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October 08, 2003
The West Wing resorts to cheap tricks
Alex Strachan
Vancouver Sun
Tuesday, October 07, 2003
CREDIT: Vancouver Sun
Martin Sheen plays President Josiah Bartlet in The West Wing, a show now in trouble.
When regime change meets the law of unintended consequences, unintended consequences have a way of seizing the spotlight -- even when the cause is good. And in The West Wing's case, the cause may not have been that good to begin with.
Aaron Sorkin, The West Wing's creator and head writer, had a hand in every script of every episode of the behind-the-scenes White House drama since its inauguration on Sept. 22, 1999, and when he left the series in May The West Wing lost not just its most personal voice but possibly its heart and soul as well.
Sorkin's ear for walk 'n' talk byplay in the corridors of power, his eye for the small, everyday details of life in the public service and his ability as a dramatist to find the drama in a debate over a line item veto or the machinations involved in getting the right person on to the right committee, are just some of the reasons The West Wing won four consecutive Emmy Awards for outstanding dramatic series.
FBI special agents may have rescued presidential first daughter Zoey Bartlet (Elisabeth Moss) from her kidnappers in last week's episode, but the outcome had all the suspense of a fixed fight.
The West Wing is in trouble, and not just because its ratings dropped 20 per cent last season over the previous year. The West Wing is in trouble because what once gave the show its charm and distinctive tone, the way it made heroic acts out of small deeds has been hijacked by high drama.
The kidnapping of the president's daughter, a cheap audience trick, capped a season in which terrorist threats dominated The West Wing's agenda, from the officially sanctioned assassination of a foreign dignitary suspected of having terrorist ties to the endless conflict over a fictional Persian Gulf state called Qumar.
Witty banter and fancy political footwork have become collateral damage.
Sorkin's successor, John Wells, has appeared in the credits for the past four seasons as one of The West Wing's executive producers. He was instrumental in The West Wing's development in its initial stages, though his primary role has been as president and CEO of the production company that makes the show. His company also produces ER and Third Watch, and it is ER, Wells's primary responsibility, his first love and the show that most bears his stamp, that provides hints of what The West Wing will become.
Sorkin never wrote an episode that focused exclusively on the lives and relationships of its main characters; there are episodes of ER that do nothing but.
Last week's West Wing episode, also written by Wells, introduced a new character, Ryan (Jesse Bradford), a White House intern who seems poised to become a romantic interest for Donna (Janel Moloney). In true TV tradition, the two met and took an instant disliking to each other, which bodes well for future romance.
Sorkin bears no small amount of responsibility for the direction The West Wing took last season, but he was able to compensate with his natural ear for dialogue and the way he could make his characters walk and talk with a spring in their step and a snap in their voice.
Compare the smart, incisive way both Bartlet's personality and his complex relationship with his wife was revealed in a first-season episode, written by Sorkin ("We don't handle my wife. When we try, you know what happens at the other end of this building? I get a little punishment"), to the small talk of this year's season premiere, when Wells padded a scene by having Bartlet ask his wife, "You want me to call down for some coffee?"
By obsessing over the terror threat, The West Wing is merely trying to reflect events in the real world, of course, but the more it does so, the more it reminds us that it is not real. It is no longer a drama about politics; it is a melodrama about terrorism. And if ER is any indication, and I think it is, it is also about to become a soap opera in the bedroom. What was once high-IQ entertainment now is now low-definition television.
Posted by Jo at October 8, 2003 08:48 AM