Aaron Sorkin needs to get his ass back to Washington, stat. Last night’s West Wing, while by no means a disaster, was not the show I’ve loved for four years. New Executive Producer/Head Writer John Wells doesn’t seem to get what we’ve loved about Sorkin’s show. Yes, there was much tension in last night's installment chronicalling the hours immediately after the President’s daughter was abducted, but the characters we have come to love weren’t there either.

Now, the full verdict on this new West Wing won’t be official until we see an episode that isn’t fraught with so much grief and sleeplessness and I certainly wasn’t expecting a lot of humor last night. But I was expecting good writing. Instead I got cliches and obtrusive hand-held camera work.

Case in point: Jed is sitting alone in front of a large circular window (a set which grew to look more and more like the throne room from Return of the Jedi in every scene) and Abby enters, just waking up. Then Abby tells Jed about how she had a dream about Zoey when she was six. "I had a dream about Zoey. She was five or six. I held her and she was small." Wow. What great dialogue. What an evocative piece of writing.

Language is a part of these peoples’ lives, it’s what makes them unique. And it makes sense in character. People who spend their days writing speeches are going to speak with a little heightened prose. But Wells’ decision, as he has said in the press, is to focus on the human drama and get away from the banter. Well, human drama is great and necessary. But that’s not all this show is about.

Perhaps West Wing had become a little light on conflict. Most of the stories were about the staff focussing on an external adversary (the Republican presidential candidate, Qumar) rather than dealing with conflict between the characters. But what frightens me is that Wells is going to come in and turn the show into ER, where no one gets along and there’s rarely anything but conflict. And they are always tired.

I do not want to spend an hour a week with tired, cranky people I used to care about. That’s why I quit watching ER (That and the fact that I was actually actively, vocally rooting for a formerly beloved character to just die already). Everyone became so unlikeable, so contrary for the sake of being contrary that I couldn’t take it. And for Sorkin’s show to drift into that area will kill it.

As created, The West Wing was a show about an idealized workplace full of bright witty people saying bright witty things and fighting for a common good. That’s the show I fell in love with. That’s the show I want to watch every week. I don’t want to watch a show about people constantly in conflict with each other, constantly unable to do the right thing. There needs to be balance and I’m not sure Wells is capable of that. When’s the last time an ER character was allowed to be happy for more than two acts?

I want Wells to succeed on this show, I really do. I don’t want to lose this group of people who have come to mean a great deal to me, especially since I’m still getting over the loss of Buffy, Willow, Xander and Giles (and don’t even get me started on Anya). But I will turn away if it isn’t fun anymore. I will turn away the first time I equate Jed Bartlet with Mark Green in my head. I will turn away the minute this show stops making me happy, the minute it becomes a chore to watch or depresses me because of what it used to be. The West Wing is one of my favorite shows of all time and I want it stay that way. I want it to be a happy memory. And I want Abby to something more interesting than “I had a dream…she was small.”

***

I watched a little of the Recall Debate last night. Damn I miss Washington State politics. It was so much simpler and there were so many fewer crazies. And Washington voters would never recall someone who had been in office a week. The man was re-elected, get over it.

And these are our replacements? Cruz Bustamante is a good man and he has my vote, but he doesn’t exactly have the gravitas I expect in a California governor (not that Davis has all that much of that himself). Arianna Huffington is a pretty good social thinker but she seemed to think she was back on Politically Incorrect, slinging barbs at Arnie. Actually, I liked her for that. The Green Party candidate has severe delusions of grandeur. McClintock at least seems to have a head on his shoulder but nowhere in that head is any thought of my civil rights. And Arnold. Poor, deluded Arnold. He actually calls himself a business owner. Who thinks he actually has any experience running the businesses he bought with his Last Action Hero salary? The guy’s a doof. A big, muscular doof. And yet there’s a very real possibility he could be our governor. WTF?