‘West Wing’ imitates life

By Frazier Moore

Associated Press

NEW YORK – It came with no easy answers.

But Wednesday’s TV series “The West Wing” did the next best thing: In an hour of absorbing drama, it thoughtfully confronted questions and fears the nation is now learning to live with.

Aaron Sorkin, the NBC series’ creator-producer, pulled off a remarkable, even unprecedented feat by writing and filming this episode, start to finish, in the three weeks since the Sept. 11 devastation at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Rushed through production yet fully up to “West Wing” standards, the program took the form of a dramatic dialectic clearly meant to illuminate, not exploit, a real-life tragedy. It displaced the season debut, now set to air Oct. 10, which resumes last season’s ongoing story as an embattled Bartlet decides to seek a second term.

Even though the events that inspired this special episode were never addressed, nor when it might have taken place ever specified, viewers found the Bartlet White House gripped in all-too-familiar crisis mode: Word of a security breach has erupted. It’s the fifth in three weeks.

Suddenly, the White House was in a lockdown. No one knew what might happen next. And in an accident of timing, Josh Lyman, deputy chief of staff, was stuck in the White House cafeteria with a group of touring high school students.

“So, why is everybody trying to kill us?” one student asked him, articulating a worry that any “West Wing” viewer could relate to.

Intercut with this impromptu seminar was harsh questioning of a suspect – an Arab American and administration insider – by chief of staff Leo McGarry (John Spencer).

The man, swiftly nabbed and highly suspicious, turned out to be innocent. The real culprit would be in custody by show’s end.

No death, no destruction, problem solved. But, really, nothing was resolved – just put off for another day.

So what can anyone do about the terrorists around the world?

“You want to get these people?” Lyman (Bradley Whitford) asked the students during the hours-long lockdown. Embrace pluralism, he said. “Keep accepting more than one idea. Makes ‘em absolutely crazy.”

He stumped the youngsters when he asked what word in relation with “Christianity” is analogous to “Islamic extremists” with “Islam.”

His answer: the Ku Klux Klan. “That’s what we’re talking about: It’s like the Klan gone medieval and global!”

Wandering into the room, press secretary C.J. Cregg (Allison Janney) argued for sweeping counterterrorist measures while communications director Toby Ziegler (Richard Schiff) responded with alarm that civil liberties might also be trampled.

President Bartlet made an appearance, and a student asked him if there isn’t something noble about a martyr.

“We don’t need martyrs right now. We need heroes,” pronounced Bartlet (Martin Sheen). “A hero would die for his country, but he’d much rather live for it.”

And deputy communications director Sam Seaborn (Rob Lowe) sounded what, at first, seemed an encouraging note.

“Not only do terrorists always fail in what they’re after,” he said, “they pretty much always succeed in strengthening whatever it is they’re against.”

What about the IRA in Northern Ireland? “The Brits are still there,” Seaborn replied.

But the student persisted: Failure, if that’s what it is, doesn’t put a stop to terrorism.

“No,” Seaborn grimly agreed.

Nothing easy. But a brave exploration.

Copyright ©2001 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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