Season 6 was a turnaround in quality and storybuilding for The West Wing after a shaky Season 5. With show creator Aaron Sorkin now out of the picture for over a year, John Wells and the rest of the writing staff began to find a consistent voice that proved, for the most part, entertaining and involving. And the show's emphasis on the upcoming Presidential campaign proved to be a great choice in creating good quality TV drama.
There were some low points ... Ninety Miles Away is among the worst of all West Wing episodes, and the start of the season with the Israeli-Palestinian summit, Leo's heart attack and recovery, and CJ's rather surprising elevation to the Chief of Staff position was still a little bumpy. But Matt Santos proved to be an electrifying character, and the addition of Alan Alda as Republican Senator and Presidential contender Arnold Vinick helped lift the show creatively as well.
Season 6 also got a little wonky with the timeline. Around the time of Liftoff and CJ's move to the CoS position, we heard that the 2004 midterms had already taken place (even though we were still in the summer of 2004 series-wise - that episode actually aired right around when the actual federal elections of 2004 would have occurred, but the show hadn't gotten to the fall yet). Then we started hearing, over and over again, references to "seven years" having passed, even though we were only in Season 6 and the sixth year of the Bartlet administration. Here's the deal: the producers knew the odds of a Season 8 were remote, given the drop in ratings and the realities of life on a TV network. Even Season 7 wasn't a guaranteed thing when Season 6 was underway, so the decision was made to ramp up the pace and basically skip a year of the show's timeline. That would enable the stories to follow the 2006 presidential primaries and national conventions for episodes airing in early 2005; then the 2005-06 season would be sure to contain the 2006 Presidential election.
Ratings-wise, while the show didn't stop the slide in viewership we saw from Season 4 to Season 5, the drop was slowed down somewhat. The West Wing was the 35th most-viewed TV series in the 2004-05 season, off from its 29th place showing the season before (and well off the top-15 ranking it had in Seasons 2 and 3). Average viewership of each episode was 11.1 million, off a bit from the 11.8 million of Season 5. And for the first time ever, some episodes pulled in fewer than 10 million viewers, especially towards the end of the season (which, as I mentioned, was actually considerably better creatively than the beginning of the season).
The Wake Up Call, Drought Conditions, Ninety Miles Away, and Things Fall Apart all had under 10 million viewers, and the excellent In God We Trust was actually the least-seen episode of the entire series to this point, with just under 9 million people watching. The season finale, 2162 Votes, bounced back to over 11.5 million ... does that bode well for Season 7? Considering renewal of the series for another year wasn't certain, and NBC moved The West Wing from its longtime Wednesday night slot to the relative graveyard of Sunday night for Season 7, probably not.
Critical recognition for the show continued to fall, as well. As you remember, The West Wing won the Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series four years in a row, from Season 1 through Season 4; it continued to be nominated in that category for the rest of its run, but never won again. The series won 14 major Emmy Awards over that initial four-season period, but in Season 5 Allison Janney was the lone Emmy winner and now, in Season 6, the show received no major Emmys at all.
The West Wing also found itself unnominated completely for Golden Globe awards; after 19 nominations and two wins over the past five seasons, the Hollywood Foreign Press left the show totally unacknowledged for this year. The Screen Actors Guild Awards were slightly better, as Allison Janney earned another nomination for her leading role as CJ Cregg and the cast itself was nominated for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series, but again ... no wins.
- The series was nominated for Outstanding Drama Series for the sixth straight season, after winning the first four times it was nominated. This year's award went to Lost.
- Alan Alda for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series, for his performance in King Corn and In God We Trust. Alda had been previously nominated for 30 Emmy Awards, for acting, writing, and directing, and had won five (mostly for the series M*A*S*H). This year's award went to William Shatner for Boston Legal.
- Stockard Channing was nominated for Outstanding Performance by a Supporting Actress in a Drama Series for her work in Third-Day Story and The Wake Up Call. It was the sixth straight year she had been nominated in that category for The West Wing, and she took home an Emmy for Season 3. The Emmy in this category went to Blythe Danner for Huff.
- Alex Graves received his second West Wing Emmy nomination for Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series for his really excellent work on 2162 Votes. He had previously been nominated in that category in Season 3 for Posse Comitatus.
- The
show's cast received another nomination, their fifth, for Outstanding
Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series. The trophy went to the
cast of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (a cast which included former West Wing actress Jorja Fox).
- And Allison Janney was again nominated for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Drama Series, her fourth in this category, but saw the award go to Jennifer Garner for Alias.
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