After pretty much side-stepping the issue for the first five years of its existence, "The West Wing" tonight decided to dive head-on into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And they did it with a bang- literally- as a US delegation to Gaza was struck with a car bomb, killing longtime peripheral character Adm. Fitzwallace (John Amos) and injuring cast regular Donna Moss (Janel Moloney).
The episode was generally unoffensive, I thought, although it really illustrated that 'Wing' has for all intents and purposes become a non-fiction version of a segment on "The McLaughlin Group": a hot-button issue is brought up, the characters take predictable positions and argue about it, no one says anything new, and nothing is resolved. Two weeks ago it was outsourcing, this time it's the Mideast.
The Israel treatment continued the show's post-Sorkin pattern: it didn't fall into the moral equivelance trap, but they did fall into the "been there, done that" trap: there wasn't a single syllable uttered in any of the arguments that I hadn't already heard at least a dozen times before.
Meanwhile, two things have me worried about next week's finale: the introduction of Mary McCormack (Stern's wife in "Private Parts") as an intelligence officer who, like Jack Ryan and Jack Bauer before her, has unrealistically easy access to the president; it's one of those out-of-nowhere characters who takes up way too much space in so many episodes and besides- "West Wing," Sorkin or not, has always been terrible at writing non-CJ female characters- they all sound like each other. (Then again, so do the males).
Anyway, McCormack was much more interesting as the lesbian Republican lobbyist on HBO's now-defunct pseudo-reality series "K Street." And the other thing I'm dreading? Josh's visit to Donna in the hospital: you just know, if she in fact lives, they're finally going to stoop to the inevitable Josh/Donna romance plot that no one wants to see.
One great subplot, however, has emerged from this train wreck of a season: the subtle feud between Toby and vice presidential chief of staff Will Bailey over the legacy of the Bartlet administration and how his vice president will learn from it. If they can't build on that, I'd have to advise NBC to pay very close attention to the Don't Save Our Show petition.
(Oh, and Tobey and CJ's Minnesota discussion was a nice surprise too).
Posted by Stephen Silver at May 13, 2004 01:21 AM