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January 24, 2005
On TV as in Life, Presidents Don't Last
By JACQUES STEINBERG
New York Times
LOS ANGELES, Jan. 21 - Hours after President Bush delivered his second Inaugural Address on Thursday, the actor who portrays his fictional counterpart, Martin Sheen, sat in a dimly lighted mock-up of Air Force One 3,000 miles from Washington and reflected on the jockeying already under way to succeed his character on "The West Wing."
Asked how the producers of that NBC drama might ultimately choose among the two apparent front-runners - a cranky Republican senator played by Alan Alda and an earnest Democratic representative played by Jimmy Smits - Mr. Sheen leaned on the cane his character uses to combat the effects of multiple sclerosis and proposed ripping a page from the playbook of "American Idol."
"You could do it the way you would on, what do you call it, one of these reality shows," said Mr. Sheen, still wearing the three-piece navy suit his character, President Jed Bartlet, had worn for a scene set at a party. "You could put Mr. Alda, Alan, and Jimmy Smits before the audience and say, 'Who would you like?' It would be interesting, wouldn't it?"
While the show's writers have ruled out a national referendum to elect their next president - the ultimate vote will be cast by John Wells, the show's executive producer, who has yet to throw his support to a candidate - the sixth season of "The West Wing" has already had enough suspense, intrigue and conflict among its main characters to rival "Survivor." As President Bartlet's physical health has deteriorated - he experienced partial paralysis on a plane ride to China for a state visit - most of his aides are adjusting to new jobs, the result of a shake-up in the final year of his second term that has touched off uncharacteristic backbiting.
In one coming episode, Josh Lymon, who is played by Bradley Whitford and is the campaign manager for Mr. Smits's Matt Santos, actually brawls with the president's communications director, Toby Ziegler, played by Richard Schiff.
The creative jolt to "The West Wing" this season - along with a modest increase in its ratings - has come at a critical juncture in the life of the program. The contract between NBC and Warner Brothers Television, which owns "The West Wing," is due to expire at season's end, and the network has yet to make a decision on whether to extend it.
For NBC, struggling through a season in which it could well finish fourth in the prime-time ratings, "The West Wing" has sometimes hurt more than it has helped, at times finishing fourth in its time slot, 9 to 10 p.m. Eastern time on Wednesdays. But working in the show's favor is that so far this season its ratings are up 1.2 percent from last year, according to Nielsen Media Research, and, more important, that its 11.9 million viewers remain among the most affluent watching television. In something of an anomaly, it also often draws substantially more viewers than the program that precedes it. (This past week, it nearly doubled the ratings of its lead-in, "Sports Illustrated: Swimsuit Model Search.")
While the network's situation has created its own suspense, both NBC and Mr. Wells sent signals this week that pointed toward the program's return. Jeff Zucker, president of the NBC Universal Television Group, told reporters gathered here Friday for a midseason presentation by the network that he considered the show to have "rejuvenated itself" and that he was optimistic it would be renewed. On Thursday, Mr. Wells said in an interview in his office on the Warner Brothers lot that he was "as confident as I can be without a signed contract" that there would be a seventh season.
"It moved from hope to confidence recently," he said, before adding, "More than that, I expect the show has got a couple of more years in it."
Meanwhile, with the exception of Mr. Sheen, every main actor and actress associated with the program, including both Mr. Alda and Mr. Smits, has formally committed to return for at least part of next season, Mr. Wells said. Mr. Sheen, whose representatives are currently negotiating with Warner Brothers, said that his own return was a foregone conclusion. "I'm in," he said.
The idea that "The West Wing" might endure seemed almost unthinkable at the beginning of last season, when the program was sent reeling - creatively, as well as among its executives and cast - by the departure of Aaron Sorkin. Mr. Sorkin, who had created the show, wrote or rewrote all 88 episodes in those first four seasons, Mr. Wells said. His departure, along with that of Thomas Schlamme, another executive producer who directed many episodes, left only Mr. Wells from what Mr. Sheen described as "the triumvirate" that had guided the show.
Mr. Wells acknowledged in the interview that the show had struggled at times last season as he presided over a team of writers who took turns trying to figure out how to compensate for the loss of Mr. Sorkin's distinctive voice. Among the mistakes he made, he said, was leaving all of the main characters in the same jobs they had held since the early days of the Bartlet administration.
"No matter how talented your actors, if people are doing exactly the same jobs with the same relationships to each other, you begin to exhaust the ways in which you can get them into conflict," Mr. Wells said. "The only thing you can really do with that is to shake it up."
Drawing on his deep background overseeing prime-time dramas - he is also the executive producer of "E.R." and "Third Watch" - Mr. Wells gathered his writing staff over this past summer and began plotting what everyone believed would be an especially taut story line, one that had never been portrayed on television, at least fictional series television.
"The one area that the show hadn't addressed in its five years on the air was the notion of an administration coming to an end and the continuity of government and the difficulty of someone leaving the office who'd been there for a long time," Mr. Wells said. "We started doing a lot of research on the last years of administrations and how difficult it is for presidents and for the people who've been influential in the administration to sit in the White House and watch a whole other group of people begin the journey that was so essential to their lives."
Mr. Wells and his writers have already mapped out a fairly detailed election schedule. The current season will end with episodes set at fictional Democratic and Republican conventions. There will be an election early next season and an inauguration that will be broadcast about this time next year. There are even plans to visit Mr. Sheen's character in retirement in his home state of New Hampshire.
The only question remains who will be the president, and Mr. Wells swears that he and his staff have yet to cast their votes.
"We're not trying to be coy about it," he said. "We write a chapter at a time and then see what we've got. It's unfolding for us."
At their best, the events portrayed on "The West Wing" have often had a ripped-from-the-headlines quality, not because they have re-enacted the administrations of Bill Clinton (who was president when the show made its debut) or President Bush, but because they have extracted inherent drama from political discourse on unlikely subjects like ethanol and the earned-income tax credit.
Part of the program's authenticity comes from the résumés of its writers and consultants, who have been vetted like cabinet nominees to insure that the writers' room reflects all bands of the political spectrum. One writer, Eli Attie, was a speechwriter for Al Gore. A consultant, Kenneth M. Duberstein, was a chief of staff to President Ronald Reagan.
Although the Bartlet administration has always been tough to categorize politically - while generally liberal, the fictional president has also declined to stop an execution and has intervened militarily in the Middle East - the introduction of Mr. Alda's character, Arnold Vinick, has given the show a chance to establish its bona fides with conservatives.
"The difficulty we've been having writing the Vinick character is that he makes an awful lot of sense," said Mr. Wells, 48, who won't disclose his party affiliation but says he tends to be more liberal. "Vinick's very articulate. And he presents a point of view very straightforwardly."
The on-camera bake-off between Mr. Alda's character and Mr. Smits's, each of whom is in effect competing to take over the lead role on the show, is fairly unusual in network television history. In interviews this week, each actor chose his words as carefully as a politician when asked if he was available for all of next season - each said he was, if need be - and whether he would accept the fictional presidency if offered it.
"In order to preserve the suspense," said Mr. Alda, 68, "I would have to say, 'I have no plans, at this time, to be president.' "
Posted by Jo at January 24, 2005 07:31 PM