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November 29, 2002
Actor Casts His Lot With Jewish Ideals
“You don’t achieve this kind of lifestyle without sharing it.”
by Naomi Pfefferman
The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles
When Joshua Malina arrived at his first Jewish Federation event, a 2001 pro-Israel rally, he received an unpleasant surprise. The boyish, 36-year-old actor — expected to become a regular on NBC’s White House drama "The West Wing" — had a respectable career going. "But I was appalled that bigger stars hadn’t turned out to support Israel," he said, sounding as passionate as his new "West Wing" character, campaign manager Will Bailey.
"It just drives me nuts that there are so many high-profile Jews in Hollywood, yet we can’t get anybody to say, ‘Yes, I defend Israel,’" the actor said. "It’s not that I expect people to sign off on everything the Israeli government does. I just don’t think it should be considered a radical thing for celebrities to say that the Jewish State has a right to exist in peace. But I think the general feeling is, ‘God forbid I should associate myself with such a political firecracker.’"
Malina, who grew up in a traditional, Zionist household, doesn’t mind being a firecracker for Israel and other Jewish causes. He’s served on a young leadership committee of the New Israel Fund, which is devoted to enhancing democracy in Israel.
The actor has also read to children at the Central Library to support Koreh L.A., The Federation’s literacy initiative. And on Dec. 4 he’ll serve as a celebrity chair of the fourth annual Vodka Latka event, benefiting Federation-supported services for at-risk children.
The event, at the Hollywood Palladium, will include a fashion show by Sharon Segal of Fred Segal, cocktails by Campari and a performance by the musical group Pink Martini. "I like being associated with a Jewish group that addresses the needs of the entire community, regardless of race or religion," Malina said of The Federation.
For Vodka Latka, Malina convinced friends such as Hank Azaria and Rebecca Romijn-Stamos to serve as celebrity chairs. "I’m not deluded enough to consider myself an actual celebrity," he said matter-of-factly. "What I consider myself is a conduit to bring bigger stars to an event."
Other celebs scheduled to attend include Christina Applegate, Mili Avital, Evan and Jaron Lowenstein and Jonathan Silverman.
Malina grew up in a kosher home in New Rochelle, N.Y., where charity was de rigueur. One of his earliest memories was dropping coins into his first-grade tzedakah box, savoring the "plunking" sound as his teacher, Mrs. Rosenblatt, encouraged him to recite the phrase "mitzvah gedola latet tzedakah" (it’s a great mitzvah to give charity).
Meanwhile, his parents, Robert and Fran, founding members of Young Israel of Scarsdale, N.Y., read to the blind, donated bags of food to the poor and a significant amount of their income to charity.
"My father never walked past a [panhandler] without giving him something," Malina recalled. "I remember once suggesting that a particular man might not make the best use of the money. My father quoted the Talmud, stating that if a person is reduced to asking for money, you don’t ask questions."
Robert Malina, who has worked as an attorney, investment banker and Broadway producer, told The Journal that his son was a quick study. "Joshua was always sensitive to other people’s feelings," he said. "I remember situations when he was at camp and he befriended children who were not befriended often. He very quickly took to the notion that Judaism is an action-oriented religion."
During Joshua Malina’s childhood, his father’s best friend was Neil Simon’s producer, Manny Azenberg. Young Josh grew up attending his plays and dreaming of replacing Matthew Broderick as Jewish protagonist Eugene Morris Jerome in "Brighton Beach Memoirs."
Closer to home, he starred in plays at his yeshiva, Westchester Day School, and watched his cousins perform with their Jewish pal Aaron Sorkin at Scarsdale High. His favorite Sorkin role: Jesus in "Godspell."
After Malina graduated from Yale with a theater degree in 1988, it was his mother who suggested that he look up Sorkin, by then a 28-year-old wunderkind taking the New York theater scene by storm.
"It was the best advice I could have received," said Malina, who soon became Sorkin’s good friend and poker buddy. He was surprised, however, when the writer-producer asked him to audition for his Broadway play, "A Few Good Men" — and equally surprised when he got the part. "Within a year of graduating college, I had achieved my dream of acting on Broadway," he said.
Sorkin later cast Malina as a Jewish producer in his ABC series, "Sports Night," writing him a juicy Passover seder scene and sequences in which his character argued with a non-Jewish girlfriend.
When Sorkin recently cast Malina as Will Bailey, an Orange County Democratic campaign manager in "The West Wing," he braced the actor for some bad news. "He said, ‘Now your character is not going to be Jewish,’ as if I might object," Malina recalled.
The plan is for Bailey to be considered for a presidential speechwriting job in the fictional White House.
"Josh is the player you always want to pick for your team," Sorkin said. "There’s never a false note and he has world-class comedy skills. And everybody likes him in the huddle. When you have an opportunity to cast Josh, you do."
While the "West Wing" production schedule is hectic, Malina, a husband and father of two, makes time for Jewish life. He attends Temple Beth Am and keeps a kosher home, a mitzvah he likes because "it reminds me, three times a day, that I am Jewish."
When his father noodged him to give more to charity, he complied — but not out of guilt. "I give because that’s how I was raised," he said. "You don’t achieve this level of lifestyle without sharing it. I’d feel guilty if I earned this kind of money without sharing it."
He also continues serving as a spokesperson when called upon for The Federation and other groups and hopes to participate in a Hollywood mission to Israel. "It’s rare that I wish I were more famous, because that’s never been a motivating factor for me," he said, recalling that pro-Israel rally a year and a half ago. "But to support Israel, I do wish I were a more recognizable face."
Posted by MorganG at 06:07 PM
November 27, 2002
NBC opens a 'West Wing' in Orange County
Democratic character's run for Congress offers a look at O.C. that seems more reel than real.
By MARTIN WISCKOL
The Orange County Register
The chief speechwriter for America's favorite prime-time president is headed for Orange County.
Tonight, Sam Seaborn will leave NBC's "The West Wing" to begin a run for election in a congressional district that includes Newport Beach and Laguna Beach.
One result of the story line is that the country gets a glimpse of Orange County to follow up on what it saw during the World Series.
"I don't think anybody has fully portrayed Orange County – not 'West Wing' or elsewhere," said Rep. Loretta Sanchez, D-Santa Ana, whose 1996 upset of Republican incumbent Robert Dornan is echoed in the show's plot. "I still believe that people don't fully understand Orange County."
Indeed, the show – an inside look at the lives of staff members in the West Wing of the White House – plays on the county's reputation as a bastion of white Republicanism, but the stereotype is growing increasingly inappropriate. In nine of the county's 34 cities, the majority is no longer white. And Hispanics will make up the majority of the county's population by 2020, according to projections. Following up Sanchez's 1996 win, county Democrats also won seats in the state Senate and Assembly – although the county remains overwhelmingly Republican.
When it comes to the congressional district depicted in "The West Wing," the differences are even more perplexing. It is called the 47th District, which is Sanchez's landlocked district, but focuses on Laguna Beach and Newport Beach, which are in GOP Rep. Christopher Cox's 48th District. And the six-term incumbent is modeled after Dornan.
| County's new colors Orange County long has had a reputation as a conservative, white bastion and is generally portrayed that way in the television series "The West Wing." Some facts belie that image:
|
The plot began unfolding last month when Democratic character Horton Wilde, who was challenging the fiery Republican incumbent, Chuck Webb, died. Thinking a Democratic victory unlikely, Seaborn promised Wilde's widow that if the deceased won, he would run in the subsequent special election.
Of course, Wilde pulled an upset.
Dead candidates do indeed win. Among them, Missouri Gov. Mel Carnahan won a 2000 U.S. Senate bid three weeks after dying, and Rep. Patsy Mink, D-Hawaii, was re-elected after dying this year. But a Democrat winning in a coastal Orange County district? It must be fiction.
"I think they're just having a little fun with reality," said John Graham, a real-life Democratic challenger in Cox's district and a management professor at the University of California, Irvine. Cox received 68.5 percent of the vote to Graham's 28.4 percent.
Republican voters outnumber Democratic voters by a 5-to-3 margin, making it one of the most GOP districts in the country.
On one hand, the plot device provides NBC with a graceful way to phase out Rob Lowe, who is expected to leave the show in the spring because of a pay dispute. Rather than be killed or jailed, Democratic President Joshua Bartlet's chief speechwriter can simply disappear to Orange County.
On the other hand, it gives Democratic-leaning Aaron Sorkin, the show's creator, a chance to poke the Republican stronghold of Orange County in the ribs and offer a reminder of the controversial Dornan.
"The Republican Party does occasionally field questionable candidates," said Mark Chapin Johnson, a co-founder of the New Majority, which is trying to bring more moderate positions to the GOP. "But Chris Cox is certainly not one of them. He is greatly beloved in the district and will be there for as long as he wants to be."
Johnson, a Newport Beach resident, was prepared to run for Cox's seat when it looked like the incumbent might receive a federal judicial appointment. But Cox then said he preferred to remain in Congress. Johnson is, however, keeping an eye on "The West Wing" version of the race.
"The show is humorous, intriguing, very entertaining – and bears no relation to reality," he said.
Indeed, the Orange County scenes have been shot in Los Angeles, although the show scouted locations at the Orange County Performing Arts Center and the fairgrounds, said the county film commission's Janis Arrington.
John Hanna, former chairman of the Democratic Party of Orange County, agreed that a Democrat is not likely to unseat Cox. But he is content with the show's portrayal of the county.
"The people we have in office now are hardworking, less flamboyant," Hanna said. "We're more cosmopolitan, and it's nice to see us not be the butt of jokes. There's a certain amount of pride to see our county on national TV."
Wylie Aitken, president of the Democratic Foundation of Orange County, joked that perhaps life could imitate art.
"Maybe if (Lowe) wins, we can convince him to run for real," he said.
Posted by MorganG at 06:05 PM
Lowe leaves 'West Wing' for whatever's next
By Dave Mason
Ventura County Star
Rob Lowe is leaving "The West Wing" tonight without knowing if his character will get elected to Congress.
"I'll probably find out the same time as viewers do," the Santa Barbara star said, laughing during a phone interview with The Star on Monday. Lowe's final episode airs at 9 p.m. on NBC, Channel 4.
Lowe's character, Sam Seaborn, is the assistant director of communications at the White House, but in recent episodes, he became the replacement for a congressional candidate who died. Sam is now in a special election as a Democrat in Orange County.
Lowe announced last summer he would leave "The West Wing."
"There just wasn't any more room for my character," Lowe said. "It became clear last season that it was time for me to move on.
"I'm just in an exciting time of finding out what I want to do next," Lowe said.
It's not, Lowe said, that he's getting tired of playing Sam.
But Lowe said he felt his character had become less crucial to the show and had served his usefulness.
The congressional race arc for Sam has all the scent of a spinoff, but Lowe said he hasn't been involved in any discussions on that. "That would be up to (creator and executive producer) Aaron Sorkin.
"I feel the character could go on and do his own show," Lowe said. "I could play Sam for another 10 years."
Lowe's new projects include "The Christmas Shoes," a CBS movie premiering at 9 p.m. Sunday on Channel 2. In the well-acted drama, Lowe plays a lawyer who puts his work ahead of his family but learns about the true nature of giving from a young boy whose mother is dying. (See the review in Sunday's TV Star.)
"I felt when I read it, I could bring a humanity and sympathy to a character who's unsympathetic," Lowe said. "It's a universal theme. We all want to be better parents than we are.
"The story really moved me; it was a really good cry," Lowe said. "I'm a manly man, but I'm not above a good cry."
Lowe is spending his Thanksgiving and Christmas with his family in Santa Barbara, where he has lived for eight years. "I don't like to travel much," he said.
On Thursday, he's organizing a Turkey Bowl football game for his children and others in the neighborhood.
"I'm going to need a workout before all that eating," he said.
Posted by MorganG at 06:02 PM
November 25, 2002
Prime-time presidents: It's wit versus grit
By Howard Rosenberg
LA Times
TV has a long history of depicting U.S. presidents, with Sam Waterston's soulful Abe Lincoln in 1988 standing head and stovepipe hat above them all, and assembly lines of clay-duck John F. Kennedys reminding us how bad screen biographies can be.
When it came to low burlesque, though, nothing beat "An American President," a PBS series in 2000 whose exotic choices to speak the words of first executives may have been the worst concept in the annals of documentarydom.
Former Sen. Bob Dole as Herbert Hoover? Muttering radio jokester Don Imus as Andrew Johnson? Democratic Party hit man James Carville as Andrew Jackson? When that master thespian Carville woodenly recited, "My reputation is dearer to me than life," it brought to mind a line that Jack Benny made his signature:
"Now cut that out!"
Prime time's most famous presidents these days are fictional. Josiah Bartlet of NBC's "The West Wing" has just been reelected, and David Palmer is a year into his first term on Fox's tumultuous "24."
Bartlet (Martin Sheen) is a short, white, folksy intellectual; Palmer (Dennis Haysbert), tall, black and regal. Bartlet is effusive, Palmer stony. Bartlet has shrewd eyes and misses nothing (because he's a liberal Democrat, no doubt), Palmer (a Democrat whose philosophies are not precisely defined) is a bit of a thickhead.
Their White Houses, too, are as different as, well, white and black. Bartlet's is as funny as it is thoughtful, Palmer's relentlessly grave.
Bartlet not only has health problems but this season is also facing another crush of domestic challenges and global crises, and already has a Middle East assassination under his belt. Just last Wednesday, moreover, he adroitly handled a secret request from a militant Iranian leader to allow his 15-year-old son to enter the U.S. for life-saving surgery. After Bartlet reluctantly said yes, the ayatollah infuriated him by still issuing a bitter harangue against the U.S. to assuage Iranian hard-liners at home.
That's mild, however, compared with the minefield facing Palmer in a series whose entire season spans just 24 hours in the lives of its characters.
At 8 a.m. he was summoned from a fishing vacation with his son and informed that unnamed terrorists were planning that day to set off a nuclear bomb in Los Angeles that would cause up to 2.5-million casualties.
It will be noon when Episode 5 opens Tuesday with Palmer still trying to keep the looming nuclear threat secret, and still shaken by news that a smaller bomb blew apart the L.A. branch of the government's Counter Terrorist Unit and killed or injured scores of its staff.
What's a president to do?
For starters, Palmer immediately put on ice a nosy newspaperman who would have panicked the city by reporting the nuclear device's existence. Bartlet the libertarian probably wouldn't have done that.
In Bartlet's case, also, we have a president who rarely makes major decisions without consulting his large cadre of smart loyalists, and his wife also delivers advice.
But what is it with poor Palmer, who appears almost isolated? Will someone please find this president a staff?
He suffered major betrayals last season, one by his chief political advisor on the eve of the election, another by his ruthless wife (they're now divorced). The final moments of last week's hour found him firing National Security Agency honcho Eric Rayburn (Timothy Carhart), who had blocked presidential aide Lynne Kresge (Michelle Forbes) from telling him of the CTU bomb threat in time to order the place evacuated.
Why would Rayburn do that? It's all very mysterious, although his whole tone and demeanor scream hidden agenda. Why, also, did Kresge refrain from ratting on Rayburn to Palmer, even though she's presented as the president's closest aide (his chief of staff has yet to become a factor)?
Instead, Palmer had to ferret out this deception himself, perceiving belatedly what viewers surely knew all along (duh): that Rayburn was a treacherous slug. Shifty eyes were the giveaway.
It would go differently in the Bartlet White House, where staff fidelity to the president is a religion. Along with incessant repartee. Here's a White House for Noël Coward.
If Bartlet learned of a terrorist plot to obliterate L.A., the response would be immediate-- motion. You'd see scene after scene of him and his staff bantering wittily while striding briskly through the White House's West Wing as a prelude to saving L.A.'s bacon. Then they'd walk and be clever some more, because this is the wittiest, most mobile White House crowd in history.
Bartlet banters wittily while others trail him, and banters wittily in his private rooms with his wife (Stockard Channing), who banters back just as wittily. Bartlet's chief of staff (John Spencer) doesn't banter much, but his deputy (Bradley Whitford) does, especially with his equally witty assistant (Janel Moloney). The president's communications director (Richard Schiff) banters wittily, as does his deputy (Rob Lowe), who is leaving his White House job to stake out his own witty political future. Bartlet's press secretary (Allison Janney) banters as wittily as her colleagues. His personal aide (Dule Hill) has progressed from plain-spoken to wittily plain-spoken (when he's given something to say). And new to the staff is an executive secretary (Lily Tomlin) whose potential for witty banter appears unlimited.
Palmer, on the other hand, would break his face if he ever tried to laugh. What he has that Bartlet doesn't have, though, is Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland), "24's" dominant protagonist. As the government's least witty man, Bauer is devoid of funny things to say. But as last season showed, he is the most resourceful Fed in the field (even though now retired from CTU).
The series continues to follow equally other strands of its terrorist-plot tangle, including the adventures of Bauer's idiot daughter, Kim (Elisha Cuthbert). Yet count on Bauer being the one who saves L.A. at the end of these 24 hours.
He might be less a he-man if he worked for Josiah Bartlet. But he'd be funnier.
Posted by MorganG at 06:01 PM
November 20, 2002
A change in politics might boost a show faltering in the polls
By Noel Holston
Newsday
Regime change, anyone?
I'm not talking about Iraq, although its oppressed citizens obviously could use a more benign leader. I'm talking about a changing of the guard on "The West Wing." Maybe the time is opportune.
The defection of viewers from NBC's Wednesday-night White House drama is the talk of the TV industry this fall. Its overall Nielsen numbers are down about 20 percent from last season - 30 percent if you're talking about the important 18-to-49- year-old demographic. One theory - much discussed and at least as persuasive as the notion that viewers are bailing to watch ABC's "The Bachelor" or Fox's "Fastlane" - is that executive producer/head writer Aaron Sorkin has pushed the show into such blatant, in-your-face partisanship that it's alienating some viewers who, because of events of the past year, are feeling generally more conservative and specifically more favorable toward President George W. Bush.
Starting late last season and extending through this fall's election arc, Bush has undergone the video equivalent of being hanged in effigy on "The West Wing." "Saturday Night Live" and the all-but-forgotten Comedy Central sitcom, "That's My Bush," haven't served up a meaner parody of Bush than "The West Wing's" faux-Republican presidential challenger, Robert Ritchie (James Brolin), a Sun Belt governor with the most vacuous look this side of the inbred hillbillies in "Deliverance." Ralph Cifaretto had a fairer chance against Tony Soprano than Ritchie had when he met eloquent Democratic incumbent Jed Bartlet (Martin Sheen) in the series' big debate episode four weeks ago. Ritchie wasn't on the stump, he was a stump.
Who could blame right-leaning viewers for feeling as if they had witnessed a mugging and wanting to change channels? For that matter, who could blame viewers who simply like their political slugfests fair? Rigged debates are no more appealing than political attack ads.
What's done is done, of course. President Bartlet scored a victory on TV as decisive as Republicans did in the real-life midterm elections. Still, I can't help but wonder what if. Maybe it's the prankster in me, maybe it's that indiscriminate bleeding heart.
What if Sorkin had had (pick one) the whimsy, the yen for a challenge or just the commercial instinct to exploit a shifting political climate, and had let Gov. Ritchie win? What if, come January, Jed Bartlet went back to indoctrinating naieve college students and Robert Ritchie took up residence at the big house on Pennsylvania Avenue? What if "The West Wing" became "The Right Wing," with a whole new cast and a whole new agenda?
There could be an episode in which President Ritchie, now a real character, not a cardboard target, valiantly resists pressure from special interest groups to sign an international environmental treaty in order to save American SUV manufacturers and, thus, thousands of jobs. There could be a whole arc about him helping small-business owners slip from the tentacles of federal regulation. He and his born-again attorney general could defend the unborn from abortion clinic doctors, press to have death sentences carried out, clothe nude statuary and fight to stop cancer patients from abusing marijuana.
Affirmative action might provide a rich vein of story ideas. Sorkin already pays several prominent Republicans, among them former Ronald Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan, to give him a conservative perspective on "West Wing" stories. In her Wall Street Journal column a while back, Noonan recalled what happened to a subplot she suggested for Bartlet's press secretary, C.J. Cregg. She portrayed C.J.'s dad as an embittered, broken victim of affirmative-action hires. Rewritten by Sorkin, C.J.'s father was doing just fine, despite getting passed over in favor of less-qualified minority applicants. In the Ritchie White House, Noonan's take on the subject would stand.
Attitudes such as these are so rarely presented in a favorable light in prime-time drama that you have to wonder whether "The Right Wing" would be too radical to fly. Would the certain loss of liberal-minded viewers offset any gain in conservatives? Only if Sorkin actually did a political flip-flop would we know, and frankly, that's about as unlikely as the Republicans bumping George W. from their ticket in 2004.
There is one more way Sorkin could really shake up "The West Wing" and possibly lure some of those young-adult viewers back. Remember that the de facto "pilot" of this show is "The American President," a theatrical film Sorkin wrote about a widowed and highly eligible U.S. prez. Writing Stockard Channing's first lady out of the show would be tricky, but Sorkin is bright and the viewing public is forgiving.
Hail to "The Bachelor in Chief."
Posted by MorganG at 05:59 PM
November 19, 2002
Disgruntled voters bail on the chief
BY PHIL ROSENTHAL
Chicago Sun-Times
A banker named Aaron Buerge is wreaking havoc with Jed Bartlet and his administration, which just won the White House again in a landslide but is nonetheless sliding in the approval ratings among TV viewers.
NBC's "The West Wing" is down in the Nielsens by 20 percent over all from a year ago and, among the advertiser-coveted 18-to-49-year-old crowd, the numbers are off by almost a staggering 30 percent.
"Wing" auteur Aaron Sorkin may have made Gov. Ritchie seem like a ninny, but even Ritchie would recognize that's anything but fuzzy math.
Maybe Buerge and ABC's "The Bachelor" will stop siphoning off viewers after this Wednesday, if only because he is supposed to pick either Helene or Brooke and put his catfighting harem game show to an end.
But that doesn't necessarily mean happy days are here again for Sorkin's weekly civics class, which started faltering last season and has never really recovered. "The West Wing" remains an above-average series and draws a still-healthy 15 million viewers each week, but it's nowhere near as good or as satisfying as it once was.
The lessons seem preachier, the stories more labored and, well, you just don't get the same swell of emotion each week that you could rely on after nearly each episode in its first couple seasons. While most shows are hitting their stride in season four, "The West Wing" already is starting to falter.
Thanks to David Palmer's crisis mode on Fox's "24," Bartlet isn't even the most interesting president in prime time at the moment. Heck, Bartlet isn't even the most interesting politician in his White House as Rob Lowe's Sam Seaborn character is being written out of the show with a run for the House in California's archconservative Orange County.
It doesn't take much to fix things when you have a strong cast and an idea of where you want to go. Just look how "The Sopranos"--which had a lot of us itchy for something (anything) to happen--redeemed our faith by pulling many of its loose ends together in the last two weeks.
Unfortunately, it's not clear Sorkin has that overriding vision David Chase has on "The Sopranos." Sorkin's fly-by-the-seat-of-his-Dockers approach once gave this show a sense of spontaneity. Lately it's only given the program stories that lurch along in fits and starts for weeks only to end abruptly and too many supporting characters (and actors) to service.
The president is facing congressional hearings and no one sees a way out, then suddenly it's over as if there never should have been a crisis in the first place.
Press secretary C.J. Cregg is falling for a Secret Service agent, then he gets killed for a mistake the gang in the "Police Squad" movies wouldn't make.
Gov. Ritchie goes from being a formidable opponent to a straw man in the blink of an eye, as if a GOP candidate could get through the nomination process without being able to survive a mere debate.
You get the feeling that the only people less respected than conservatives on this show are the intelligent viewers who know, even if Sorkin and company resist, that drama comes from conflict.
Sure, there was no way Bartlet could lose his re-election bid--Martin Sheen has a fat new contract and there's too much money at stake for NBC and Warner Bros. TV--but Ritchie at least could have forced the president to reconsider his ideas and approach on an issue or two.
Making Bartlet and his White House staff right on every single issue is doubly uninteresting unless the opposing arguments are reasonable and have merit. This used to be a show about the exchange of ideas. Too often now it's a show about liberals slapping themselves on the back about how right they are ... about everything.
Well, we're going to find out just how smart these people really are because, in prime-time television, every night is election night and we're an electorate that can be as fickle as a bachelor banker from Springfield, Mo.
Imagine if ABC or the other networks, unlike Sorkin, gave us an intellectual equal to consider in the race.
Posted by MorganG at 05:57 PM
November 13, 2002
How high can you fly on a left 'Wing'? Viewers cast their vote
By Brian Lowry
latimes.com
The election is over (the outcome was never really in doubt), and everyone is hoping to get back to business as usual.
Of course, I'm talking about "The West Wing."
America's fictional president, Jed Bartlet, easily won reelection last Wednesday, after trouncing a language-mangling southern governor in a debate the week before. To some, the parallels between Bartlet's opponent and the White House's current occupant were representative of a liberal bent that has turned off conservative viewers.
Talk radio host Larry Elder, for one, has insisted the program's 20%-plus ratings stumble versus the corresponding stretch last fall is directly attributable to its out-of-step politics, and he found plenty of callers to echo that position.
A less subjective analysis suggests the decline is more complex, with competitive factors explaining much of the audience attrition. Faring best as it does among older and more affluent viewers, "The West Wing" has always been vulnerable to titillating concepts that lure away the younger crowd -- from Fox's "Temptation Island" and "Celebrity Boxing" to the show's current nemesis, ABC's "The Bachelor."
To test my own theory, when I broached the subject of watching "The Bachelor" to a class at USC last week, nearly every female hand shot up. (Yes, parents, this is what your tuition is paying for.)
Still, given last week's disparate election results real and imagined, the question of how politics affect "The West Wing" merits consideration. The world and mood of the country, after all, have changed considerably since the series premiered in 1999, when Bartlet and his team provided an idealized wish-fulfillment version of the then-administration.
The hard evidence, such as it is, lends qualified support to the notion politics has been at least a contributing factor to the show's sluggish performance.
According to demographic data from Simmons Market Research Bureau, people who identify themselves as "very conservative" have always been less likely to watch the show, but the gap grew during the most recent survey period from May 2001 to May 2002. "West Wing" viewers were more likely to identify themselves as "somewhat conservative" than the average viewer, as did those in the "somewhat liberal" or "very liberal" categories.
Breakdowns for the Los Angeles area from Scarborough Research, meanwhile, actually found self-identified Republicans to be slightly more likely than Democrats to watch the series, with only independents placing below average.
This shouldn't be a complete surprise. "West Wing" viewers tend to be older and richer -- attributes generally associated with Republicans.
As one research analyst put it, people might listen to Rush Limbaugh because they like his politics, but in prime time, most folks simply want to be entertained.
In that respect, it's easy to see how lecturing the audience might be off-putting, something series creator Aaron Sorkin has seemingly done with greater frequency since the 2000 election controversy and Sept. 11.
Many critics derided the hastily assembled Middle East civics lesson that kicked off last season for being preachy. Similarly, some have said that Sorkin wrote himself into a corner with the election story arc, which almost required being heavier on ideology and lighter on suspense.
Had Bartlet lost, after all, the series would have become "West Wing 2: The GOP Years."
Yet with the show amassing record ratings a year ago and its creator heralded as a genius, who around him could say no? Such naysaying has thus been left to Web sites like http://www.televisionwithoutpity.com, where some posters labeled the debate anti-climactic and the show more one-sided since losing its most fleshed-out conservative voice, Ainsley Hayes, with Emily Procter, who plays her, relocating to "CSI: Miami."
Deborah Birkett, a Beaverton, Canada, writer who provides the site's detailed recaps of each episode, called the Republican contender "a straw man" for Bartlet to steamroll. "Why they paid James Brolin when they could have just cast a scarecrow I have no idea," she noted, adding in regard to Sorkin, "I keep hoping he'll get back on his game."
Sorkin declined to be interviewed. Talking to Newsweek, however, he suggested that press coverage of the show's diminished ratings was somehow tied to upcoming contract renewal negotiations with NBC -- a conspiratorial mind-set better suited to "The X-Files" than "The West Wing."
To keep this in perspective, "The West Wing" remains a success by virtually any measure, averaging 16.2 million viewers this season, 11th among prime-time programs. The renewal fee might drop from what its studio, Warner Bros., would have commanded a year ago, but no one needs to hold bake sales for the profit participants.
Rob Lowe, in what was apparently a snit over money, is leaving. New characters will come on board. Life goes on.
Still, it seems equally true that "The West Wing" peaked last year and will be hard-pressed -- for various reasons, not least among them the TV world's preoccupation with the new and different -- to reverse its current parabolic course. The series will still be popular and prestigious, to be sure, but hardly the sensation it was.
Whatever Sorkin may infer, this is also noteworthy. Not only is the program a three-time Emmy winner as best drama, but for many it provides a more enticing window into the world of politics than any hour spent watching CNN or Fox News Channel ever could.
In addition, the lines between news and entertainment, fact and fiction, keep blurring. Episodic dramas rip stories from the headlines, right next to newsmagazines that behave like dramas. This dynamic helped fuel interest in "The West Wing," but it has also kept a spotlight trained on its foibles and shortcomings. Such is life inside the fishbowl.
President Bartlet delivered a monologue during the debate that could easily be the show's own disclaimer to critics: "I'm the president of the United States, not the president of the people who agree with me. And by the way, if the left has a problem with that, they should vote for somebody else."
Based on the ratings, some are using their remotes to do just that. And whether it's because of their affinity for "The Bachelor" or George W. Bush, it seems pretty clear that the honeymoon is over.
Posted by MorganG at 05:55 PM
November 12, 2002
‘West Wing’ episode to feature Dayton
By Bob Batz
Dayton Daily News
Ten copies of the Dayton Daily News that left town last week will return to the Miami Valley early next year as props on an episode of the hit NBC drama series The West Wing.
The episode, filmed in Chicago, is to air in January. The newspapers will be part of a story that has White House Press Secretary C.J. Cregg, played by former Oakwood resident Allison Janney, returning to Dayton to speak at her 20th high school class reunion, when she learns her father has Alzheimer’s disease.
The episode set here will give the Emmy Award-winning political drama a stronger local flavor than it already has. Martin Sheen, who plays President Bartlet, and Rob Lowe, who plays Deputy Communications Director Sam Seaborn, also are former Dayton-area residents.
Copies of the newspaper will be strewn about the set during a scene at C.J.’s father’s home. The production crew will build a Dayton Daily News newspaper box, which will appear in a scene where C.J. is a passenger in a car driven by her father.
"They talked about filming the episode in Dayton, but discovered it would be cheaper to do it in Chicago," said Lora Ducat, NBC’s director of TV production clearance. "But that wasn’t so surprising because our season-opening episode was set in Indiana, but filmed in Pennsylvania."
The fact that C.J.’s father has Alzheimer’s shouldn’t come as a complete surprise to West Wing fans. "In past shows, she has alluded to the fact that her father’s memory is going," Ducat said.
Posted by MorganG at 05:55 PM
November 06, 2002
Exit poll: 'West Wing' is sinking. Why?
By Alan Sepinwall
nj.com
In politics, perception is reality. In television, too, and right now the perception is that the fictional politicos on "The West Wing" are losing the hearts and minds of the viewing public.
But how real is that?
In terms of the Nielsen polls, the show has definitely slipped. This season's overall ratings are down about 20 percent -- 30 percent among the 18-to-49-year-old viewers coveted by advertisers -- from the same point last season. It's not a dramatic enough slide to warrant even thoughts of cancellation, but it's a troubling development at an age -- early in year four -- when most hits are peaking.
You can blame some of that decline on more competition in the Wednesday at 9 timeslot, particularly from ABC's comedy train wreck-cum-game show "The Bachelor," whose core young female audience is exactly the demographic that has abandoned "West Wing" this year.
But fluffy alternatives like "The Bachelor" and Fox's "Fastlane" aren't the sole source of the "West Wing" woes. The Bartlet administration and its real-life creators also have to take some blame for losing so many constituents.
The problem lies less with this season's handful of episodes than with last season, which was as bad a stretch for a presidency, real or fictional, since Nixon took his helicopter and went home.
The Very Special Episode about terrorism, which was thrown together in a week after creator Aaron Sorkin felt he had to address 9/11, came across as well-meaning but patronizing. The story of President Bartlet's multiple sclerosis cover-up dragged on and on and on, long after the interesting parallels to Lewinsky-gate had been exhausted. Mary-Louise Parker derailed every episode she appeared in as women's rights lobbyist Amy Gardner, a walking, talking repository of anti-feminist stereotypes. And the season closed with a shameless, implausible arc guest-starring Mark Harmon as a doomed Secret Service agent who won CJ's heart before being shot through his own while trying to stop a convenience store robbery. (He died, by the way, because he made a mistake that no rookie beat cop would.)
With the exception of the now-obligatory Christmas showcase for a member of the supporting cast (in this case, John Spencer, who, like Richard Schiff and Brad Whitford before him, won an Emmy for his holiday magic), the third season seemed like a pale imitation of the first two. Even Sorkin acted stunned when the show won a third consecutive Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series.
Given a year-long creative slump, is it any wonder that so many viewers didn't bother to come back when summer vacation ended?
(Some of them had already fled before summer began. While the ratings are down significantly from this point last year, they're only slightly lower than the numbers from last May.)
To Sorkin's credit, he's done a solid job of attacking some of last year's flaws. Amy Gardner, for instance, doesn't come across quite as shrill as she used to, and the air of pessimism that hung over the characters has mostly dissipated.
But the show is still paying for mistakes Sorkin made months or even years ago.
Start with the election plot, which has Martin Sheen's mentally agile Bartlet running against vapid Florida Gov. Ritchie (James Brolin), who is such a blatant dig at President Bush and his perceived stupidity that they might as well have cast Will Ferrell in the part.
The American voter's preference for plain talk over refinement isn't a bad idea for a political drama, especially one by a writer like Sorkin, who has made love of erudition a pet theme going back at least to his script for "The American President." But Ritchie isn't a character; he's a straw man for Bartlet and the other regulars to knock down with ease. Last week's debate episode was so blatantly one-sided that Brolin needn't have bothered showing up; a cardboard cut-out would have done just as well.
If Sorkin really wanted to tackle anti-intellectualism in politics, he would have been better served making Ritchie a clever guy who thought the best strategy was to play dumb. That might have been a character worth spending more than a season on.
And why is Sorkin even doing a major election arc? No matter who the opponent is, the audience knows that Bartlet's going to win. NBC isn't going to fire the entire cast in midseason and start over. This victory is a done deal; better that the show just treated it that way by making Bartlet's opponent a no-hoper (a la Mondale in '84) and leaving the campaign in the background.
Unfortunately, I suspect that tonight's election day episode won't be the end of the Bartlet for America story. The entire plot has been Sorkin's fantasy re-interpretation of Gore/Bush, which means we still have to cover the Florida debacle.
If that happens, it would be the latest example of how fact and fiction don't blend well on this show.
"The West Wing" originally took place in a world far removed from our own, and was less a show about politics than one about characters who happened to work in politics. Their passion and idealism were more important than their ideology, which early episodes glossed over in the same way "ER" treats medicine as a foreign language. Substantive topics were occasionally debated, but briefly and in a light-hearted manner. Think Josh and Donna playfully arguing about the tax rebate, or Sam explaining the census to CJ.
Sorkin may have started to believe the glowing press clippings about his ability to convey the issues of the day, or he decided that a show set in the political arena had to have a serious political agenda. Either way, the show's leftist bent quickly grew more pronounced, to the point where on some weeks it seemed less a drama than an infomercial for the Democratic Party.
"The West Wing" isn't at its best when Sorkin is trying to rewrite the Clinton presidency or support the war on terror, but simply when the characters are rushing pell-mell through the corridors of the White House, exchanging banter and demonstrating an enthusiasm for public service that's admirable and entertaining no matter your political affiliation.
The new season's most appealing subplot has speechwriter Sam Seaborn (Rob Lowe, who will probably leave the show later this year) pondering a last-ditch bid for Congress, replacing a candidate who dropped dead during the campaign, in an overwhelmingly Republican district. It's a winner not because we necessarily agree with Sam's stance on gun control, but because the idea of running for office in an unwinnable race perfectly fits what we know about Sam's romanticized view of government. (It also helps that Lowe has good chemistry with guest stars Joshua Malina and Danica McKellar, who are playing the dead candidate's top staffers.)
There are other problems with recent episodes. All the interesting developments in a subplot about the fictional terrorist nation of Qumar are occurring off-screen. Lily Tomlin's flaky secretary Deborah Fiderer is a very poor substitute for Kathryn Joosten's unflappable Mrs. Landingham. After three years, Sorkin still doesn't know what to do with Dulé Hill's Charlie Young, and the show badly misses recurring character Ainsley Hayes, who was Sorkin's attempt to portray at least one conservative in a sympathetic light.
Overall, though, this is a much more promising start than what we saw at this time last year. If Sorkin can learn to re-emphasize the people over their politics, it may not be too late for "The West Wing" to stage a rally.
"The West Wing" (Tonight at 9 on Ch. 4) On election night, President Bartlet's staff tracks poll results, while Sam waits to see if he'll have to keep his promise to run for Congress in a dead man's place.
Posted by MorganG at 05:54 PM
Taking 'Wing' Again
With the campaign behind it, 'The West Wing' is bidding to reclaim its mandate
By Rick Kushman
The Sacramento Bee
Tonight, finally, we can start the national healing that's always needed after an election.
And, no, we're not talking about those pesky midterm campaigns for Congress and the California governor's office. Sure, those were as irritating and empty as always, but we've got something larger in mind: my favorite TV show.
Specifically, it's NBC's "The West Wing." And I'm saying right here that with President Jed Bartlet's re-election campaign about to conclude tonight (at 9 on Channel 3), that series can get back to being the wittiest, brightest, most intelligent and electric hour of television it's been for three-plus seasons.
I'm also saying the past two episodes, and especially last week's debate show, have been as good as any "The West Wing" has produced, which is to say as good as any hours on television.
Still, the experience of "The West Wing" at the start of this season is further proof of just how thin the margin is between excellent and merely very good, and how extraordinarily hard it is to make high-quality television, hour after hour, for years.
First off, let's clear away some clutter.
Despite complaints from some critics and viewers -- some of them very legit -- "The West Wing" is still the fastest, sharpest show on TV. By lengths. Nothing matches the wit or the volume of ideas and details that are loaded into conversations with rhythm and snap, and nothing comes close to the moment-to-moment rush that a "West Wing" in full flight can offer.
Having said that, ratings are down a bit. The show is drawing about 16.2 million viewers, roughly 1 million fewer than the series averaged last season.
That sounds a lot like the natural defection of viewers to newer shows, but it looks more harsh because it's almost 4 million viewers below the first weeks of the 2001-02 season when "The West Wing" was red-hot.
The series has also dropped in the prized 18-to 49-year-old demographic as other networks have counter-programmed with flashier, younger shows such as ABC's "The Bachelor," Fox's "Fastlane," CBS' "The Amazing Race" and WB's "Birds of Prey."
For what it's worth, "The West Wing" is still the top show on TV in another demographic sought by advertisers: people who earn $75,000 a year and up.
In any case, ratings are the business side of TV. Let's talk about quality.
Boiled down, the broad criticisms this season come down to two points: less thrilling and too preachy. Are they valid? At times. But "The West Wing" is also a victim of circumstances, its own success and those darn elections.
To deal with specifics, a show that's won a Peabody Award and three straight Emmys for best drama starts to drag around unreasonably large expectations.
Critics -- including the one right here -- are certainly guilty of piling those expectations high with the kind of praise that made "The West Wing" sound like it's produced on Mount Olympus (where, presumably, writers, not network suits, have creative control).
Those same critics, whether reasonably or not, are the first to turn on a show, in part because it's their jobs to re-examine everything and maybe because, you know, you always need another column.
Anyway, "The West Wing" is not the only series taking some critical jabs. HBO's "The Sopranos," the other Olympian drama of recent years, has been smacked around for, among other things, the crime of not being violent enough.
"The Sopranos" is its own complicated case, but both shows suffer at least some from those expectations, and just as importantly, from being familiar. The 60th time -- and we've watched more than 60 episodes now -- that we see press secretary C.J. Cregg (Allison Janney) being clever and elusive at a news briefing is far less thrilling than the first or second. The same is true of those rolling conversations and lyrical recitations of issues and facts. They may be as sharp as ever, but we take it in stride.
With all of that as a foundation, however, some of the complaints ring true, and now we get back to the original point: Making good television is very hard. Particularly TV that tells a continuing story.
Series creator Aaron Sorkin, one of Hollywood's most talented and nimble writers, said when the show started that his toughest job would be to develop stories and characters' lives that could sustain 100 or more hours of television.
The possible pitfalls in doing that are everywhere, and they multiply as a show ages.
Characters need to grow, particularly in a show like "The West Wing" that's grounded in a real, if somewhat alternative, universe. But if they grow too much, they risk changing from the original characters that made the show work. If they don't suffer some, the series can feel like a Disney special; if they suffer too much, we've got a daytime soap.
Even the normal rhythms of life -- say romance -- come with built-in problems. A romantic chase is always entertaining. Romantic bliss on screen is dull. But if characters always love and lose, they become thin caricatures -- think Ally McBeal.
There are other natural hazards. Send one story off line and the repercussions can be huge.
For instance, the death of the president's longtime secretary, Mrs. Landingham, set up a brilliant episode and some lasting, solidly human complications for President Jed Bartlet (Martin Sheen). But it also left a gap that needed filling and, unfortunately, the result was those too-goofy job interviews and a wacky introduction to Deborah Fiderer (Lily Tomlin, who's on board for 10 episodes this season).
More important than those blips has been the continuing election story line. If you have a show about politics, you're going to need elections, but in fake White Houses, as in real ones, elections dominate everything else.
Other stories, like the growing crises with the fictional Middle East nation of Qumar, have been overshadowed by the election, and they're being drawn out because they can't get playing time.
The thing is, elections aren't a lot of fun. Not even fake ones written by Aaron Sorkin. Elections are the pieces of democracy -- particularly as they are performed in modern America -- that most of us like least.
And, oddly enough, they don't fit "The West Wing's" tone. Sorkin has described his show as an old-fashioned Western, and the guys who wear the white hats come through in the end on the wings of their principles, hard work and earnestness.
But that gets lost when the plot is driven by a campaign. We mostly just watch people devising strategies, which not only goes nowhere, it ends up sounding like preachy moralizing, or even worse, like political cynicism.
When there were actual actions to take, as in last week's superb debate episode, we got back to the heroes coming through on brains and grit, and everything felt right in the world.
The TV world, anyway, and that's the other thing. Real life has not helped the "The West Wing" much. The real elections, which seem to be nastier and even more depressing than usual this year, have added to our distaste at watching fake ones.
And the change of real White House administrations has also changed a lot of relationships with the show that, a year or so back, was a national hour of healing.
When Bill Clinton was president, Jed Bartlet represented something better for almost everyone -- for Democrats, he was what Clinton could have been; for Republicans, he was at least an honest, moral man and he wasn't Bill Clinton.
Now, some Republicans see Bartlet as an argument against President George W. Bush, and many Democrats see Bartlet's hawkish outlook as support for the Bush position on Iraq.
We say, let it go. Sorkin has said since the start that Jed Bartlet and his crew are simply an argument for intellect and a thoughtful, well-intentioned approach to governing.
All of that, however, is irrelevant here. This is simply an argument that "The West Wing" is what it has always been, a masterpiece of flowing wit, of eloquence, brains, storytelling and romanticism.
Has it hit some bumps? Sure. Will it hit more? Undoubtedly. Is it still the best show on TV? Absolutely. Will critics still harp? Of course, for a while. Then we'll hear about the resurgence.
So, tonight, the elections start to end -- though we don't learn if Bartlet wins re-election until next week. (Any bets?) That means, tonight, finally, we can begin the national healing.
Posted by MorganG at 05:53 PM
November 04, 2002
An Interview with ‘West Wing’ Creator Aaron Sorkin
By Jeff Giles
Newsweek
The West Wing,” which is a great show (no, shut up, it is), just won its third consecutive Emmy. But it’s been taking its lumps in the press because it’s losing viewers to “The Bachelor,” Rob Lowe is leaving—and some critics think the series has gotten lame (no, shut up, it hasn’t). “West Wing” creator Aaron Sorkin spoke with NEWSWEEK’s Jeff Giles.
Do you watch “The Bachelor”? I watch it religiously. I TiVo “West Wing.” I watch “The Bachelor.”
That can’t possibly be true. I’ve never seen it. Listen, we understand that some of the younger women have gone to “The Bachelor,” so instead of starting our episodes with a recap, what we’ll be doing is having Janel Moloney marry a millionaire celebrity boxer. There’s gonna be a quick ceremony. Then they’re gonna eat worms.
Is it a coincidence that all these negative articles about “West Wing” came out just as you’re about to negotiate a new deal? Obviously they help NBC. A coincidence that nine articles should appear in one day about a top-10 show losing 20 percent of its women 18 to 34? That’s a story with a pretty wide scope, and you’ve gotta expect people to cover that.
Let the record reflect that you’re being ironic. Yeah, I hope that you’ll let the record reflect that. Luckily, Hollywood isn’t into schadenfreude—so that’s a break.
Some viewers think Lowe’s story lines are dull. It’s a big cast. Plenty of times Rob has had a lot to do. He’s got two Golden Globe nominations and an Emmy nomination to show for it ... Look, any writer writing for Rob has big shoes to fill. You’re looking at the specter of “Atomic Train” and “Oxford Blues” and “St. Elmo’s Fire,” and you try to live up to those standards, and sometimes you can’t.
I’m not sure if the record should reflect that you’re being ironic. (Laughs) Whatever you like.
On the off chance NBC and “West Wing” can’t make a deal, would you go to another network? Hey, we’ll do it anywhere. We’ll do it on the cooking channel.
Posted by MorganG at 05:52 PM