Guess it's time to take West Wing off the TIVO season pass.
Just got "Back from the Beach," and read this. God, John, what a wonderful weekly hour of TV you have had for the last four years! A magnificent Liberal President, with an outstanding Liberal staff, fights for "Truth, Justice, and the American way," against the nasty right wingers in Congress.
Well, for the next couple of weeks, a "Newt Gingrich" type takes over and "kicks ass and takes names." My turn at last. But, never fear, your side will prevail and it will return to the "Camelot" you love. Here is the "Times" review.
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September 24, 2003
TV REVIEW | 'THE WEST WING'
A New Regime at the White House
By ALESSANDRA STANLEY
he new season of "The West Wing" begins on Wednesday night exactly where the show left off so startlingly in May — with a Republican president in command.
When President Josiah Bartlet learned that his daughter Zoey had been kidnapped by terrorists, he temporarily stepped down rather than risk letting his personal anguish sway his judgment as commander in chief.
And that typically noble decision was his last.
This drastic new course was set by the show's creator, Aaron Sorkin, in the rollicking cliffhanger he wrote before leaving the show in the spring. But John Wells, the executive producer who took over after the departure of Mr. Sorkin and the other executive producer, Thomas Schlamme, has done very well indeed with the scenario he inherited.
"West Wing" needed a jolt.
The vice presidency is vacant (because of a sex scandal), and next in line is the speaker of the House, Glenallen Walken (John Goodman), who barrels into the Oval Office like a right-wing Lyndon B. Johnson, barking orders and slapping down equivocators.
He gives the F.B.I. one more day to find the kidnappers before ordering a retaliatory strike. "But if Zoey Bartlet turns up dead," he says, "I'm going to blow up something. God only knows what happens next."
Viewers, however, can already tell that "The West Wing" has taken a sharp right turn.
The crisis — a terrorist retaliation for an assassination secretly ordered by President Bartlet — does more than bring "West Wing" up to date with current international events. It shatters the complacent amity of the Bartlet White House, giving room to all the tensions that flourish around a real Oval Office and that had been smothered in the show's glow of second-term fellowship, banter and high moral principle. A happy, healthy West Wing is no better suited to drama than a happy, healthy marriage is. It was time for the Bartlet administration to suffer a setback.
One could not hope for a more promising fall from grace. The Walken presidency is the new corporate management in charge of downsizing the company after a merger, the new baby that parents bring home to a toddler accustomed to undivided attention and the new team of writers and consultants brought in to pump up a show after its creator has left.
As Walken, Mr. Goodman sheds all his usual bonhomie and lets the Bartlet loyalists know who is boss the way Johnson was wont to: he makes the press secretary, C. J. Cregg, come in close to straighten his tie while he questions her loyalty. His supercilious congressional aides do not bother to cloak their contempt for their Democratic hosts. Meanwhile the president and first lady are huddled refugees in a guest suite of their own White House, waiting for a whisper of hope, like ordinary distraught parents.
Walken is a hawk and an unrefined bully. (He has a small, yapping dog that sits on antique silk armchairs and has to be walked by senior aides.) But as a commander in chief, he is also decisive, strong-willed and surprisingly good at news conferences. When asked by a reporter if he regrets his predecessor's secret order to assassinate a Qumari terrorist leader, Walken retorts, "My regret is that we only got to kill the bastard once."
Bartlet's staff members watch in awe and dismay, a few fretting over how the United Nations will react. "I'm sorry, he looks, I dunno," says Donna, assistant to a Bartlet aide, Josh Lyman, and at a loss for the right word.
"Presidential," Josh supplies gloomily.
Some fans of the show are already ascribing the switch from a Democratic fictional president to a Republican one as a sly political statement — an effort by NBC to curry favor with the real powers that be. (Martin Sheen, who plays President Bartlet, was Hollywood's most visible critic of the war in Iraq last spring. )
That reasoning is what Italians call "dietrologia," the art of finding dark, ulterior motives behind the most obvious decisions. The nation may not have a shortage of Republican face time, but "The West Wing" did: its heroes needed a worthy enemy, and the plot needed to move beyond Clinton-era crises and into the more compelling present.
There are a few awkward bits of dialogue that indicate that a new team is in charge. When a Walken aide recommends closing the markets to avert a financial panic, Toby, Bartlet's chief speechwriter, delivers a cliché that since Sept. 11 has often been reserved for satire. "If we close them," he says solemnly, "then the terrorists win."
Over all, however, the first episode of the post-Sorkin "West Wing" is a treat. It would be wrong of course to hope that Zoey is never found. But with any luck, she will not turn up any time soon.
THE WEST WING
NBC, tonight at 9, Eastern and Pacific times; 8, Central time
Created by Aaron Sorkin; directed by Thomas Schlamme, Alex Graves and Chris Misiano. Produced by John Wells Productions in association with Warner Brothers Television.
WITH: Martin Sheen (Josiah Bartlet), Stockard Channing (Abigail Bartlet), Dulé Hill (Charlie Young), Allison Janney (C. J. Cregg), Janel Moloney (Donna Moss), Richard Schiff (Toby Ziegler), John Spencer (Leo McGarry), Bradley Whitford (Josh Lyman) and John Goodman (Glenallen Walken).
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