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November 20, 2003
Rick Kushman: 'West' goes south
Without Aaron Sorkin, 'The West Wing' has lost its soul and intelligence
By Rick Kushman
Sacramento Bee
This one is painful. It's the column I hoped not to write. But face it, "The West Wing," the four-time Emmy winner, that once-lyrically written masterpiece of lofty romanticism, is, officially, awful.
Where there were layered, charismatic characters, we've now got a pack of whiners.
Where there were noble intentions and an ode to public service, there are now fools, bullies and selfish brats.
Where the plots were driven by bright debate and difficult moral complexities, now they use emotional manipulation and cliffhangers.
"The West Wing" lost its creators at the end of last season -- writer Aaron Sorkin and director Thomas Schlamme, though Schlamme remains a consultant on the show -- but it still has that remarkable cast, and it has some huge fans out there.
Ratings are up this season -- probably because fans came back to check out the changes, but they're dropping again -- and even a few critics have praised the show. They're wrong, but you never know with critics.
But, be honest, this is not the show it was. Not close. There's nothing amazing, no one inspiring, no moments of grandness or majesty.
In its best seasons, "The West Wing" was nearly a national hour of healing. It offered the argument, with power and grace, that public service matters, and it created the hopeful fantasy that the honesty, intelligence and civic concern of the people in it are unassailable.
Now? It's just another TV show, a show that relies on formula and cheap emotion, on TV conventions that ring as familiar as they do false.
But it didn't have to be this way.
Of course, things were going to change. No one writes kinetic dialogue like Sorkin. Few people can hustle characters through a building and make conversation and debate sing with power, vigor and poetry like he can. All of that was special, but it was frosting.
The core of this series has always been those stellar, deftly drawn characters. They were dazzling in their sense of purpose and loyalty, they were honest and caring, and so astoundingly smart that they raised our IQ just watching them.
So what have the new producers done? They tried to keep the hustles through the building -- sounding mighty lame in the process -- and took all the characters and gutted them. Took out their souls and replaced them with spiritless husks, one each from the categories in TV drama for dummies.
There is no one to like anymore. No one with a sense of dignity or purpose. Instead, everybody's angry, everyone's in emotional peril. Everyone is lost and flailing.
A few weeks back, C.J. Cregg (Allison Janney) wept to the president, "We need you to lead." She wept at him.
And that was Josiah Bartlet (Martin Sheen), a president who, until this season, never needed to be told his duty, a man who understood the stature and dignity on the office of president of the United States.
He was a smart, forceful, articulate leader, a Nobel Prize-winning economist with a world-class intellect and, above all, a good man. But that guy is gone. In his place is a charmless, sometimes doddering wimp who seems to have nothing to do.
They've all changed. Noble war horse Leo McGarry (John Spencer) is now dismissive and ticked-off; C.J. is the house scold; Toby Ziegler (Richard Schiff) went from biting idealist to selfish crank; Will Bailey (Joshua Malina) went to work for the vice president and functions as a smart-mouthed jerk; and Josh Lyman (Bradley Whitford), the too-cocky-but-earnest political whiz, is now so incompetent he stopped his taxi to get out and scream gibberish at the Capitol building. "You want a piece of me?" he yelled. "You want a piece of me?" By now, who would?
This is not about a change in politics -- this version has no politics -- it's about an excessive drop in wits. The Republican opposition has been gutted, too. Often, they were smarter than the West Wing staff; always, they cared as much about their country, although now and then someone had to be the bad guy.
The Republicans working for Bartlet -- first Ainsley Hayes (Emily Procter), then Joe Quincy (Matthew Perry) -- were patriotic and dedicated and, as often as not, won their arguments.
But now, the Senate majority leader is a collegial, aimless goof, and the speaker of the House is an ambitious, mean-spirited weasel. Meanwhile, not one word of genuine policy debate has been uttered all season.
Once, you watched "The West Wing" and thought, "Wow." Now you watch and think, "They wouldn't do that; that's stupid; what is this, 'ER'?"
The answer is, sadly, yes. What we've got is bad "ER," which, these days, is a couple of layers of bad. That comes as no surprise, because both shows are run by executive producer John Wells.
We don't want to beat up on Wells, we really don't. He inherited a very tough spot following in Sorkin's writing footsteps while trying to revive ratings. And last season, "The West Wing" certainly had its rough patches and odd twists that needed some work.
But, just as in "ER," Wells and his staff seem to have mistaken pathetic for pathos and meanness for natural conflict.
It's also as if Wells and these writers never watched the show -- though Wells has been an executive producer from the start and it was his production company that housed the series.
These days, no one trusts Josh because, I guess, they need the conflict. Not so long ago, Leo and the president had an exchange, when Leo said, "What, you want to start not trusting Josh?" as if that idea was impossible.
The old "West Wing" was staffed with perceptive, engaged professionals, from the clerks to the opposition to the FBI agents. Now, everyone is bitter or selfish, and no one acts consistently or, really, with any discernible motivation except to set up the next confrontation.
Also missing are the light moments woven through even the darkest episodes, the debates over the shape of maps, falling satellites or the need for pennies (most, it turns out, end up in jars).
There was, for instance, the time the president called the Butterball turkey hotline. "If I cook the stuffing inside the turkey," he asked, "is there a chance I could kill my guests? I'm not saying that's necessarily a deal breaker."
Now there is an unrelenting grimness to the Bartlet White House and the entire show. Even the humor, such as C.J.'s allegedly clever cracks to the press, is grim.
Sorkin called "The West Wing" an old-fashioned Western. "It's about romanticism, it's about idealism," he said. "It's about being clear that our guys wear the white hats, and when there's a showdown, they'll come through."
Now, no one wears white hats and no one comes through. Last week, there were two great chances to capture the old spirit -- when the chief justice (Milo O'Shea) stepped into the Oval Office, and when the president met the group haggling over the budget. Both came up tired and labored.
The chief justice, instead of giving a heroic speech about ideals, democracy and the law, whimpered about the good old days. Then Bartlet and the House speaker, instead of engaging in an ennobling argument for their beliefs, got malicious and petty as they let the federal government shut down. "We had a deal," Bartlet said.
All of that was so obviously constructed to get to a fight and so NBC could promote it as "the decision that stops everything." Now, "The West Wing" gets the same promotions as "ER" and every by-the-numbers series on TV, always something like "the most dramatic episode ever." What's next, helicopters falling from the sky?
The old Bartlet would have hated this new show. He was a man who quoted Churchill and Roosevelt, "serious men using big words for big purpose," as he said.
This "West Wing" seems afraid of big words and big purpose, afraid to show brains or nuance the way hack politicians are afraid to show what they think.
That kind of behavior, as Bartlet said once, "isn't worthy of a great nation," and this season's dumbed-down, soaped-up "The West Wing" isn't worthy of a once-great show.
Posted by Jo at November 20, 2003 04:20 PM