Well it's official now - NBC cancels the West Wing.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/TV/01/23/west.wing.canceled.ap/index.html

I don't care what anybody says - I don't think the show suffered a dramatic loss in quality after Sorkin left. Yes he was missed, but it is not like this show turned into something terrible.

Its a sad day. NBC really could of made history by showing the first Latino President on TV. What's worse is that NBC screwed up by not pushing harder to promote this show.

The saddest thing of all was that this show was defeated in the ratings by c r a p like American Idol and Survivor - two totally worthless POS shows.

I wasn't canceled. It was impeached.

I don't think I can survive 2 more years of GWB without my alternate universe to go to.

Me either T'Pooh. Boy do I wish Bartlet was our President now.....

Here is an interesting take from the Huffington Post.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/huffpost/20060123/cm_huffpost/014286;_ylt=AknnjFcXbfokuS_kkcKtX3is0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3YWFzYnA2BHNlYwM3NDI-

LA Daily News reports that we will find out the winner in April, and the series will end with the inauguration.

How's the Gina Davis show (brain cramp) doing in the ratings?

Don't know, but I watched it a few times and was unimpressed. Compared to West Wing, it's a soap opera.

I think the show has been unfairly blamed. Sorkin had his strengths, but he also had his weaknesses too. The problem is that the show was inevitably going to have to go through some kind of drastic change, whether Sorkin was on board or not. Consider:

The West Wing has chosen to be a show in which we see the steady march of time. Unlike shows such as "The Simpsons" (in which time doesn't exist) or "Law & Order" (in which the passage of time is largely ignored, except for cast changes), TWW has very much been affected by real time. Time is a rigid constant in the WW-verse. That is, the creators have chosen to have time in the WW-verse flow similarly to our universe; four TV seasons is four years.

What are the consequences? Well, an administration has four years, eight at most (at least for a normally elected administration). And if you chose to depict that administration in the manner described above, that translates into eight seasons. If you start a year into your first term (as WW did), you have 7 seasons of Bartlett. This was a forgone conclusion from the instant Sorkin decided to structure the show in the way that he did.

Now, it sounds like most of the pathetic whining you read about from TV Guide readers is based on the fact that they wanted the show to continue just as it always was. Such ones should be discounted, since that would violate the already established WW rules of time. Did they really think that Bartlett could stay in office forever? That's impossible. We knew, and always should have known, that after 7 seasons Martin Sheen would be out of a job. The only question is, what form would the last season or two take?

They could have kept everyone in the Oval Office and ignored the election. Maybe this would have pacified the masses, but it would have belied the creators' commitment to realistically depicting a presidential administration, even though WW's VP isn't a reasonable candidate. Do you think Bush isn't worrying about 2008 just because Cheney isn't a viable candidate? Of course not!

To ignore the election, then, would have been unforgivable. The creators chose to handle it the best way possible. They gave us a horse race in the Democratic primaries, between the candidate we liked (Santos), the inside man (the VP), and the "bad boy" who had the Party and popular support (Hoynes). It was truly an exciting season.

And Vinnick: nice job. They could have given us another Governor Ritchie, an idiot not worthy of the office, someone just to root against. It worked well once, when we were entitled to four more years of Bartlett. But, now that that idea is impossible (and making it unnecessary for Santos to win), they've chosen to give us an interesting candidate. Vinnick may be from "the other side," but it's a petty, close-minded viewer who can't look at him and see something they can like, who choses to see only his party affiliations. Look at the way that he, and he alone, had the guts to stand up in Iowa and NOT take the "Ethanol pledge." Look at his refusal to bow to the religious right. Look at his loyalty to his own staff. Most importantly, look at the respect that a good man like Leo holds him in. Or someone like Bruno, who switched sides because he believed in the man. That says something for him.

I don't criticize the writers. I APPLAUD them for their willingness to make drastic--and ultimately fatal--changes to their show, in the name of realism. They could have bowed like so many other shows, cheated us out of realism and hired a few girls with big breasts, thrown in a few pointless affairs, things that so many other shows do to save their ratings. But "The West Wing" stayed true to its original goals, even though this killed them in the end.

That is, the creators have chosen to have time in the WW-verse flow similarly to our universe; four TV seasons is four years.

Actually it's 3.5 TV seasons is 4 years. Bartlett's Second Inauguration was in the middle of season 4.

Well, no, not really; we jumped in partway into Bartlet's first term. Time in the first few years of the show wasn't just flowing at the usual rate of one second per second, it was indexed to time in the real world -- episodes airing in December 1999 were also taking place in December 1999 in the show's world. Jed Bartlet was elected the first time in 1998, and again four years later in 2002 in his universe and in ours.

Then we misplaced a year somewhere in season 5, and we seem to be doing our best to stretch things out Battlestar Galactica-style before the series finale. Otherwise we'd never have gotten another election storyline; if we'd stayed with one year per season, the Santos/Vinick showdown wouldn't be taking place until this fall, and the show will be long gone by then, of course. I don't really like the way we're playing with time these days, but I also haven't watched regularly since Sorkin left, so what do I know?

http://westwing.bewarne.com/queries/shootingdate.html#year

Regardless of nits, I think the *intent* was pretty clear to have show time indexed to real time.

Matthew Patterson: Regardless of nits, I think the *intent* was pretty clear to have show time indexed to real time.

That's what I was getting at. Forgive my errors above. I just meant that, all things considered, the show flows in some form of real time, as opposed to a show like "The Simpsons," where time stands still.

NBC has scrapped a West Wing clip show retrospective, which was to have aired before this Sunday's (5/14) series finale. In its place, they'll run the pilot episode.
NBC wanted to run the pilot, along with the last episode, of Hill Street Blues back in 1987. I guess they got heat over it, as that idea was scrapped, and the series finale ran by itself. (NBC had previously run the Hill Street pilot five times, and it probably wore out its welcome. Also, this was in the days before cable channels grabbed series for endless reruns, even before their end. Just like Bravo does with The West Wing now.)