What’s the West Wing gonna do?
December 18th, 2005As most people have heard by now, actor John Spencer, who played Leo McGarry on The West Wing, died Friday of a heart attack. This bummed me out to no end, as I’m a huge fan of that show and of his character in particular. He’s had a less prominent role the past couple of seasons, and now I wonder if real-life health problems may have had something to do with that.
What I’ve been wondering about lately is how the West Wing people are going to write him out of the show. One Farker suggested “Somewhere, Ed O’Neill’s phone is ringing.” This would make sense… O’Neill played Baker, the popular Pennsylvania governor whom most assumed would occupy the VP spot on the Democratic ticket that was later given to Leo. O’Neill is also a television powerhouse with sufficient talent to carry the show through what many consider to be its last season. Some have suggested that now Alan Alda will win the election. Come on. They’ve invested too much emotional capital in Matt Santos to have him tank at the polls. There was an attempt early on to make it look like it was a real horse race — they brought in Patricia Richardson and Steven Root as Alda’s staff, people you can easily see rotating into the regular cast of a major TV show. They divided the episodes between Alda’s Arnie Vinick and Jimmy Smits’s Santos in a fairly evenhanded fashion. But this season, they’re not even pretending. It’s Santos, all the way. Santos and McGarry. But how to get rid of McGarry now that Spencer is gone?
How do you write an episode completely expunging a character from the cast without having that actor to work with? Does Josh Lyman pick up a phone in the teaser, then solemnly turn to everyone and say “Leo’s dead?” Do they get a Leo stand-in and shoot him from the back, keeling over and dying? Maybe Leo doesn’t die. Maybe they find him face-down on the floor after a bender and it’s back to rehab.
Maybe they just recast the role, Bewitched-style. Maybe they write in a regeneration scene like in Doctor Who. A couple seconds of computer-generated Leo clutching his chest, then he glows and emerges as Rob Lowe. Nah, that’d never fly on this side of the pond.
However they do it, I won’t be glued to my set. My schedule these days has meant that I’m unable to watch The West Wing when it’s on, so usually I have to BitTorrent it later. This season has struck me as kind of weak, even compared to the Sorkin-free last two years, and being robbed of Leo is just one more nail in its coffin.
If you haven’t seen the show, then for God’s sake why have you read this far? And also, watch the first four seasons… they’re available on DVD and re-run on Bravo. Do yourself a favor.
December 19th, 2005 at 11:54 am
Caught this entry in the Metro Express today, and boo I say to you, because you must be one of the legions of Emmy voters who wouldn’t tune out The West Wing for The Sopranos for years.
The same situation occured with The Sopranos when they lost Nancy Marchand, who played Tony Soprano’s mother Livia, in the third season. (If you’re DVD-inclined, it’s Season 3, Disc 1, “Proshai, Livushka”, I believe.) To give you an idea of how they dealt with it: for the funeral episode, there was CGI and editing work done (somewhat sloppily)… but the episode turned out as one of the best of the season. More troubling was the fact that the season required an extensive re-write as it happened during filming; I’m not sure where TWW is in their production schedule right now as far as this season and the next go, but it will be interesting to see how TWW handles it.
Still, as the Sopranos showed, the loss of a great actor is tough but survivable.
December 19th, 2005 at 12:05 pm
I’m told TWW has 14 of 22 episodes in the can for this season, and that Leo was supposed to be in 5 of the remaining 8. I guess the writers are pulling all-nighters right about now. I wonder if Sorkin left any crack in his desk…