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October 20, 2004
Not much to hail in 'West Wing'
by David Bianculli
New York Daily News
Here's the first good thing about the NBC series "Hawaii": It's done so poorly in the ratings, the network has pulled it, and added a second hour to tonight's season premiere of "The West Wing."
For viewers, that's like trading crudity for crudités.
Yet while "The West Wing" remains a very watchable program, at times it can be frustrating to long-time viewers, who remember the issues and high points from the show's earliest seasons, when series creator Aaron Sorkin was at the top of his game.
John Wells is at the helm of "The West Wing" these days - and, as with his stewardship of "ER," he's got to deal with a sprawling ensemble cast, and the challenge of reinvigorating a dramatic show that has lasted long enough to put most of the characters through most imaginable paces.
With "The West Wing," the biggest problem last season was that many of the characters began to act inconsistently.
Martin Sheen's President Bartlet, once the show's moral and intellectual center, was the worst victim of this revisionist history. He spent a lot of time being guided, even scolded, by subordinates like Allison Janney's C.J. Cregg and Joshua Malina's Will Bailey.
NBC sent out two episodes from the new season for preview: the opening "West Wing" hour tonight at 8, and the third episode, which will be televised next week. The network also provided samples from the intervening episode, which, like the others, deals with the fate of car-bomb victim Donna (Janel Moloney) and escalating tensions between Israelis and Palestinians in the Middle East.
While the season opener has some strong and dramatic moments, it also has its share of forced and unconvincing ones.
Once again, though Bartlet makes the final decisions, he relies on his staff for inspiration as well as information. And the car-bomb incident, traced to terrorists in Syria, is linked by military intelligence to having a possible, but questionable, link to other terrorist factions in Iran.
Bartlet resists the suggestion to attack both countries simultaneously - not when incomplete information leads him to feel that lumping in Iraq with Syria was nothing but "a pretext to attack another country we don't happen to like."
The parallels to our country's real-life treatment of Afghanistan and Iraq are much too obvious - painfully so. In its prime, "The West Wing" would never have been that blatant.
Only a few characters, like Bradley Whitford's Josh Lyman, still sound and act like themselves.
The hope is that the season's major developing story line, about the election of a new administration, will give "The West Wing" both the freshness and focus it needs.
If, however, the on-air NBC promos have led you to expect guest stars Jimmy Smits and Alan Alda tonight, keep waiting.
They don't show up until the November sweeps.
Originally published on October 20, 2004
Posted by Jo at October 20, 2004 07:53 AM