present a one-hour blockbuster movie every week, complete with grand themes, striking visuals and monologues so meaty that they all but guaranteed the cast a stranglehold on the supporting actor Emmys every year. (The show has won at least two acting Emmys each season.)

Sorkin was lauded not just as a dramatist, but a teacher. Numerous columnists claimed he did a better job of explaining the issues of the day to laypeople than his counterparts in TV news, who seemed more interested in the horse-race aspects of politics than in the principles behind them.

But the golden era lasted only slightly longer than Gerald Ford's term in office.

The ratings began to slip last spring, when ABC counter-programmed the tony drama with the trashy dating series "The Bachelor."

Shortly before this season began, Sorkin and Schlamme were on stage to accept their third consecutive Emmy for Outstanding Dramatic Series, and even they seemed baffled about the win. The ratings continued to go down (though they have improved a bit in recent weeks), and the series went from water cooler fodder to "Is that still on?"

"The Bachelor" and its spin-offs were able to get past White House security because Sorkin and company had started to believe their own press, sacrificing human drama for preachiness, typified by a talky post-9/11 episode about terrorism that played like "Hardball" in a high school cafeteria. (Even Sorkin later admitted it wasn't very good.)

Overall, 9/11 and the arrival of the Bush administration made the doings of President Bartlet and his staff seem irrelevant. Who cared about diplomatic crises in a fictional Middle East when the actual U.S. military was gearing up for war in the real thing? Who wanted to hear "Wing" characters debate school vouchers and a graduated income tax when the real America was on Orange Alert?

Sorkin had never tried to disguise his liberal leanings -- the series' first episode concluded with Bartlet verbally dressing down members of the religious right -- but the arrival of a born-again Republican in the real Oval Office seemed to inspire him to new heights of fear and loathing. Even card-carrying Democrats started getting uncomfortable when characters Toby Ziegler or Josh Lyman got up on a soapbox. The series became like a restaurant where the special of the day was always spinach.

Curiously