Whither reality TV?

So far, "The West Wing" is the only drama directly responding to the attacks. Will TV ever be the same?

By Andy Dehnart

Oct. 3, 2001 | "Ripped from the headlines."

That's the phrase NBC uses to promote its drama "Law & Order." On the short commercials plugging this week's show, the announcer sensationally enunciates the line, as if to suggest that because the fictional show takes its inspiration from real life, the program will be even more dramatic.

That might have been convincing before Sept. 11, when terrorist attacks destroyed the World Trade Center towers live on television. There, of course, we saw headlines come to life in the most unimaginable ways during typically perky morning news shows. The footage wasn't "just like a movie" or really like anything we'd ever seen on TV before, except perhaps for footage of events like the Challenger explosion. This was real-life drama with incredible real-life consequences playing out on our screens a few seconds at a time. The headlines were writing themselves with a cathode ray tube.

This Wednesday night, the only drama on TV that has truly been ripped from the headlines -- or at least the headlines we've seen in the last three weeks -- is a "very special episode" of "The West Wing." Unlike the "Law & Order" spot, "The West Wing" is being promoted by a solemn commercial featuring stars Martin Sheen and Bradley Whitford. "In the wake of the events of Sept. 11, we decided to postpone our premiere," says Whitford. Sheen continues, "We wanted to set our continuing story lines aside for a night and try something different. We hope you'll join us on Wednesday, Oct. 3, for this new episode." Titled "Isaac and Ishmael," the episode finds the staff of "The West Wing" "dealing with some of the questions and issues currently facing the world in the wake of the recent terrorist attacks on the United States," according to NBC. Series creator Aaron Sorkin wrote the hourlong show, which was rushed into production last week -- so fast that there were no screening tapes available for critics.

While "The West Wing" will be the first fictional show to deal with the terrorist attacks, it's not the first show to acknowledge them -- or to react. Other shows quickly made changes. CBS's CIA drama "The Agency" dropped its pilot, which began with a hostage gagged with an American flag being blown up in Cairo. "24," a new Fox show that was shot in real time and will unfold an hour at a time throughout the season, edited out of its first episode a bomb exploding on a commercial airplane. Scenes of airport troubles were deleted from the season premiere of "Friends," and "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" reportedly removed shots of the twin towers from the show.

The first entertainment shows to come back on the air after the attacks were the late-night talk shows, but they weren't the same as they'd been. First David Letterman returned, teary-eyed alongside an also-shaken Dan Rather; a somber Jay Leno came back the next evening. Later, an equally choked-up Jon Stewart delivered an unexpectedly poignant and moving monologue at the beginning of the normally biting and satiric "The Daily Show."

Although soap operas have returned to their daytime slots and laugh tracks are again resounding during prime-time comedies, television has a different tone. And while some of the changes made in the name of sensitivity seem like overreactions, the decisions generally make sense in the context of the unimaginable events of Sept. 11. Watching a jet blow up just to make a suspenseful drama a bit more entertaining has a different meaning now. But what happens a month, six months or a year from now? Will TV and pop culture ever be the same?

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