Slowly Going Bald

After seven years on the air — three stellar, one amazing, one horrible, one tolerable, and one not bad — "The West Wing" took its final bow Sunday night on NBC, and I, for one, am glad to see it finally go.

The show has had its fair share of ups and downs, not to mention the most flagrant disregard for dramatic continuity in recent TV memory. Major characters disappeared without a mention: Emily Procter as Ainsley Hayes was slowly phased out in Season 2; John Larroquette as the White House counsel made only a brief appearance early on, and Oliver Platt took over the job and actually stuck around for a few story arcs; but the biggest vanishing act was easily Moira Kelly as Mandy the Annoying PR Woman, whose character was poorly defined to begin with and served no purpose during Season 1 except to help the viewer realize just how much Kelly as an actress was dragging the show down. So without a word, between the first and second seasons, she disappeared. The first year ended in an assassination attempt cliffhanger, and when the second year picked up in the middle of the action, Mandy was gone, never to be mentioned again. I can understand the showrunners' willingness to eliminate her, but come on, at least toss out a line about why she left.

And yeah, sure, the series played pretty fast and loose with time, flowing pretty steadily during its first few seasons but somehow skipping a year to get to the next presidential election, as if the producers knew they'd have to wrap things up soon. But that's just a minor symptom of the bigger problem: When creator Aaron Sorkin departed after the show's fourth season, the series suffered a dramatic drop in quality. Under the guiding hand of producer John Wells, "West Wing" started to soon look like Wells' "ER," which is to say poorly lit, full of film-student camera work, and heavy to the point of being soporific. Sorkin took the show's heart and soul when he left, and it showed.

No great show can ever sustain its momentum, and on the heels of the recent death of "Arrested Development," which still stings a little, I'm reminded of how I would have been happy if "The West Wing" had ended after Sorkin left. Actually, I would have preferred it if NBC had just looked the other way when it came to Sorkin's substantial coke habits and just let him keep running the show. Come on guys, just pretend he's an athlete. You let them get away with anything.

All that to say that I'm glad Sorkin is returning to the air with this fall's "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip." It's set to air on Thursday nights, right against the newly moved "Grey's Anatomy," and it's my hope that "Studio 60" is either amazing for its entire run or canceled before it gets too old. Two great seasons is preferable to five mediocre ones.

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