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September 24, 2003
'Wing' has this vote
By David Bianculli
New York Daily News
THE WEST WING. Tonight at 9, NBC.
Despite winning the Best Drama Emmy Sunday night for last season's work, the biggest question surrounding NBC's "The West Wing" this season is whether it will be any good, now that series creator Aaron Sorkin walked away last May.
Based on the one episode provided for preview, it's a little hard to say. The first impression, though, is that the show will survive just fine.
It might not thrive, but it didn't always thrive under Sorkin's watch anyway. After a brilliant freshman season and an equally strong second year, both Sorkin and the show lost focus.
The acting remained brilliant, thanks to one of the strongest ensembles anywhere, but story lines fizzled.
Only when Sorkin was calling it quits and planning his own farewell to the show did he, and "The West Wing," again become astounding. The two-part season finale, in which the kidnapping of President Bartlet's daughter Zoey prompted him to step down and turn over the Oval Office to the Republican Speaker of the House, was a taut nail-biter in which everything was left unanswered.
Was Zoey alive? Was the kidnapping a form of retribution, as Bartlet and his inner circle suspected, for the President's clandestine approval of the assassination of a senior official of the (fictional) country of Qumar? What would the Republicans do now that they were in charge? And how quickly would Bartlet get his title and power back, and at what cost?
With plot threads like that to follow, executive producer John Wells and the rest of the continuing "West Wing" team had a major leg up when it came to shaping tonight's premiere.
And since most of those questions remain unresolved after the season opener, it may take until the conclusion of this story arc, and beyond, before the post-Sorkin "West Wing" can be fully and fairly evaluated.
What's best about the opener is John Goodman as President Walken - a gruff man who makes decisions just as quickly as Bartlet, but clearly not always the same ones. There's the tension of the West Wing staff at trying to function under a new, less popular boss.
And in the residence quarters, where Martin Sheen's Bartlet is agonizing over his missing daughter, his wife Abby (Stockard Channing) learns of the kidnappers' possible motivation, and is furious.
The dramatic structure of the season premiere is more straightforward than Sorkin's usual season openers - no flashbacks, no "Pulp Fiction"-type shuffling of time. A lot more is told through silence, and reaction shots, than is usual for this show. But it's a gripping hour, and the unpredictable twists could carry the momentum, and the show, as well.
In the situation room, with some military advisers pushing for retaliation and others counseling restraint, President Walken booms, "If Zoey Bartlet turns up dead, I'm gonna blow the hell out of something, and God only knows what happens next."
Exactly.
Originally published on September 23, 2003
Posted by Jo at September 24, 2003 09:34 AM