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don't need to have seen Scream to know that horror movies
have conventions that must be followed. For example,
from almost the first few minutes it is generally possible to guess
who will survive, and who is going to die. Typically, a nice, likable
character will be one of the first to perish. Such a death sets
a suitably downbeat tone, and previews the implacability of the
torment to come. So it was on last night's season finale of West
Wing. It was a weirdly lurid episode, which made little or no
sense until one understood it for what it was, a tribute to the
cinema of fear.
The story begins, therefore, with a good person in a coffin. President
Bartlet's big-hearted secretary, loyal Mrs. Landingham, is dead.
In fact, the scriptwriters were in such a hurry to get moving with
the plot that they had killed the poor dear off in the previous
episode. Bartlet, meanwhile is wrestling with an emerging crisis
in Haiti. Haiti? That's no coincidence, RKO's land of voodoo can
always be relied upon to add menace to any tragedy.
Next, of course, there has to be rain, wind, and lightning. Last
night's West Wing was no exception. As the show progressed
we learn that Washington is to be hit by a strange unseasonable
storm, the worst, Bartlet is assured, for more than a century. Naturally,
when such a storm is raging, one of the characters has to run through
the tempest looking crazed. Shakespeare famously used such an opportunity
to tear out Gloucester's eyes in King Lear. Martin Sheen's Bartlet
was more restrained. He merely turned down the offer of a raincoat,
and went for a stroll in the deluge.
Add in some terrible childhood trauma to the mix. Flashbacks give
us the young Bartlet as a pupil in one of those 1950s prep schools
where everyone wears a tweed jacket and sensitive students feel
guilty about their privilege. Unfortunately for the future President,
Bartlet Senior is the headmaster and he is not played by Robin Williams
(but by MSNBC pundit and West Wing writer Lawrence O'Donnell).
In the space of a few minutes we watch this ogre hit his son, sneer
at Catholicism, support censorship, and underpay his female staff.
Well, what else can you expect from a WASP in prime time?
Not, probably, shouting at God in Latin in the National Cathedral,
which is what we find President Bartlet doing at the end of Mrs.
Landingham's funeral. What a display! He hurls abuse at the deity
for allowing bad things to happen, particularly to a man such as
himself, who has, he whines, been a good president (there then followed
a laundry list of achievements that sounded suspiciously like those
once claimed by Bill Clinton). It was Martin Sheen's most spectacular
hissy fit since that Saigon hotel room in Apocalypse Now
and about as convincing, a piece of ripe ham to add to the West
Wing's usual baloney, and an ominous warning that this show
was about to turn very dark indeed. For incantations in Latin are
never good news. The last time one was tried in a Washington drama
was for The Exorcist, and that succeeded in riling up the
Devil.
Bartlet gets off lightly. The only apparition he raises is that
of the late Mrs. Landingham. She returns to the Oval Office, the
first dead left-wing lady to show up there since the days when Mrs.
Roosevelt would drop in to chat with Hillary. Mrs. L., of course,
is on a mission. In the horror genre, the dead always are. Bartlet,
you see, is in crisis. Tantalizingly, at least for viewers on the
Right, there is a chance that scandal (but only of the noblest sort:
he concealed his Multiple Sclerosis) might cause the president to
drop any bid for reelection. Mrs. Landingham will have none of it.
She reminds him of the poor, the sick, and the dispossessed (of
whom there seem to be a quite a lot, despite all those presidential
successes that Bartlet had so recently been recently been discussing
with God). The implication is clear: These are problems that need
the intervention of big government and a liberal president. There
is work to be done, but no one called "W." could do it. Bartlet
is the man for the job.
The show ends with a reinvigorated Bartlet at a press conference.
The journalists all want to know. Will he run again? Officially,
we won't be told until the series returns, but take it from me,
this is no cliffhanger. Bartlet will be back. That's the rule. Just
ask Freddy Krueger.
In horror, there's always room for a sequel.
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