KILL YOUR ENTHUSIASM (8)

By: Catherine Christman
October 23, 2022

One in a series of 25 enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, on the topic of favorite killed-off TV characters. Series edited by Heather Quinlan.

MRS. LANDINGHAM | THE WEST WING

When I say West Wing, then name a character whose unexpected death spawned a zillion emotions, you’re probably thinking I’m gonna say John Spencer. After all, it was Spencer’s real-life death that triggered the absence of his alter ego, Leo McGarry, from the West Wing corridors.

Instead, think of a deceptively mousy-looking woman with a page-boy hairdo and glasses, who was better at making people toe the line than Bob Fosse.

Horrific demise with crushing impact?

Yes, literally, for it was none other than a collision in her brand-new car that killed Dolores Landingham — President Jed Bartlet’s gatekeeper.

I should have suspected Aaron Sorkin had a tragic turn in mind for her, since this celebrated wordsmith named her “Dolores,” Latin for sorrow. And the fact that Jesus carried his cross along the Via Dolorosa on the way to his crucifixion should have also been a big clue.

But in the end it came down to character suicide. Because Kathryn Joosten, who played Dolores, was indirectly responsible for her death.

It happened one night at a West Wing charity event when Joosten confided in Sorkin that she was under consideration for a new series.

Immediately, Sorkin’s mind was racing about the heh, heh, heh possibilities that might await Dolores. Can you imagine how many times Joosten later said to herself, “Couldn’t I have just told Aaron I liked the hors d’oeuvres?”

It reminded me of something Bob Dole said when asked about his presidential debate strategy from the night before — a night in which he lost. “I decided to go for the jugular,” he said. “My own.”

But what brought me to my knees as I watched Jed (Martin Sheen) after Dolores’s funeral, taking on God mano a mano in the National Cathedral — shouting in Latin, the language of dolores — as he excoriated God?

It was the depth of feeling Jed exhibited in those moments for a woman who’d meant the world to him, going back to the days when she worked for his father, and Jed was just a boy.

While Dolores was alive, did Jed ever tell her that he adored her for challenging him to be his best self? Of course not. When it came to verbalizing his feelings, Jed was up there with Marcel Marceau.

The closest they got to showing their emotions was when Dolores told young Jed, “You’ve never had a big sister and you need one.” And so she became one.

Perhaps my seventh-grade teacher Sr. Madeleine Maria was right. There is a hierarchy in heaven, and despite the fact that at the conclusion of his diatribe, Jed stubbed out his cigarette on the marble floor of the National Cathedral, there will be a higher place in heaven for Jed Bartlet. Because in that hallowed hall he was not afraid to do a gut-check and fearlessly reveal the depth of his love by telling his God off.

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KILL YOUR ENTHUSIASM (8)

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