In Which Our Hero Is Reduced To a Blubbering Mess of Goo By a Napkin

I've had a little time to think about it now and I've decided maybe not to be so glib.

It's funny how a TV show can change your life.

I've had a lifelong fascination with the idea of service, and with American politics. As a child, my twin, Sarah Vowell-like obsessions were Lincoln and JFK. For about five seconds, as a good Catholic boy, I entertained thoughts about maybe entering the priesthood. (Then I discovered girls. More specifically, that girls, unlike boys, usually smell really good.)

In 1999, I was not particularly happy. I'd been in a new job for about two years. I was a television producer, making good money. I'd helped start up a station. I liked the people I worked with (most of 'em, anyway.) I got to write a little in my job -- mostly sketches and things like that. But there was kind of a maw there, just waiting to claim me. I'd just turned thirty the year before, and when the question, "Is this how you pictured your life?" came up, when I was honest, I had to admit not just "no," but "hell no."

Then I saw the premiere episode of The West Wing. From the moment the show premiered, from the moment Jed Bartlet walked into the room quoting the First Commandment, I knew two things absolutely: 1) that I had a new favorite show, and 2) that I had to get the hell out of my job.

It wasn't just the quality of the writing or the acting or the direction, though they were all fine. I'd been more or less devoted to Sports Night, Aaron Sorkin's first television series...I'd been lucky enough to see A Few Good Men on Broadway, and had tracked Sorkin's writing ever since.

What The West Wing did for me, though, was to rekindle those thoughts of service. Thoughts that had been rattling around for years, that made me think, "what is it that you should be doing? What is the best use of what you have?" I knew it wasn't necessarily politics. First of all, living in Canada was a bit of an impediment to that, and Canadian politics just didn't inspire me like American politics. I'd been teaching University part-time for a number of years, and though that did feel like I was doing something --(it certainly wasn't the money, which was pathetic) it didn't leave me feeling that I was in the right place, doing the right thing.

Jed Bartlet wasn't just a character; he was an ideal. I didn't see a lot of him where I worked. I didn't really respect my current boss too much. In meeting after meeting, I had come to realize that they didn't really respect me. I could say things like, "well, here's what the students I teach say," when trying to chase that elusive youth audience, but it didn't connect. I could say things like, "the ACTRA (actor's union) contract says this..." but none of that mattered if you weren't listened to. I had a meeting with an old boss inside the same organization and she said the very wise words that galvanized me: "maybe it's time for you to go."

I wanted to be a counsellor to the President, serve at the pleasure of the President -- or at least have a life where I was doing something that I believed in.

Then there was the show itself. Holy God, the writing -- long, breathless strings of dialogue that was funny and angry and smart and about something. I didn't know TV could be like that. If TV could be like that, then what the hell was I doing interviewing people who wrote books, or promoting bad movies with more kitch than cultural value?

So a few months later I started writing a spec script. And then I wrote another. And then I took one of my plays and turned it into a screenplay. And that got optioned and for a while it looked like maybe it would get made. Then it didn't.

I applied to two programs. One was the Disney/ABC Writers Fellowship. The other was The Canadian Film centre. Heads, I go to L.A. Tails I stay here. If I didn't get into either program, well, I was just going to quit. Quit and figure out something else to do...or more accurately, some other way to do what I wanted to do, the only thing I could think of doing now, which was to try and write something 1/10th as good as The West Wing.

I entered that West Wing spec script in one of those script competitions. It won. It got me into the CFC, if not Disney/ABC.

Then the American political process went all pear-shaped in the 2000 election and I was kind of glad not to be down there. I tried not to think about it. I thought about Jed Bartlet, and the people who worked in a place doing jobs they believed in.

And I quit my job.

And I went back to school.

And I have never regretted it for a single second.

And six years later, I haven't written that show 1/10th as good as the West Wing yet, but I'm getting closer. And when I sit in meetings, talking about story, people listen. In about forty-five minutes, I'll sit in on the first production meeting of a series that I'm partially responsible for creating. And you know what? It's for the same place where I was unhappy as a TV producer. It was the right call for both me, and the company. I didn't stay and become bitter, which is probably why I'm able to work with them now -- and hopefully help them to create something that will accrue more value to the company than I ever could have accrued as an employee. That's the value of following your heart. It's not saving a bunch of Cubans on rafts, floating into the Port of Miami -- but it'll do.

And yeah, Aaron Sorkin's Bartlet, who could quote philosophers I didn't know or hadn't read, would never have made the mistake of missing that the Founding Fathers set a March, not a January inauguration, but the fact that the show was able to bounce back to a level of quality at all without Sorkin (which it did) is inspiring, in a way, too. The idea is not to become irreplaceable. The idea is to create something so indelible that it changes the way other people write.

So Keb'Mo singing America The Beautiful while people box up the Oval Office -- some people might not like that on the message boards, but of course that is the beauty and the power of the American system. That is what's beautiful in it. The Orderly Transition of Power, the Government of Laws Not Men. It's this that makes me choke up when I think of America, when I think of how easily it can be threatened, and hopeful when I think that though the cost might be high, ultimately the system will right itself. Because there have to be people out there with that idea of service. Maybe my calling was to write TV, but I have no doubt that there are Josh Lymans and Sam Seaborns and Toby Zieglers and C.J. Craigs there, for real.

I have no doubt that forgetful chief executives can one day take that last walk and remember everyone's names (Something I never managed to do in all those years teaching.) I have no doubt that the principle, not the men, ultimately survive. It's that idea that The West Wing celebrated, right til the very end.

And that's how a TV show can change your life.