. . . has been transforming itself for a year and a half into something other than simply a panagyric to the liberal wing of the Democratic Party. It started last year, when two episodes featured the G.O.P. Speaker of the House as a fill-in for the President, whose daughter had been kidnapped and who felt he couldn't do his job.

That marked the beginning of the change. After that, I began watching The West Wing because it seemed to me when the show's ratings took a nosedive its producers finally realized a lot of the country (oddly enough) doesn't live in L.A. (which is just as well; traffic is awful here as it is). After that, the Republicans were no longer the enemy on the show: politics as usual was the enemy. Special interests were the enemy. Calcified thinking was the enemy.

Now, with Martin Sheen's contract nearly up, the next election in the West Wing parallel universe is going to take place a year early. Theoretically, the existing Vice President (whom few viewers take seriously) has a lock on the Democratic nomination, but there is at least one wild card candidate: Congressman Matt Santos, played by Jimmy Smits. A prominent White House staffer, Josh Lyman, is pushing hard to make him viable.

And then, there is the Republican senator, Arnold Vinick, played in a delicious role reversal by Alan Alda. There is the cognitive dissonance of hearing Alda denounce government spending, but it works. He's the GOP opposition here, and his views are delivered with respect.

There's also the ongoing sexual tension between Lyman and his former assistant, Donna Moss, who now works for the Vice President's campaign. Last night's installment had them staying in the same hotel, in rooms across the hall from each other. At one point Lyman crosses into the hall, raises his hand to knock on Moss's door, and thinks better of it. He goes back to his room alone, and the audience is left to wonder another week if those two will ever get together.

The episode ended with the renegade Latino congressman and the equally iconoclastic GOP senator sitting down in a hotel coffee shop to chat, and agreeing on a surprising number of things.

And the big question is, which of these two men will be elected President of the United States in the NBC parallel universe?

Some of the show's most avid fans see a split ticket in the future, but I can't imagine the show's producers would cross party lines and have one of these guys actually run with the other: the West Wing universe does, after all, need to parallel this one to some degree. What I can see is Alan Alda playing a Republican president in the show's next incarnation, with the Jimmy Smits character as his Secretary of Education.

I think it's going to play out something like that, and the transformation is meaningful because it represents NBC's ability to break out of its politically insular world, and admit that there are some good ideas to be found on the right.

It's time to give these people another chance; check it out.

Posted by: Attila at 12:09 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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