The West Wing Retrospective: Why Rob Lowe Left The Show and How

 

When I first saw The West Wing I was still having issues with actors leaving TV shows.

To be clear I didn't necessarily mean being killed off, which even by the later 1990s was starting to become a recurring theme in TV. I'd actually gotten used to it not so much from watching Oz and The Sopranos but the works of David E. Kelley who until HBO came along had the reputation of being the Grim Reaper of TV, shockingly killing off regulars even on supposed comedies such as Ally McBeal. What troubled me more was when an actor chose simply to depart a series to seek greener pastures in film (then the usual way things worked) or just because they were tired of working on the show. At the turn of the century, the biggest loss I had endured was Andre Braugher leaving Homicide in 1998, though at least in that case I'd been given a full season to prepare.

Anyone who watched The West Wing knows that Sorkin didn't have the greatest track record. Famously he wrote out the first season character Madeline Hampton without any explanation or indeed the characters commenting on it at any point. He wasn't much better with recurring characters who had the habit of coming and going as they pleased. The most famous example in the early seasons was White House reporter Danny Concannon (Timothy Busfield) who was set up as a love interest for CJ in Season 1, made a few appearances in Season 2 and then vanished without a trace until he suddenly reappeared at Christmas in Season 4.

Still when Rob Lowe announced in interviews after Season 3 ended that he was thinking of leaving the show and would in fact depart for good halfway through Season 4, I took it very personally not just because I had loved Lowe's work on the series but because it seemed slightly ungrateful. Lowe, it's worthy remembering, had been a teen sensation in the 1980s but his career had become essentially fodder for public humiliation when he was seen in a sex tape in the aftermath of the Democratic National Convention. He'd spent most of the 1990s with a far smaller profile in movies and when he was cast in The West Wing it was at the time a consideration of 'how the mighty had fallen'. Instead when the show became a critical and audience hit it completely redeemed his career. The fact that he was now choosing to leave the show after four seasons seemed to be the definition of ingratitude.

Of course, it ended up working out like gangbusters for Lowe. He starred in a few intriguing dramas that were quickly cancelled before exploding on to the scene yet again when he and Adam Scott joined the cast of what was then a middling comedy series called Parks & Recreation and almost immediately turned it into one of the greatest shows of the 2010s. Lowe's work as Chris, the most enthusiastic man you will ever meet, was one of the most constantly hysterical performances and demonstrated his gift for comic timing in a way not even The West Wing had. Since departing the show in the penultimate season (along with Rashida Jones) he has worked constantly in some of the most successful TV projects on network TV, most notably the Lone Star spinoff of the 9-1-1 franchise. His post West Wing career has been just as good as any of his co-stars who stayed with the show the entire run.

And with the benefit of hindsight I now completely understand why Lowe would later say he was constantly frustrated working on The West Wing. Lowe was the biggest name on the series, other than Martin Sheen, so I have little doubt he expected the meatiest role. And very quickly it became clear that Sam Seaborn wasn't even close to it.

Sam's title, as he famously told us in the Pilot, was the Deputy Communications Director at the White House. The problem was that was never as important a job as the rest of the staff. You understood Josh's job and his relationship with Leo and the series would later explain that Josh and Sam had been friends and that Sam had left his job to work for the campaign. The problem was the show never explained in any detail how Sam ended up working for Toby in the aftermath of the campaign and more importantly, it was never clear where he fit in the pecking order.

There was a fair amount of humor to see Sam and Toby bickering about the words in a speech, but you were never clear that Toby's was Sam's superior the same way that Leo was clearly Josh's. The clearest relationship he had on the show was with CJ and that made sense: Sam was a communications director and CJ was the press secretary. But that never seemed a relationship of equals either: CJ had a habit of lecturing Sam and he rarely did the same to her.

And if it was unclear where Sam fit in the pecking order in the administration, it could be harder to pin down his exact role and the jobs he was chosen to do. We learned early on Sam was a lawyer, and he would be used to determine legal liabilities of members of the staff throughout the first and second seasons in particular. Which begs the question: why hadn't he been hired as part of the White House counsel's office instead of deputy communications director?

Indeed throughout the first season the times where Sam ends up having his greatest moments is when an investigation into the White House is meant to bring up that Leo McGarey was a recovering alcoholic and drug addict. At one point Josh is called in for an interview and Sam is there to keep him calm. But as the questions get more aggressive he ends the interview and says one of the great lines Lowe ever delivered: "You're a hack in a cheap suit. And if you come after Leo, I'm going to bust you like a pinata." In this scene and other you see Sam working as the attack dog for the administration. The problem was that even by this point in the series this role had already been occupied by Josh and honestly, that would always lead to better stories. Also by the time the first season was over Toby was clearly far better at the speechwriting part and the debate between idealism and pragmatism.

And so with no clear role on the show and no clear position in the administration Sam spent most of his tenure on the series playing second fiddle to everyone else. That didn't mean Lowe wasn't superb when he was given a chance to shine: as I indicated in my piece on Donna, his work in Somebody's Going Into Emergency, Somebody's Going to Jail'  made the episode one of the highpoints of Season 2 and there were quite a few other brilliant episodes where Lowe got a chance to show his fire. But compared to the rest of the cast, they were notably fewer. It's possible the reason Lowe only received a single Emmy nomination during his four years on the show was that he insisted on submitting his name for Best Actor instead of Supporting Actor. But looking back, it's hard to find the same number of episodes that gave Lowe the chance the shine the same way that Bradley Whitford or Richard Schiff got over this same period.

In hindsight the clearest sign of this discrepancy may have come during the stretch in Season 2 when the staff became aware of Bartlet's diagnosis. Sam didn't learn about it until the penultimate episode of the season after which every other series regular had been aware for a while. There was a plot point given for this that was discussed by Toby and Josh but the implication might just as well be that he was the least important when it came to figuring out what to do next.

So one can see why after three seasons Lowe figured it was time to move on. And I have to say I was never entirely thrilled with how they wrote him out of the series. With that being said there are clearly elements of the arc that they chose that are, if anything, more relevant to today's political arena then they were twenty years ago.

As I said at my introduction to this series Jed Bartlett was elected in 1998 with both houses of Congress being Republican. That was a parallel to what was going on in American politics: Bill Clinton had won reelection in 1996 but both houses of Congress were still very much Republican. During the 2000 midterms both Houses of Congress remained exactly the same, which was not that different from how the actual 2000 Congressional election would actually turn out. ("Tell me democracy doesn't have a sense of humor," Josh said at the end after that episode .)

It's worth noting that even the most devoted fans of The West Wing admit that Seasons 3 and 4 were not at the same level of the first two seasons. Part of it was no doubt because of 9/11 but I honestly feel that even had history not intervened the series would still have been struggling all the same because of how television worked.

There was never any real drama about whether Bartlet was going to lose reelection. The West Wing was both a rating and critical hit and that meant NBC was going to keep it on the air as long as possible. And because the show was, like most others, airing in real time that meant it was essentially going to have the spend Season 3 and part of Season 4 trying to milk drama out of a situation that all but the most naïve viewers had to know was inevitable. I was only 22 in the fall of 2001 and even I knew that no matter how doubtful the characters would be in private Bartlet was going to win.

Consequently whatever suspense was supposed to come into the investigations into Bartlet hiding his diagnosis from the world was purely for dramatic effect: Bartlet was not going to be impeached or forced to resign and none of the characters we knew and loved were going to lose their jobs because of this. They might agonize in private in ways that would get them nominated for and win Emmys (I wasn't that cynical about that part of it then) but they were regulars on network TV series that was still a huge hit. This might happen on cable shows; it wasn't going to happen here.

Honestly it's a credit to Sorkin and his entire cast that they managed to dangle for so long what the industry refers to as 'schmuck's bait' (something that has the potential to completely tear apart the foundation of the series if its true but is usually resolved in an episode to be false)  and have it work as well as it did. I might have been irritated by some of the storylines (the legal maneuvering; the debate over the Congressional hearings) but because all the actors committed to it, I rarely had the problems with it I should have. All of the actors were at the top of their game that season and there were quite a few episodes that very much demonstrate the best Sorkin had to offer. (I'll refer to some of them in later articles in the series.) But looking back it really seems that the biggest missed opportunity for the show was to deal with an issue that should have been paramount when the President is running for reelection but Sorkin almost never touched on until it was over: getting more Democrats into Congress.

If anything this should have been front and center considering all of the struggles the show had demonstrated over the years they'd had with Republicans in Congress. Considering how difficult it must have been to get so much of the agenda passed (and that's including what we never saw on the show) the priority should have been to get Democrats elected up and down the ballot. When you add in the fact that the climax of the investigation was that Bartlet had to accept a congressional censure in large part because the Republicans were planning to crucify his chief of staff on live television, you'd think it would at least have been a concern. And considering that they were going to have to worry about what to accomplish in their second term, that would have been a priority as well.

Instead during the entire third season all of the talk about was about Bartlet's running for reelection and how everything would affect him. That's not necessarily a flaw: considering that the show was set in the White House, it should have been the staff's priority. But it's only in the fourth season when the show that Sorkin dealt with it at all – and perhaps only because he was planning to write Lowe's character out.

In the early stages of Season 4 Sam is looking through the records of Democrats running for Congress that the DNC has recruited and is appalled by the selection. Most notably he's concerned about their candidate for the California 47^th  Horton Wilder, who's just had his fourth heart attack. ("We nominated a man who had three heart attacks?" he says when he hears that.) It's worth noting this district is Orange County which has been famously Republican since the era of Goldwater.

During the episode Debate Prep he vents his frustration more than a few times about the inadequate candidates the DCCC is choosing and finally gets to the point: "Do we want to be taken seriously when we say we want to take back the House or not?" Joey Lucas (Marlee Matlin) acknowledges problem but follows it up with: "How are we supposed to compete in a district that last went Democrat before Abraham Lincoln was elected President?"

This episode, I should add, was written well in advance of the way partisan gerrymandering would lead to districts being labeled permanently red or blue. But few would argue about the relevance of the question today. Yes, there's an argument about throwing good money after bad in a hopeless cause, but if you're not going to even make the effort how can anyone take a national party seriously when they want to speak to all Americans?

During this episode Horton Wilde dies in the aftermath of his heart attack and Sam goes to the California 47^th to tell the campaign manager Will Bailey (Joshua Malina) that the DNC is pulling its funding and he has to close up shop. He finds a very determined Bailey not willing to do so and is in fact holding press conferences adding to do so, in which he tears apart the Republican incumbent Chuck Webb. Famously he finishes: "There are worse things than not being alive."

Sam comes back to talk to him after the debate telling him again what to do. For the first time Will gets angry about it: "There are ideas in this campaign. Important ones. And  they're only going to get talked about in a blowout and you know it. And you know there's no glory in it!" Then he makes it personal, reminding him that everyone though John Hoynes was going to win the White House and Sam and his friends were idiots for going to New Hampshire with Bartlet. Sam decides to leave it be and says that if Wilde wins, he'll stand for reelection in 90 days against Webb. He makes the promise to the widow and Will Bailey but he thinks there's no chance it'll happen.

It's worth noting the only suspense in the election is whether Chuck Webb will lose his seat. This is frankly Malina's finest hour on the show as he works with energy, enthusiasm and famously stands outside waiting to see if the clouds will break, therefore driving down turnout. "Now!" he shouts and the clouds burst. Even he's astonished it happened.

Sam spends the entire day in increasing turmoil and is not happy when it happens because the world knows about his promise. But it's worth noting Amy Gardener shows up saying that Sam should keep his promise she says: "When the sun comes up tomorrow, everyone's going to be talking about how the President had no coattails." It is clear that while Bartlet won by an eleven point landslide, the House (and possibly the Senate) are still Republican. An angry minority of House Democrats will be pissed how the President didn't help them regain the majority.

Josh fires back: "The President's coattails were big enough for a dead man to be reelected." Not only does this deny the reality of the situation, it ignores the fact that the DNC wanted Bailey to fold his tent and Wilde managed to win despite that. Bartlet is not only a lame duck, he has a Congress who will be no friendlier to him then they were in his first term, a situation that will become clear in just a few episodes. Tellingly for the rest of the Sorkin era no one at Bartlet's administration comments that this was a failure on their part.

Sam does agree to run for the seat and there's a large debate as to if he loses that he will be promoted to another position. When he does lose in a two-part finale, it's done as a complete anticlimax with not even showing election day and there's no explanation given as to why Sam never came back.

The show also will blunder when making Joshua Malina's character a regular. It's clearly been set up this way with Sam getting Will to help write the inaugural address as a matchmaker. The last words he says about him to Toby is: "He's one of us." But once he's part of the cast, the show does a terrible job with him from beginning to end. There's a period of hazing which is out of context with what we've seen them do to other semi-regulars, they eventually give him Sam's position and after that, they won't even give Will the same kind of authority Sam once had. He basically spends much of the final part of Season 4 camped out writing speeches, not making much policy or headway and has no presence in the season finale. When the show comes back (without Sorkin) the first thing the writers do is have Bailey move to working for the new Vice President and he spends much of the rest of the series being a stand-in for all the frustrations they have with the new VP and for the rest of the show, the position Sam held apparently isn't held by…anyone.

It's almost like a final insult to everything Lowe did in his tenure: we're now acknowledged the part he played was meaningless and had no function. The show made many more obvious blunders under John Wells' tenure but retrospectively, this one seems the most cruel.

But for all that I can't bring myself to despise Lowe's final real moments on The West Wing when he makes the decision that, despite the fact he will almost certainly lose and end any chance he has to run for office someday and win, he feels sometimes you have to do it. It’s made clear when Leo talks about it that night when he's told that Sam will in fact get creamed. He ends the episode by saying: "The process matters more than the outcome."

That's actually the lesson that I really wish that people of all political persuasions, Democratic or Republican, ultra conservative or loony progressive, really should take from the electoral process. As Will famously says to Sam when why he is running the campaign: "Horton Wilde may be dead, but what he believed in isn't. That metaphor is reason enough to carry on." Considering that for so many people these days the loss of any election of any candidate – particularly progressive Democrats – is  yet another reason either for surrender or to say the system is irrevocably broken, this is something that needs to be celebrated and believed in. In the winner take all system so many think democracy has to be – which was very much active during the period Sorkin was writing The West Wing  and that he made very clear should disgust all Americans – we have to believe that the fight is important and then defeat doesn't permanently define you.

Yes both Will and Sam eventually lost their battle and Chuck Webb won reelection. But both of them knew it was inevitable and they kept fighting anyway. As Leo says: "The process matters more than the outcome. Here endeth the lesson."