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October 16, 2003
On Bartlett and Bush, and Moby for inaugural ball
by Doug Imbrogno
Charleston (WV) Gazette
“The West Wing,” you hear from TV writers and the Neilson ratings, has had its problems with lower numbers the last couple of seasons.
Me, I’m still annoyed with series creator Aaron Sorkin for knocking off President Jed Bartlett’s feisty, font-of-wisdom secretary, Mrs. Van Landingham, two seasons ago in a car crash, just so Jed could talk back to God and smoosh a cigarette in His face inside a cathedral.
She was of one of TV’s few elderly characters not a caricature, displaying the wise (and wise-ass) grandmotherly energy many of us know from our own grandmas and aunts, yet little seen in prime-time, where elders are invariably buffoons or teeth-grating wise-crackers.
Lily Tomlin’s strangely underplayed replacement character has yet to fill Mrs. Van Landingham’s shoes.
I also still hold a grudge against Sorkin for making me care about the romance between press secretary C.J. Cregg and a Secret Service agent played winningly by Mark Harmon — only to gun him down in a plot turn that so peeved me I stalked from the living room. (If you’re going to watch a show, might as well take it personally.)
But Sorkin has left the series, as has Rob Lowe, feeling unloved as the series was originally conceived with his character — the brainiac White House staffer Sam Seaborn — at its center and not President Bartlett.
But, man, it’s nice to still have at least one president around you can respect in the morning.
I can see the disconnect, though, between reality and prime-time. The new, Sorkin-less “West Wing” season began this month and the Bartlett administration is still reeling from its decision to pre-emptively off a single terrorist leader intent on blowing up the Golden Gate Bridge.
The moral implications of using politically sanctioned violence and pre-emptive massive force? Thoughtful discussion and fretting on the moral and international consequences of the powers of the presidency and use of American might?
This is “West Wing’s” fodder and one of the reasons the show is still such a tonic to faithful viewers.
It’s the current real-world presidency where such matters seem fiction.
Maybe that’s why the real world’s president’s own ratings are in free fall.
Posted by Jo at October 16, 2003 04:56 PM