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May 05, 2003
'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, during that same period, "West Wing" seemed torn between high-minded debate and dunderheaded plotting: multiple assassination attempts, overly cutesy relationship stories, characters disappearing with no explanation, and a never-ending supply of opinionated leggy blondes.
Sorkin had been hinting about his departure for quite some time, even telling the "Today" show last year that he would probably leave after the fourth season, and a statement from Wells suggested that everyone knew Sorkin had been packing his parachute for a while.
"Sadly, we always knew this day would come," said Wells, "and have been assembling a talented group of writers, directors and producers to assist in this transition."
Whoever emerges as the new voice of "The West Wing" (our pick is Lawrence O'Donnell, a "Wing" alum who created NBC's "Mr. Sterling") will have to figure out a way to stay consistent with the current tone without slavishly imitating it. Whatever the show's dramatic failings in the last two years, the Sorkin/Schlamme collaboration guaranteed that the series wouldn't be mistaken for anything else on television. Their style -- particularly Sorkin's idiosyncratic, bantering dialogue -- will be hard to re-create, and it's probably best if the new writers don't try.
Perhaps the best way to deal with the change is to work it into the world of the show, maybe by having Bartlet fall under the sway of a Dick Morris/Karl Rove type -- a political guru whose drastic suggestions could account for any changes in the series' tone. Plus, it would create some dissent among the supporting characters and allow them to give voice to any concerns from fans who expect the characters to talk and behave in a particular way.
Regime change is never easy, but it's always interesting to watch. As frustrating as "The West Wing" has become, it could sink even lower without its two founding fathers. Or it could execute the most unlikely political comeback since Nixon emerged from exile to beat Humphrey in 1968. Politics is, after all, the art of the possible.
Matt Zoller Seitz and Alan Sepinwall are TV critics for The Star-Ledger.
Posted by Jo at May 5, 2003 04:11 PM