Jimmy and Alan take to the stage

NBC offers up some interesting television tonight (Sunday) with their live broadcast of the "Presidential Debate" between Arnold Vinick and Matt Santos, the characters portrayed by Alan Alda and Jimmy Smits.

The West Wing which is in an election year thread this season, will air live twice, once on the East coast and again on the West coast, throwing its actors to the television wolves with a throwback to the days of live television.

It will be interesting to see how large an audience tunes in to watch, when NBC moved the West Wing to Sunday nights it found the audience did not follow in the numbers expected. Perhaps having suffered through a couple of sub standard seasons the audience had grown weary of the pensive shots and endless walks through the corridors of power.

The election thread though has breathed a bit of life into the show, it seems to be more energized this year as the two candidates battled their way through nominations and now head into the homestretch of an election campaign.

How the producers will have the nation vote will make for an interesting study, if Vinick should win that would mean a Republican administration and pretty well an exit for the entire cast. If Santos wins, well a few of our favourites could still keep their paychecks and show up for work next September. The shows producers say that the debate tonight will portray the kind of civilized relationship that seems to be missing in politics these days, Alda and Smits will debate real issues, putting ideas across instead of soundbites.

Which if you think about it is a rather sad commentary on politics today, we're hoping that two television actors will show the real players how it should be done. So desperate are we for a sense of relevance to politics these days.

Many think that this might be the last year for the show which has won its share of Emmy awards over the years. Alda and Smits go looking for votes and ratings tonight. How well they pull off the live broadcast could go a long way to showing that this show is still a relevant part of the prime time schedule.