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September 23, 2003
Wells Just Has to Wing It
With Sorkin's departure, 'West Wing' producer faces challenges
By Verne Gay
STAFF WRITER
Newsday
September 24, 2003
So how out of touch are those Emmy voters who awarded "The West Wing" a fourth consecutive win as best drama? Consider the ways: Last season NBC was bugged with cost overruns, late scripts, and the relentless and occasionally shrill left-leaning politics of its most distinguished drama. Critics - who once reliably prayed at "The West Wing's" altar - barely bothered to TiVo it anymore. Much worse, ratings crumbled nearly 30 percent among young adult viewers.
Meanwhile, the show's prickly genius- in-residence, Aaron Sorkin, rebuffed attempts by NBC to lighten up the Bartlet White House, and by season's end, Sorkin was gone and so was co-executive producer Tommy Schlamme.
"An amicable departure," insisted all parties concerned. "Not quite," said everyone else.
And now it is up to John Wells, the show's new executive producer, to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. The series returns for its fifth season tonight at 9 on WNBC/4.
Wells, one of TV's most highly regarded producers ("China Beach," "ER," "Third Watch" and "The West Wing," where he has been a co-executive producer since its 1999 launch) held a conference call with reporters last week. His message: All is right with "Wing," but all also is about to change. He's added writers (including "China Beach" scribe John Sacret Young) and redundantly explained that he will not be the sole writer on all 24 episodes this season; Sorkin wrote nearly all 90 "Wing" episodes, which was perhaps a sore point with his underemployed colleagues and certainly one with NBC, which blamed him for the late scripts.
Wells also will embrace a different political point of view; imagine that! "We're not going to change the Bartlet administration," but conservative views "will be much more represented on the show and the conflicts between them [and the administration] in trying to get fiscal and international policy done. Our characters aren't changing, but the world in which they live, where there's a Republican-controlled Congress, has forced them to have those conversations more, and to hear the other point of view.
"Our hope would be that you don't sense that it's very different, but we certainly want to address the economic situation in the country ... and deal with the issue of security and how all of us are not feeling nearly as safe. We want to have conversations about international intervention, and not to take potshots at what the Bush administration is doing, but just the opposite, [and show] how complex the issues are and how there aren't any easy choices.
"We have to address the fact in our audience's minds that something has changed in the way we look at the world, and what we expect from our leaders and we want to address that without making the show too ponderous or too earnest, to make sure we're feeling relevant to our audience."
Wells also took some pains to suggest that Sorkin had no hard feelings, but also leaves the unmistakable impression that Sorkin no longer wants anything to do with his creation, although he did show up Sunday night to accept the best drama Emmy.
Wells recalled that while on vacation in Hawaii last spring, he watched the show's two-episode finale (the kidnapping of President Bartlet's daughter). In what he described as a "self-pitying moment," Wells wondered to his wife, 'Well, how am I supposed to get out of that?'"
He later had conversations with Sorkin about the plotline, although "he felt I should go off and do what I want to do." Wells even "begged" Sorkin for some guidance on the season's first two episodes, "but he felt it was time for us to do it on our own."
The two old friends still have the occasional lunch together: "It's shoptalk - two writers getting together and complaining."
Copyright © 2003, Newsday, Inc.
Posted by Jo at September 23, 2003 05:08 PM