Roger Catlin | TV Eye

From Pilot to Finale

It seemed as if they would be just filling the space when they decided to put on the 1999 pilot for “The West Wing” on before Sunday’s series finale.

They couldn’t come to terms about paying talent for the one-hour retrospective that would certainly have been deserving one of the best dramas in TV history. “That 70s Show” will get a more significant TV send off later this week.

But seeing Aaron Sorkin’s pilot one more time, crackling as it was with ideas and humor and smarts, was something of a revelation -- especially as it compared with the relatively plodding final episode by John Wells that bid farewell as the Bartlet administration made way for the Santos crew on inauguration day.

'The West Wing' & Me

Way before I was paid to watch TV, “The West Wing,” whose series end I wrote about today, was about the only network drama I’d bother to watch regularly.

You should know by now I’m no fan of the formulaic and unnecessarily grisly crime yarns and fell off the “ER” train some time ago. Aaron Sorkin’s “West Wing” was just so good, it almost spoiled everything else on broadcast TV by comparison.

If people called during the broadcast back in the days before TiVo, that more primitive recording was employed: the phone answering machine. After TiVo, you’d rewind parts of it to savor the language or the jokes; toward the end, you’d rewind it just to get a clue of what they were talking about so speedily as they bolted down hallways (Uswhatistan?).

C.J.'s Choice

Funny that the first post-administration job interview for C.J. Cregg on “The West Wing” is from the former head of CTU on “24.” Well, the guy who played the head of the CTU on “24.”

Like most of the other heads of CTU we’ve seen on “24,” George Mason, as played by Xander Berkeley, died a horrible death on show led by Jack Bauer show. But on te show led by  President Bartlet, he came in once for one scene in the second-to-last episode every Sunday.

He’s playing a mega-billionaire, Bill Gates-like mogul whose very presence causes titters among high level staffers. It’s one of a couple offers to C.J.; President Elect Matt Santos is practically demanding she put in another two years at the White House working for him.

But her biggest problem is in dealing with TImoty Busfield's Danny Concannon, the reporter with whom she’s resumed her after hours dalliance. He has his own demands – but only to know where he stands in her post-Chief of Staff life. Heaven knows he hasn’t had an easy time dating the big official; the Secret Service has to case his apartment every time she comes over.

There was something odd in the well-written episode though, as when C.J. and Toby talked about the good times they have had together.

Veeping It Up

It was all about vice presidents on “The West Wing” Sunday. Laurence O’Donnell’s script pondered the details of what would happen if a vice presidential candidate died on election day (some complicated electoral college thing there has no precedent or even vice precedent for).

Alan Alda’s recently defeated Republican candidate Arnie Vinick was dangled the VP job from Democratic president-elect Matt Santos – in a ploy to get Republican support for the candidate he really wanted.

And the whole episode was directed by guy who played Bartlet’s former vice president: Tim Matheson. 

The Return of Sam Seaborn

Considering that “The West Wing” was conceived, in Rob Lowe’s way of thinking, as a series about the going’s on behind the scenes at the White House as seen by the idealistic Deputy White House Communications Director, it was sad to see the character Sam Seaborn written out of the series after four seasons.

But from the beginning, one of the smartest and consistently high quality dramas in TV history has been a splendid ensemble piece. And though Lowe was the biggest name when the show began in 2000 (Martin Sheen’s President Bartlet was originally only going to appear occasionally and briefly), the other strong talents became just as important as Lowe’s Seaborn character.

Sunday, after a three year absence, Lowe’s Seaborn finally popped up on the show again.

Lugging Leo's Casket

Perhaps my expectations were raised too high by the sincere tributes to the actor John Spencer soon after he died last December, the real losses felt by the actors, and in expressed in a January press conference it didn’t look like they wanted to attend.

But the episode they spoke of then that dealt with the death of their friend and colleague – or at least the character he played in “The West Wing,” Leo McGarry – the result Sunday couldn’t help but being disappointing.

Once again the wide gulf of what the “West Wing” once was and what it is now was on display. Where once Martin Sheen’s President Bartlet could be counted on to either give a stirring sermon or to even curse God – in Latin and English -- as he did in the unforgettable episode “Two Cathedrals” – and that over the death of his secretary Mrs. Landingham at the hands of a drunk driver – here he sat mute listening to the boilerplate ramblings of a priest.

McGarry was presumably more to him than she was; he was a mentor, a friend, an ally, a valued chief of staff. But Bartlet chooses only to sit in the pews and, more unbelievably, be a pall bearer (would they have honestly allowed the retirement aged sitting president, who has MS, bear the casket alongside the president elect?).

The Anticlimactic Results

Maybe it’s a general malaise with the White House in general, with its record low approval ratings of the current occupant, that leads to similar dissatisfaction in key episodes of the two Presidential TV dramas this week.

First, Sunday night’s election day finale on “The West Wing” seemed deeply anticlimactic, too dependent on states and electoral college numbers than it should have been to humanity, greater causes or the fact that Leo McGarry the presidential candidates has died with the West Coast polls still open.

Are we to believe for a second that Matt Santos in his victory speech – yeah, he won the squeaker, big surprise – wouldn’t even mention the name of his running mate who died a few hours earlier?  That’s the kind of omission you might expect in “24” (another series with a president we’re not exactly crazy about), where hours literally mean weeks, but not on “The West Wing,” where the guy who’d been on the series since its start had died in the same episode.

Maybe they were waiting for next week’s funeral episode for the full requiem for McGarry, but still. As decent a guy as Santos is supposed to be, it’s unbelievable he wouldn’t remember him in his victory speech.

As for the other TV President, she returns this week on “Commander in Chief,” a saga has become so brittle it’s tough to remember what we saw in it in the first place.

Sex on Election Day

The odd conceit about election day according to the first of two part “West Wing” that aired Sunday, is that to kill time until the exit poll numbers come in, everybody has sex.

Is this possibly true? I don’t remember this being a part of the documentary “The War Room.”
But these lulls in political history are really the time for romance, then it’s time for Josh and Donna to consummate and upgrade their collegial status to become bedmates before the whole series ends next month.

It finally happened twice Sunday – during commercials – but there was plenty of awkward post coitial moments on display, including one that answered the question: How long do you wait in the afterglow before turning on the TV for the latest numbers?

Vetting 'West Wing'

I thought I knew a little bit about politics and media, so when Janeane Garofalo’s political operative on “The West Wing” was shut down by wire services declining to bite on her suggested story about the Vinnick campaign stealing their slogan, I thought it rang a bit false.

If I were a political writer I certainly would pick up on that kind of story. But that may be just the kind of shallow, irony-bent writer I am. I asked an expert in the political field and he said he wouldn’t have done the slogan-stealing story, either. “I’m too big picture for that,” he said.

But he vouched for two other details in Sunday’s episode.

I think somebody did the story about Bush's buses on his first bus tour in Ohio being Canadian. That was real. As was the general female breathlessness on the campaign over Jon Bon Jovi.

Trump: He’s Tired

There are a couple of hints “The Apprentice” is struggling in its fifth go-round, averaging only 11 million viewers this year, putting it not only out of the Top 10, but out of the Top 40. Last week’s episode scored an anemic 9.5 million.

As a result, auditions for the California-based season six are not only coming to such far flung places as Hartford this weekend, they’re apparently changing the way the finale will be run as well.

Instead of Donald Trump doing whatever he wants to do, as he has been doing all along, there was a hint in a promo Monday that he’d be opening the phone lines to vote a winner come finale time.

It may have been the most interesting development in Monday’s episode, which ran like a dull, hour-long infomercial for the commercial tie-in of the week, a cruise ship. In the end, Trump made fun of the Tarek, the insufferable Mensa member (first rule of Mensa: you do not talk about Mensa) but ultimately kicked out Gold Rush’s hyper project manager Dan instead. Ho hum. Even he seemed relieved to be gone.