Hardly news, but I'll miss it

[dianeduane]

NBC's fantasy White House drama "The West Wing" will end its seven-season run on May 14 with the inauguration of the new president, executive producer John Wells told television critics Sunday.

The election will be covered on April 2 and 9 and viewers will know by the end of the latter episode whether the presidential candidate played by Jimmy Smits or Alan Alda won the election -- a decision the producers "have only really in the last couple days made," at the end of "quite a brawl," Wells told critics at the very last session of Winter TV Press Tour 2006.

The story goes on to say that the producers are doing something I rather hoped they'd do: both killing John Spencer's character, Leo, and keeping in the continuity the last work he did before he died. It just somehow seems...more right this way, to me at least.

(sigh) It was great TV. Less so when Aaron Sorkin wasn't working on it: but great TV nonetheless.

Comments

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Agree entirely - it'd be wrong to pretend that he was alive but always in the background, and VERY wrong to use a double or CGI or something.

As for ending the series, it does seem a very natural place to stop; that or go on with an entirely new cast and a Republican white house. I really don't think it'd work so well with another Democratic president, a lot of the dramatic tension would be lost.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Has John Spencer actually died? Oh gods, I didn't know.

As far as I was concerned the series pretty much ended when Sorkin left. I watched the odd episode after that, but they were so obviously shoehorning Bartlet's White House into Bush's messed-up America so the real President wouldn't look quite so bad (um, sorry guys...) that I lost interest. Besides, the music was gone. Nobody wrote it like Sorkin, and very few even tried. I'm glad they've had enough integrity finally to give it its quietus. And it says something about the series that even with its creator and main voice gone it was still as good as it was.

[dewline.livejournal.com]

I know I'm going to miss the show, too.

It'll be a different world without that show, and while I understand at least some of the reasons, I'll still be troubled by its absence.

[janeway216.livejournal.com]

Spencer passed away in December. Heart attack.

[cjmr.livejournal.com]

This annoys me, because West Wing was one of the few intelligent and creative shows still on network TV. They've had some great episodes, even lately. It has become almost tradition to compare how W has reacted to a situation to what Bartlett would do in the same situation.

And what will they replace it with? Probably just a 'reality' show or yet another clone of Law and Order or CSI or Desperate Housewives. (Mind you, Law and Order was creative and clever back in the days when there was only one of it. And CSI was creative and clever for about 3/4 of a season, before it descended to the depths of just being disgusting and practically pornographic.)

As a sidebar on politics in general...

[dewline.livejournal.com]

...today is the Canadian federal election day.

If you're Canadian and are eligible to vote and haven't done so yet, please do. And as Diane once wrote: Options die when decisions are made; be careful what you kill.