I’m fairly certain this thread will eventually devolve into a general West Wing thread, but…
I’ve noticed a reoccuring theme among episodes of the West Wing that somewhat annoys me. We’ll call it Sorkin’s sleight of hand.
He makes his characters extremely smart, which I can accept. He makes his enemies dumb, though. This I don’t like. The Sorkin sleight of hand is that you never notice how dumb the enemies are because you’re so engrossed in the brilliancy of the protagonist.
Here’s a few examples, and they all involve Bartlet.
The episode about two years ago that had a Dr. Laura type character visiting the White House. Bartlet naturally went on and on quoting bible verse after bible verse that were outdated and she had no response. I suppose I can accept this. After all, it’s not every day you get yelled at by a Commander in Chief and there’s no telling how you’d react. But he starts it out with “when the President walks in, you stand up.” which makes her look like a fool right from the start. Wouldn’t it seem rational that she would have automatically stood up when he entered? Probably. But she didn’t because Sorkin wanted her to look stupid.
The thing is that you don’t notice how stupid she’s acting because you’re too caught up in how brilliant Bartlet is.
The series premiere when Bartlet first walked in to a screaming match between a religious right and Toby (perhaps?) as they debated what number one of the commandments was. The religious guy didn’t know it prompting Bartlet to make his grand entrance putting the guy in his place. But who here believes that the “bad guy” didn’t know what the first commandment was? You don’t notice how illogical it is because Sorkin’s given all the attention to how smart Bartlet is.
The same goes for the debates between Richie and the President. The President got all the zingers but there was NEVER a debate. Just Bartlet being smart and Richie being dumb.
Sorkin writes the scripts and it happens again and again and again. It’s not even like shooting fish in a barrel. It’s easier. Sorkin builds the barrel and throws a dead fish in it. That way you don’t bother wasting a bullet.
Sure, it’s better than most tv shows where there are dumb enemies AND dumb good guys, but it annoys me anyway. It would be so much livelier if he put some thought into making the other side appear intelligent too and still having them lose.
I thought the scene between Bartlett and the pseudo-Dr. Laura just displayed Bartlett as a bully in severe need of a verbal body-slam. Though I don’t share much of her politics, I think the real Dr. Laura would be far less tongue-tied and submissive in the face of such sanctimonious hostility.
West Wing is at its best when it resists sanctimony, including some hard-headed realism. My favourite line is from a conversation between (I think) Sam and Josh about whether or not a pharmaceutical company could be obliged to supply AIDS medication to an African nation.
Sam (paraphrased): They should give the medication. The pill only cost them four cents.
Josh (my favourite line): The second pill cost them four cents. The first one cost them four hundred million dollars.
At last, an acknowledgement that drug research is damned expensive. I get sick of people who think drug companies should behave like charities.
Until she went to Miami, there was Ainsley - who knocked Sam sideways in a tv debate.
There’s the conservative Senator played by Hal Holbrook who’s showed up more than once.
There’s also been the characters played by Corbin Bernson and Felicity Huffman, and the “friend” of Sam’s working on the Ritchie campaign. All of them clearly outsmarted the WW staff. (Actually, the entire Ritchie campaign did a great job in dictating how many debates there were to be.)
There’s been Donna’s republican boyfriends, and more than a few portrayals of Republican Congressmen and Senators who were shown to not be anywhere in the same room as stupid.
I’d be lying if I said it was perfectly balanced between the left and right. But it isn’t always the brilliant west wingers v. the dumber than dirt opposition.
With Richie, it was valid. Like Bush, on whom he was based, he projects an overt contempt for intellectualism. His handlers didn’t seem particularly stupid.
Christian Slater’s character seems both smart and conservative.
I’ve seen but a few episodes of this series. It seems to me, though, that the vast majority of the time, it’s not Person vs. Person. Usually they’re trying to resolves some issue among themselves, or dealing with a faraway country, or something along those lines. So at worst, the Sorkin legerdemain applies only to a fraction of the episodes.
At best, I think you’re overstating it. The only episode mentioned in the OP that I’ve seen was the debate, and I have to say: You think Richie was dumb?! He was quick, eloquent, and well-spoken, if not in an intellectual way. I wouldn’t last five minutes in a debate against someone like him. Sure, Bartlet got a few zingers in, and in the end, outwitted him. Bartlet also had the facts on his side for the questions that came up. But that doesn’t make Richie stupid.
There is a bit of leeway in the numbering of the Ten Commandments, and there’s an explaination of this particular case here. I swear, everything is on the web.
I saw an interesting interview with Aaron Sorkin a while ago. He said that he has no real political ideology, but that he’s spent most of his life listening to the way smart people talk. (At one point, he mentioned some bit of network feedback on some intricate piece of dialog he’d written. The network guy said nobody would know what the characters were talking about. Sorkin said that it wasn’t important that the viewers knew what they were talking about, they just had to look at the characters and think “those guys know what they’re talking about.”)
I think that’s a fascinating idea. As much as Sorkin gets accused of having a liberal bias, his real bias may be for intelligence over stupidity. Choosing to have a Democratic administration in The West Wing may be just a coincidence of the time when the show was being developed.
THough I fully agree that “The West WIng” tilts heavily leftward, I think that when Ainsley was a regular character on the show, Aaron Sorkin wrote her some wonderful lines. Unfortunately, the actress playing her wasn’t very good, and couldn’t make Ainsley’s lines sound as clever as they should have.
But it DOES prove that, lefty though he may be, Sorkin has the talent to write very good arguments for positions he doesn’t agree with.
Bartelett is simply waaaay too smart to be believable. Remember when he spoke to God - in Latin? I seriously doubt that outside of the Vatican, that anyone spontaneously speaks Latin - and I sort of wonder even there. Even among the Jesuits I know, such a thing would be unheard of.
A bigger problem is that what is Bartlett’s idea of God - the big guy has a problem with English? Why not Koine Greek ? Aramaic? Why not Hebrew? He’s a fictional character, so he could have studied any language. Will it give him some sort of special in with the Lord Almighty - that would hubris at best, the sin of pride at the worse. For the discipline and organizing his thoughts?Give me a break! If he believes in an omniscient and omipotent god, than God already knows how he thinks and feels, why translate it when he can simply say it in English? God could clean up the structure.
I see the Left Wing as a thinly disguised hagiography of Bill Clinton, and that the way they write about Bartlett’s intelligence is more sophistry than anything else. And Sorkin has no more political agenda than say, Hillary Clinton.
His saying that people don’t have to understand what is being said, only that it look like they do is pure Clinton.
Here’s what offends me about WW: They constantly employ a plot gimmick in which “our heros” are pitted against foils who appear worthy and dangerous, but are ultimately exposed to be ignorant frauds; naturally these foils are usually the administration’s right-leaning opponents.
Two examples come to mind:
The scene: a White House summit between “our [lesser] heros” – Prez Bartlett is not present – and some Bible-thumpin’ fundamentalists who appear to have the administration over a barrel because of some indiscretion. The action: much chatter in which the “First Commandment” is misquoted liberally by the B-thumpers. Climax: in struts Prez B. who throws the Scriptures back in the fundamentalists’ faces by quoting the CORRECT 1stC (“I am the Lord your God…”). Oh how foolish and hypocritical those religious nuts looked!
The scene: another White House summit between “our [lesser] heros” and a group of three resistant Congressmen; one includes a new, African-American, replacement representative who is really a Social Studies teacher back home. The action: much chatter about the constitutional requirements of census-taking (the Congressmen’s inaccurate counting vs. our hero’s accurate sampling). Climax: Our heros win over the new guy by reminding him that if we held to the original text of the Constitution, he, as a black man, would not even be counted as a whole person! As a Social Studies teacher he, of course, knows this and appreciates its deeper meaning; but those two stupid other throw-back Congressmen sit there with “duuh… wud do ya’ mean, not a whole person?” looks on their faces throughout.
Now, do the writers REALLY think that even the lamest Bible fanatic doesn’t know the First Commandment? It’s probably the ONLY thing he knows! Or that two Congressmen never read the friggin’ Constitution of the United States? Come on!
Bartlett=Clinton? Oh, come on.
The only similarity between Bartlett and Clinton as that they are both white, male Democrats who served as governors of small states. Other than that, they’re nothing alike.
I honestly can’t tell if this is sarcasm or sincerity, but I think the similarities are pretty strong. Both are/were liberals dealing with Republican Congresses. Both are reputed to be geniuses. Both have nasty tempers. Both are/were forced to deal with Republican attacks on their wives. Both have been criticized for being Commanders-in-chief with no military background. Both came from modest (i.e., poor to middle class) backgrounds. Both had issues with their fathers. Etc.
But probably the greatest similarity – at least recently – is between Bartlett and Gore. Check out this quote from an interview with Sorkin in the New Yorker:
http://www.newyorker.com/printable/?talk/020304ta_talk_friend
I have no idea how Sorkin could say that this is “a completely fictional, nonpolitical show.” Obviously, the show is about politics. And obviously, Sorkin has a penchant for turning actual events into theater. And obviously, Sorkin leans to the left. So it’s only natural that his administration is going to be Democratic (although I remember an article in Esquire in which Sorkin said that his administration is Democratic because it makes better tv to fight for equal rights than for tax cuts). And it’s only natural that the Democrats are going to win more arguments than they lose – otherwise, his administration would look like a bunch of idiots.
I do think this past season didn’t have the same level of witty banter, and didn’t have the same amount of give and take between conservative and liberal ideas, and that disappointed me. But it’s Sorkin’s show. He can do what he wants with it. If I stop liking it, I’ll stop watching.
My mother watches that show, I weep for her. It’s perfect Hollywood drama, nearly completely at odds with reality: all the Democrats are upright saintly selfless public servants, and all the Republicans are all greedy sleazy underhanded criminals, doing things like taking campaign donations from the Chinese gov’t, making illegal trades in ham futures and sleeping with their interns.
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Not always. In on ep where the staffers have to review a bunch of supposedly wasteful reports, Sam Seaborn gets his ass handed to him, not by a Republican, but by a 19-year-old girl intern. And that business with the Dr. Laura character was taken directly out of the e-mail forwards we’ve all gotten. I get tired of the boundless intellectualism, I mean, does anyone in the White House really talk like these people?
ISiddiqui, I still enjoy watching the show. I just understand its bias and adjust for it. It’s still great tv.
amarinth, BobT, while the republicans are quite often made to appear as the enemy, that wasn’t directly what I was refering to in the OP. It was more a general comment about the opposition, whoever they may be. The opposition does something stupid but you never notice because of how brilliant the protagonist is.
Yes, when it serves a purpose, republicans can pull one over on the good guys. Normally that’s not the case, though.
Achernar, Richie may have been quick, eloquent and well spoken but they never showed a full debate. Not once did they show a full question and answer even though they had gone to great pains to explain the format. There’s an answer to the issue, a question by the opposition, and then a rebuttal. All they ever showed was Richie placing the ball on the tee and Bartlet knocking it 300 yards down the fairway.
The repubicans are hardly on the show. Last night (12/11) the only “Republican” (and that is just a guess) was the lawyer taking Toby’s deposition about his ex-wife’s pregency.
But don’t all shows do this?
Dosen’t the cop beat the bad guy because the bad guy makes a mistake or is crazy?
And dosen’t that happen every week on a cop show?
Or doctors beat a illness because the germs are stupid and the docorts are soooooo much smarter then the stupid stupid germs.
Well, after the 9th circuit court pledge ruling, Kit Bond seemed to think that the phrase “so help me God” was part of the presidential oath of office, so no, I don’t think that’s too unrealistic.