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May 17, 2006
D.C. bids its 'Wing' farewell
Residents recognized themselves in show
By DANIEL DE VISE
The Washington Post
W
ashingtonians gathered around televisions Sunday night for the series finale of The West Wing, a program from a parallel universe in which the president is named Bartlet, terrorists come from Qumar and no one in the White House is allowed to finish a sentence.
The NBC program was television's homage to Washington, from its regal theme music and iconic imagery of the city to its celebration of leaks, news briefings and spin control.
Viewing parties popped up across the region. West Wing was, in many ways, a home-town show, as Cheers was for Boston and Seinfeld for Manhattan. For some, it was a little too close to home.
"It was exactly like watching work," said Adam Levine, a communications specialist in the District who was an assistant White House press secretary for two years under President Bush. "You'd sit there and you would have just come out of a meeting in the Roosevelt Room, and you'd flip on the show and they are all sitting there having a meeting in the Roosevelt Room."
The show wasn't necessarily water-cooler material inside the real West Wing, Levine said. But it was a beloved weekly ritual for many former West Wingers, some of whom, such as Levine, consulted for the show's writers.
The general consensus among fans, insiders and TV critics is that The West Wing began as a riff on the Clinton administration.
Jennifer Palmieri, a press aide during the Clinton years, recalls when the real West Wing learned of an early concept for the show.
"We heard it was going to be about a young former Southern governor who was divorced and had a 13-year-old daughter. Does that sound familiar? Except for the divorced part," she said. Producers ended up giving the fictional president a New Hampshire background and three daughters and patching up his marriage.
Palmieri, who lives in Alexandria, remembers when the cast came to visit their counterparts in summer 1999: John Podesta, Clinton's chief of staff and Palmieri's current boss, hung out with actor John Spencer; Press Secretary Joe Lockhart paired off with Allison Janney. But she stopped watching the show after the 2001 season because "when Gore lost, it was like being at your ex-boyfriend's wedding, every week."
Some of the program's best moments transcended partisan politics, as when, in a recent episode, victorious Democratic presidential candidate Matt Santos, played by Jimmy Smits, offers to make his vanquished foe, Alan Alda's Arnold Vinick, secretary of state.
Ultimately, The West Wing was not a program about politics, he said.
"I was always trying to write the best drama that I could write for television," O'Donnell said. "If it had been a politics show, it wouldn't have lasted a season."
Posted by Jo at May 17, 2006 09:06 AM