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_... but I play one on TV
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Nov. 1, 1999 |
"The West Wing" is a bustling White House-as-workplace drama filled with busy, passionate people having busy, passionate Sorkinesque conversations (surely no one is this cleverly articulate in real life) about political moves that could affect the well-being of the country, if not the entire free world, all the while sprinting through the maze-like corridors of the White House's West Wing. The characters on "West Wing" have important, meaningful jobs that preclude them from having personal lives, but, hey, ask not what your country can do for you. They are proud to serve first-term President Josiah Bartlet (Martin Sheen), a folksy New Hampshire Democrat of founding-father stock. Squeaky clean and decent, Bartlet respects the office, doesn't waffle on the issues and shows no inclination to engage in thong-snapping in windowless corridors. Perhaps as Sorkin's little wish-fulfillment gift to the Hillary-weary, the first lady has yet to be seen. There's a rumor she's played by Stockard Channing.
The West Wing
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Joyce Millman Joyce Millman's column appears every other Monday in Salon Arts & Entertainment. In Sorkin's half hokey, half sort-of-sweet wonkadelic premise, Washington politics is a hallowed and noble sport, not the vicious Fight Club it actually resembles. There is cynicism and partisanship (the show's not a total fantasy), but it isn't crippling -- President Bartlet (or, rather, his staff) is still strong enough to force compromise and cooperation. The Washington of "The West Wing" is the best Washington it can be, given the times we live in. And just when you're ready to write the show off as a sentimental load, Sorkin snaps out of it and delivers a scene of surprising political -- OK, liberal -- bite. In the pilot episode, for instance, Bartlet's deputy chief of staff Josh Lyman (Bradley Whitford) and communications director Toby Ziegler (Richard Schiff) are forced to sit down and apologize for an impertinent remark Lyman made to the female leader of a right-wing Christian anti-abortion group during a TV debate. During their meeting, the "Lambs of God" leader and the rotund congressman who champions her aren't satisfied with just an apology; they want concessions from the president, and demand that he endorse the morality legislation they're pushing for. When Ziegler sharply demurs, the Lambs of God leader makes a veiled antisemitic remark (Ziegler and Lyman are Jewish). Just as things threaten to get uglier, into the room strides Bartlet, booming out the First Commandment ("I am the Lord, your God. Though shalt worship no other God before me") and launching into a rambling story about his 12-year-old granddaughter Annie and the interview she gave to a teen magazine. He seems amiable at first, but then he icily gets to the point: Where in Scripture, he wants to know, does the Lord command his followers to send mutilated rag dolls to girls who express pro-choice opinions in national publications? "Now get your fat asses out of my White House!" thunders Bartlet. They get. But network realities dictate that "The West Wing" can't be a liberal fiesta all the time (darn!), so, in one episode, doveish Bartlet almost ordered Syria to be bombed back to the Stone Age after a plane carrying his personal physician was shot down. And environmentalists got skewered in a scene in which press secretary C.J. Cregg (Allison Janney) tried, and failed, to keep a straight face through a presentation from a wildlife protection group solemnly asking for a $900 million taxpayer-built highway just for endangered wolves. It's a credit to Sorkin's writing (which is far less annoyingly stagey here than on "Sports Night") that those scenes didn't play like a loss of conviction on the part of the characters or the show. Sorkin does a decent job of conveying the complexities of political issues and decision-making in the real world; nothing is ever black and white. Not that "The West Wing" doesn't have its mind-blowingly corny side, starting with Snuffy Walden's schmaltzy orchestral theme song that manages to echo both "Fanfare for the Common Man" and the love song from "Titanic." Most episodes so far have been saddled with unbearably cloying President Bartlet speeches that sound like unironic rewrites of candidate Reagan's "morning in America" campaign ads. There are dippy plot developments you can see coming from a mile away -- the minute the president's physician pulled out photos of his newborn daughter and mentioned that he was going on a mercy mission to the Middle East, you knew the poor guy was a goner.
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