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| It so happened that the initial cave-in - no pun intended - of the Taliban coincided with the airing in the U.K. of the last segment in the second series of "The West Wing". If only because, switching from Aaron Sorkin's brainchild to news images of George and Barbara's offspring, viewers around the globe must have been collectively murmuring "If only", it seems timely to proffer an admiring tip of the hat to an example of American television at its best.
"The West Wing" is, finally, I suppose, a soap opera. Judged by the highest standard - but that standard includes Shaw, David Hare, Shakespeare - it maybe has a tad too many feel-good moments and 'Let's win this for the Gipper' moments. It doesn't always resist self-indulgence - those Altmanesque babbles of inaudible dialog; the show-off Steadicam tracks around the corridors; the 'look at me' soliloquy in the cathedral. But. This is to carp. This soap, no question, has been concocted overall from the finest ingredients and by master craftsmen. It is a seamlessly good series. Within sets that you never think of taking for other than the real thing a peerless, faultlessly assembled cast deploys some of the most adult writing ever to grace television. Flip, serious, doubting, committed — all at once, more often than not — harassed, loyal now to convictions, now to colleagues, the characters interact as the performers play off each other with the bravura confidence of actors in a long-established repertory company. They give the West Wing itself an utterly convincing air of being lived in, worked in. It would be invidious to single out any one cast member for individual praise - save for the obvious 'first among equals' exception. The whole whirling mass of the series is given centripetal stability by the gravitas of Martin Sheen's performance as President Bartlet. Martin Sheen looks not in the least like Abraham Lincoln or Henry Fonda but, whenever required, he throws a heavyweight's punch from his bantamweight frame. Brilliantly conceived by Aaron Sorkin, Sheen-Bartlet contrives to be both intellectual and homespun. He is an enthusiast and a doubter who conveys utter approachability alongside withering personal authority; he is a man endowed with a vast sense of history and tradition, inching his country towards the truths that he knows to be less self-evident to millions of his fellow countrymen today than they were to Jefferson and Adams. Sheen is, of course, immensely in the debt of "The West Wing's" Writers' Row. Daring to conceive of an intelligent President, they have even more boldly premised intelligent viewers. The themes and plot lines which inform the series are neither sugar candy nor factitious. They actually do examine what government should be, what government should do. With great finesse they have paralleled actual historical occurrence - The Kursk submarine disaster, the Iran hostages rescue fiasco, for instance - without ever seeming cheaply exploitative. If there has been the occasional helping of feel-good syrup, it cannot be at all said that "The West Wing" is all upbeat. A long list of blots on the American political landscape has shown up during the series' course: inadequate U.S. Medicare and Public Education; the death by homicide rate among blacks; the insanity of the 'right to bear arms' position; America's appalling record on global pollution; the fact that the first imperative of office today is preparation for the re-election campaign. One of the most impressive features of the series as it has progressed has been the ease with which the writing team has been able to dip back into earlier episodes to access and extend previous plot lines. (Sam's activities in the oil tanker trade, for example.) Although I suspect the second, it is quite impossible to judge from outside whether such retrievals indicate extensive pre-planning or inspired downstream improvisation. Whichever - the effect is not only to mimic life's patterns but breathe freshness into the familiar. With only an occasional regrettable lapse or two, "The West Wing" has batted out an extremely high average. For instance - Enough. I imagine I preach to the converted. Let me conclude with two purely personal plaudits. One: for an old rake such as myself any series which has you falling successively in love with all the female cast members in rotating succession scene by scene, cannot be all bad. Two: courtesy of Bradley Whitford, "The West Wing" boasts the funniest pratfall this side of Buster Keaton. You agree, yes? O.K?" |
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