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...ensemble drama heads to its season finale next week (Wednesday, 9 p.m. E.T.), creator and writer Aaron Sorkin has proved that dealing with public policy doesn't mean ratings hell. The characters--President Josiah Bartlet, a liberal Democrat played by Martin Sheen; chief of staff Leo McGarry, played by John Spencer; and a clutch of earnest young staff members--have wrestled with school vouchers, the Pentagon's "Don't ask, don't tell" policy on gays, even the debate over using statistical sampling to improve the Census. "Make the Census interesting, who'd have thought?" says (real) White House spokesman...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: You Could Call It the Wonk Wing | 5/15/2000 | See Source »

...WEST WING (NBC) Attention, networks: There is dramatic life outside precinct houses and hospital wards. Aaron Sorkin's White House series is a love story of people and their jobs that overcomes its speechifying tendencies and tics (half the action takes place as characters stalk down corridors) with verbal gunplay, public-policy triage and an appealing lack of cynicism--about, of all things, politics...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Television: The Best Television Of 1999 | 12/20/1999 | See Source »

With the monologue-heavy Sports Night, Aaron Sorkin showed himself to be as much a speechwriter as a scriptwriter, so it was only a matter of time before he wrote a political series. His ambitious new presidential drama, The West Wing (NBC, Wednesdays, 9 p.m. E.T.), like an ambitious presidency, swings wildly from the impressive to the insufferable...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Television: Capital Ideas | 10/4/1999 | See Source »

...Sorkin's tendency toward the dramatic is exacerbated by casting serial over-emoter Martin Sheen as Democratic President Josiah Bartlet, who makes his first appearance speaking in the voice of God. Bursting into a showdown with religious conservatives, Sheen quotes the First Commandment, then unburdens himself of a pair of minute-and-a-half speeches while Coplandesque music swells and the camera cuts to admiring staff members, in case we've failed to notice how darned inspiring he is. There will be no curtains left in this Oval Office once Sheen has finished chewing the scenery...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Television: Capital Ideas | 10/4/1999 | See Source »

Given the stacked deck in the pilot, detractors have claimed the series might well be called The Left Wing, and Sorkin has promised balance--Bartlet is antiabortion and a military hawk, for instance. But the real and admirable radical idea here is that people might still be passionate about principle, about government, about their jobs. When he's not indulging his you-can't-handle-the-truth side, Sorkin spins witty, hypercaffeinated office jabber with an intensity that's easier to buy from folks who have the Bomb than from sportscasters. That and an ensemble including ice-cool Rob Lowe...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Television: Capital Ideas | 10/4/1999 | See Source »

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