The West Wing Didn't Lose A Step After 9/11. TV Took A Big Step Forward

 

In some circles among critics there's a story about the quality of The West Wing. The argument was that it was at the peak of its powers in its first two seasons. Then, immediately after the attacks of September 11^th when America's view on government became more cynical in many ways within weeks, the liberal idealism of the Bartlet administration seemed out of touch and the show was no longer a masterpiece. They will argue both the drop in the ratings in Season 3 (it fell from 20 million to something like 15 million as part of the logic) and a certain staleness in the reelection storyline. Even before Sorkin left the show at the end of Season 4, The West Wing was already a shell of its former self.

This is a classic case of what the show referred to as 'Post Hoc, Ergo Prompter Hoc': 'After it, therefore because of it." As Bartlet said: "One thing follows the other, therefore it caused the other. But its not always true; in fact it's hardly ever true."

And that's the case here. While Season 3 and Season 4 were somewhat weaker than the first two seasons having seen every episode multiple times I can assure you they were overall superb TV with everyone in the cast of the height of the powers. And considering just how during W's presidency America was increasingly looking towards the show and wondering: "Why couldn't Jed Bartlet be President now?" that rarely holds. So that narrative is faulty.

The truth is simpler. When The West Wing debuted in September of 1999 network TV was still the alpha dog. The Sopranos had established itself as a masterpiece but up until the spring of 2001, there were no signs yet that HBO or for that matter cable was the future of television. Considering The Sopranos was about to engage in what would end up being an unprecedented hiatus – it wouldn't return until September 2002 -   the idea of cable being the future of TV wasn't cemented yet.

That end of that argument began within weeks of The West Wing ended and by the time the Emmy nominations for the 2001-2002 season it was completely flushed. And during that same period network TV was giving its share of examples of what 21^st century TV would like.

In June of 2001 Six Feet Under debuted on HBO. In many ways this series was even more revolutionary then The Sopranos. For one thing it dealt with the typical American family whose patriarch happened to own a funeral home. It began with Nathaniel Fisher's hearse being hit by a bus on Christmas Eve and the entire family having to deal with it in bizarre ways: Claire, the youngest daughter, learns of it while smoking crystal meth while Ruth the mother confesses she cheated on her father with her hairdresser during the wake. And indeed the Fishers start having conversations with Nathaniel after he dies – and Alan Ball the showrunner never really explains if these are ghosts or mental conversations.

Six Feet Under was far closer to a black comedy much of the time then a drama and it certainly didn't fit the model of White Male Antihero dramas that would dominate cable over much of the next 20 years. The show dealt with death on a week by week basis but it frequently never took it seriously. It was the first series to deal with a major character – David Fisher, played exquisitely by Michael C. Hall – who was a closeted gay man who spent the first season slowly coming out to his family, all of whom had suspected for years. Just like with The West Wing Hall and the entire cast have become fixtures in television to this very day.

More to the point Six Feet Under more or less confirmed that HBO was the home of great drama. OZ was still on the air but it never been critically received by contemporaries as a great drama and most critics still think of it as an ancestor show rather than a classic in its own right. And while The Sopranos had become a critical and ratings hit for HBO it could have been a one-off if during that hiatus HBO had not come up with another great drama that could be an audience hit and do just as well with awards shows.

By the end of 2001 it was clear Six Feet Under was going to fill that gap. The 2002 Golden Globes would have it nominated for three awards and it would win Best Drama over The West Wing and Best Supporting Actress for Rachel Griffiths. Almost overnight everyone was talking about Six Feet Under.

Network TV took an even bigger shift when 24 debuted in November of 2001. This series was delayed and in many ways reshot because of the events of 9/11 which is ironic considered the series is considered by many as the TV series that defines entertainment in the world of War on Terror better than anything. It wasn't clear that was going to be the case watching the first season: what was clear to everyone was how revolutionary it was.

24 was more radical then anything TV had done, network or cable. There were going to be 24 hours and events were going to unfold in real time. The show would follow Jack Bauer – who Kiefer Sutherland nailed from minute one – as one of the heads of CTU: Los Angeles. He's called in on midnight of the day of the California Presidential primary and is told that there is a credible threat that there will be an attempt on Senator David Palmer (Dennis Haysbert) an African-American who's the front for the Democratic nomination for President. Jack is informed by his mentor that there's a high probability that people within the government are working with the forces that will want Palmer killed. He's told not to trust anybody.

And while this is going on his teenage daughter Kim has run away from home and his wife – who he has just reconciled with after a separation – spends the night trying to track her down. As the night proceeds it becomes clear that the forces that are after the President are also targeting Jack.

We see all of this through a series of what was groundbreaking cinematography and editing, particularly with the use of split screens and the presence of a digital clock counting down that fans of the show – and I very quickly became one of them – would fall in love and a combination of violence and paranoia that fit the 2000s in the same way The X-Files had the 1990s. (Both shows, it might not shock you to know, shared writers and directors in common.)

24 didn't become a ratings hit during its first season (it wouldn't get there until it aired after American Idol during Season 2) but the critical response was almost immediately as favorable as it had been for The West Wing with many critics putting it on their top ten list. The show would be nominated for Best Drama by the Golden Globes and SAG-AFTRA and Kiefer Sutherland would win Best Actor in a Drama, defeating among others, Martin Sheen.

The final series that made clear the revolution had begun started airing in March of 2002 and it came from the most unlikely of places: FX. A fringe cable network that wasn't even carried by many cable systems until 2001 and like so many known entirely for syndication: it was about to take a swing at the original series. Michael Chiklis would shave his head to take on the role of LA cop Vic Mackey, the head of the strike Team, in The Shield.

In the opening episode Vic tells a suspect: "Good cop and bad cop went home for the day. I'm a different kind of cop." And then he begins to lay a beating on him – which is tacitly accepted as a necessary evil even by the detectives in his unit.

The series deals with the profanity and violence that we were only getting used to on HBO. And more to the point it made Vic even more frightening that Tony Soprano because it quickly became clear he was corrupt, taking money from drug dealers and at the end of the pilot, shoots an undercover cop in the face.  This series would reinvent the police procedural in a way completely different then The Wire would in a few months' time.

The critics were not quite as awed by it initially but the audiences were. The Shield debuted to 4.4 million viewers, the highest ratings any original cable drama had ever received to that point in history.

So by the time the Emmy nominations came out in July of 2002 the voters made it very clear that TV was a whole new world. ER and The Practice, which had been nominated for Best Drama the first two years The West Wing was on the air and had been perennial favorites for years before that, were gone from the ranks in almost every major category never to return. Law & Order was still there but the following year it would be gone as well.

The West Wing would be nominated for 21 Emmys, the most in its tenure with every series regular (save Rob Lowe) being nominated for an acting award.  But it wasn't the most nominated drama that year. That honor went to Six Feet Under which was nominated for 23, a number of nominations not even The Sopranos had managed to achieve.

And it was nominated in every category that The West Wing was. Martin Sheen was competing against Michael C. Hall and Peter Krause for Best Actor. Allison Janney, competing in Best Actress in a Drama for the first time, was up against Frances Conroy and surprisingly Rachel Griffiths. (Griffiths would compete in supporting actress for the rest of her tenure.) Dule Hill, Richard Schiff, John Spencer and Bradley Whitford were up against Freddie Rodriguez for Supporting Actor and Stockard Channing, Janel Moloney and Mary Louise-Parker were up against Lauren Ambrose.

Nor was this the only new face. 24 was nominated for 10 Emmys in its first season and while Kiefer Sutherland was the only acting nominee, it would nominated in the directed and writing categories. And even more historical were the three nominations The Shield received: Michael Chiklis for Best Actor in a Drama, Clark Johnson for directing the pilot, Shawn Ryan for writing it. No basic cable drama had ever received this many nominations.

The West Wing by any measure did quite well during the 2002 Emmys: it won Best Drama and Janney Spencer and Channing all won on Emmy night. But no one could deny how different the landscape was. Six Feet Under won six Emmys including Best Direction for the Pilot. 24 would win Best Writing for a Drama series. And Michael Chiklis made history when he won Best Actor in a Drama. Combined with the nominations and popularity of series such as CSI and Alias which were radically different from the kind of dramas that had been airing on network TV just the previous year the kinds of shows that audiences were now part of the cultural and critical landscape were completely different then they had been the previous year.

So no The West Wing didn't suddenly become a lesser show after the attacks of September 11^th. But when the 21^st century began so effectively did the Golden Age of TV. Great TV shows were seemingly coming from everywhere and all of them were in many ways more revolutionary then The West Wing could hope to be. It was now 'only' a well written, well-acted masterpiece among many well written, well-acted masterpieces. That's hardly a flaw.