NBC's 'The West Wing'

...Always the aim is not to tell what happens, but to reveal how it happens—how threats and subtle blackmail win reluctant congressmen to support a gun-restriction bill, for example...

...Commonweal 18 December 3,1999...

...MEDIA Celia Wren THE INSIDE DOPE(S) NBC's 'The West Wing' N othing thrills like falling in with the in-crowd, and you can't get much further in— politically, at least—than NBC's new White House drama, "The West Wing...

...Though stray ends of the characters' personal life do straggle into the picture—the vicepresident runs a top-secret AA group disguised as a card game, for example— the show devotes itself principally to surfing political crises both great (the Syrians shoot down a plane) and small (Bartlet rides his bike into a tree...

...At other moments, though, the series lobs an astonishing amount of misty-eyed idealism at us, starting with its unashamedly patriotic credit sequence, which features poignantly faded U.S...

...Even the much ballyhooed Broadway musical Rent, whose characters may compliment the brightness of the moon only to be told if s Spike Lee filming down the street, exploits New York-hipster references in order to present a bohemia for Uptown voyeurs...

...Kay Scarpetta, a medical examiner, investigates suspicious shootings, garrotings, mutilations, plague deaths, and other carnage, the novels glory in autopsy jargon and how-to...

...Set at the heart of a fictional Democratic administration, the show appeals to the same human instinct that packs the parking lot at Graceland, or that made a best seller of the Starr Report—the urge to peer behind the scenes of an exclusive world...

...Instead of a presidential speech, the program delivers the quips of the speech writers as they eat Chinese take-out...

...Why do we get a frisson from eavesdropping on other people's worlds...

...You don't need to tell me that, Reverend," the world-weary White House official barks, "I'm a member of the Democratic party...

...Even the camera work conspires in the simulacrum of privileged access—a typical sweeping, seamless shot will reel down a corridor, following a heated conversation, until the characters enter a busy office complex, whereupon the camera will whirl around to show us secretaries answering phones, staffers pacing with clipboards, people shouting from doorways, and so on, until we feel that the space really surrounds us...

...Puccini's La Boheme, on which Rent is based, probably did something similar back in 1896...

...Its purpose is to trumpet its own presence, to convince readers that they have penetrated a restricted milieu, where the currency is field-specific knowledge...

...Take, for example, a passage from the recent Point of Origin, in which Scarpetta studies a badly burned corpse: This we transferred onto a table beneath the C-arm of a Mobile Digital Imaging system, which was an Xray machine and fluoroscope in one computer-controlled unit....Other than sinus configurations, which are as distinct as fingerprints in every human being, and a single porcelain crown on the right maxillary incisor, we discovered nothing else...

...Do we, on some level, want to compensate for the social boundaries created by our era's gated communities, niche-marketing, multicultural consciousness, and increasing professional specialization...

...Or perhaps rubbing shoulders with insiders, via popular culture, simply gives us a tantalizing sense of expanded possibilities, just as peering through a window from the street lets one live, for a moment, another person's life...

...After all, although "West Wing" may occasionally grant viewers the exhilaration of knowingness, its real lure is of a different kind—Washington shop talk, White House trade secrets (plausible, if fictional), glimpses backstage...

...By tuning into a show like "West Wing," which emphasizes setting over character, are we voting for nurture rather than nature, asserting the importance of environment in molding personality and behavior...

...flags and a stirring drum beat...

...Every group has plenty of demons," a Moral Majority kingmaker complains during a stroll on the Washington Mall, when senior staffer Leo (John Spencer) tries to strong-arm him into quelling a right-wing protest...

...instead of sound bites from the president's press conference, we get the rehearsal for the press conference, temper tantrums included...

...Inside-the-mob movies, women's magazine scoops on celebrity beauty tips, Web sites that allow us to witness real-time surgical operations, reality-based TV shows like Fox's "Cops," which plant us inside the patrol car—all these entertainment offerings operate on a similar principle...

...This kind of expert testimony does not advance the plot, and as for evoking the setting, it is a little too specific—it has a defamiliarizing effect, rather than an atmospheric one...

...The blockbuster mysteries of Patricia Cornwell, for example, rely largely on the mystique of an inner sanctum—the morgue...

...Conjuring up this kind of exclusive world is one of popular culture's besttested ploys...

...Quips like this flatter us by implying that we are in the know— that we are sophisticated skeptics, wellversed in Beltway shenanigans...

...Bartlet, we are constantly reminded, is just a regular guy— he loses his eyeglasses and, when in a good mood, cooks chili (badly) for his staff...

...Does infiltrating an inner circle give us a vicarious sense of belonging—a groundedness that real-world communities do not supply in this day and age...

...In delivering the how, not surprisingly, "West Wing's" creators count on a certain amount of viewer cynicism...

...But many episodes conclude with the president's breaking into an inspiring speech that turns him into a wise father figure, protector of his employees and of the nation...

...As her hardedged heroine Dr...

...These optimistic finales act as a kind of benediction, releasing us from the burdens of knowingness, from lingering anxieties that might make us think about the real world—and might disincline us to switch on the TV next time around...

...Anyone who ever longed to be part of a highschool clique, or belonged to one, knows how enticing exclusivity can be: "West Wing" gives us the illusion of fraternizing with the elect on their own turf...

...The world, in this case, belongs to President Josiah Bartlet (Martin Sheen) and his harried but wisecracking staff, including Rob Lowe as a brash young speechwriter and Allison Janney as a gimlet-eyed press secretary...

...BartCommonweal 17 December 3,1999 let's minions obsess about spin and dole out political favors...