Kube

There were so many plot points set up in the season 4 cliffhanger...

Has he ever publically said what he would have done different?

Count Dooku

Even though Sorkin didn't announce his departure from the show until after Season Four had wrapped production, the handwriting was on the wall (so to speak) for two major reasons:

1--His level of involvement, writing or co-writing almost every single script, had to be wearing on him.
2--That involvement wreaked havoc on the production schedule (and episode costs) which drove NBC crazy.

The upshot is that NBC was not going to continue into Season Five production of The West Wing with Sorkin running the show and writing all the episodes, and Sorkin (despite his penchant for the shrooms) knew this was the case.

When Sorkin ended the season with the Vice-POTUS resigning and then the cliffhangers of Zoey's kidnapping and the POTUS resigning, he had to have discussed how he (Sorkin) envisioned the stories being resolved with John Wells.

So the only difference in the episodes where Zoey was recovered and POTUS retook office would have been that the dialogue would have been vastly improved.

Kube

I think your analysis about the direction of the show and his involvement is correct. However, I think the long term story arch of season 5 would have been very different.

He seemed to set things up about the Josh and Donna relationship - that still hasn't really been addressed.

chamber715

I don't think Sorkin discussed what he was thinking in terms of direction for season 5 with Wells. In one of the audio commentaries for the season 4 episodes, Sorkin mentions a different resolution to the cliffhanger than what it ultimately ended up being. And I think the difference between a non-Sorkin season 5 and a Sorkin season 5 would have been more than just better dialogue.

Count Dooku

In my previous post, I was just addressing how Sorkin might have handled the cliffhangers of Zoey's kidnapping and Bartlet stepping down.

Realistically, there was only one possible resolution to the two cliffhangers.

Zoey would be rescued, and Bartlet would resume his duties as POTUS.

Sorkin can speculate about what he might have wanted to do, but if he thinks NBC would have let him kill the president's daughter, he is not just high, he is delusional.

Notice what happens in the first two episodes of Season Five (written by John Wells):
The plot of Zoey's kidnapping is resolved.
POTUS retakes office.
The Qumar story and Danny chasing the truth about the assasination (that Sorkin strung along all previous season) was dispensed with, and Danny disappeared from the show.
Toby's ex-wife Andi and his newborn twins made a cameo, and then followed Danny to the cornfield.

Wells is tying up Sorkin's loose ends...
...and we get the introduction of Josh's annoying intern (clearly a John Wells creation).

Then in the next episode, we get the whole idiot VP thing and Josh Malina (who was Sorkin's boy from Sport's Night) begins his move from ensemble regular to recurring character.
The treatment of Will Bailey says everything (IMHO) about the difference between Sorkin's Wing and the Wells Wing.
Will Bailey (under Sorkin) was the most idealistically liberal voice on the show, and it was a voice that was heard often.
Wells turned Will into a kind of scold, who by Season Six (with his pushing of Russell for Prez) had become the worst kind of political opportunist.

I said:
chamber715 answered back:
I was just talking about the plot points in the first two episodes and the resolution of the cliffhangers, not what Sorkin might have done over the course of the entire season.

chamber715

I was actually talking about those first couple of episodes as well. If you listen to the audio commentary for the last episode of season 4, Sorkin mentions his ideas of how the cliffhangers would have been resolved. He already had all the answers to the questions posed in the season 4 finale. Who kidnapped Zoey? Why did they do it? And Sorkin's ideas were much less pedestrian than Wells' solutions to those same problems.

Count Dooku

No doubt.

Kube

This question probably isn't deserving of it's own post but

What exactly are the names on the blackboard in Josh's office.

I assume they're senator's names and have something to do with how many votes are needed to pass a bill. Anyone know.

Count Dooku

Depending on what episode you're talking about, it could be the potential VP candidates.

Daniel-A

I remember reading a clipping from an interview with Sorkin saying the he basically washed his hands of the show after that season's finale. Something to the extent that even had Wells asked him how it should be resolved, he wouldn't tell him how to do it, as it was now Wells' show.

Count Dooku

If that is the case then I was clearly mistaken in what I posted earlier.
I assumed that Sorkin was a professional and had pride in his creation.

Daniel-A

There was a lot of strife between Sorkin and WB that season. Many episodes were produced slowly and as a result would be done late. Even though the show had writers Sorkin would rewrite practically everything. And the production costs were too high for the ratings the show was receiving for WB. In the end Sorkin was pretty pissed off at them.

Count Dooku

Those are all reasons for Warner Bros to be pissed at Sorkin.

Look. I consider Sorkin's (basically) writing every episode of the first four seasons of The West Wing to be one of the greatest creative achievements in the history of television.
We're constantly being told how TV shows are produced by committee, and how the content is watered down.
If someone actually has an artistic vision that they want to bring to the small screen, then they are supposed to take it to cable and produce a dozen episodes a year.

What Sorkin did was amazing. The West Wing was so his vision, so one man's voice. And it was on Network TV and it attracted a huge audience.

And as much as I respect and admire Sorkin as an artist, I also assumed or expected that somehow he was also enough of a businessman to realize that he couldn't keep producing the show the way he was going (for the reasons in the above quote and also because he couldn't keep it up forever).

Whatever bitterness and hard feelings he had when he parted ways with the show, I always thought that he had enough affection for his creation, and maybe some respect for the people he worked with who were still going to be working there, that he wouldn't have just dumped the show in John Wells lap and walked away saying. " I left some loose ends for you to tie up. Good luck with that, sucker."

chamber715

I don't know if it was as malicious as that. Having tried to write someone else's characters from a blank slate, I can tell you it's the hardest thing in the world. By giving Wells cliffhangers to resolve, Sorkin gave him some starting point for all the characters, a period of adjustment to get used to writing the characters.

And while Sorkin had ideas about how he was going to resolve those cliffhangers, I can understand why he didn't just tell Wells what he planned. Again, it let Wells get his footing with characters he had never written before.

Kube

Re: Josh's chalk board - He's had lists and lists of names on it from season one. It's not tied to the VP list.

Re: Sorkin saying Good luck. I completely understand his not wanting to offer advice. It's really no longer his show. His time with it is over. He would have loved done to continue to write it but he and WB parted ways - not very ammicably. It would be emotionally hard and not very practical to kibitiz. It's sort of like getting a call from an ex-girlfriend's lover and saying, "How should I make her happy?" Well, it's in your lap now.

If Sorkin wanting NOTHING to do with the show he wouldn't have left lose ends and many posibilities in the Season 4 cliffhanger. He would have wrapped up everthing with a little bowl. Instead, he made you really, really want to see what happened next.

Also his commentaires for the DVDs were recorded after he left the show. Clearly he clears about it.

He's also said that in this current political environment he would not know how to write for the show.

djbrown

There are rumors that Sorkin MIGHT come back to write the final few episodes this season. Ran across them on TWOP when I was reading a few weeks back; not sure what the latest is.

Ralph Wiggum

Here's a recentish Sorkin interview for anyone interested:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/featu...525148,00.html

As to the original question: I doubt Sorkin had anything but the most general idea of what he wanted to do with the start of Season Five.