We were afraid it was too soon. We were right. Less than a month after the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, NBC's The West Wing attempted to address a nation's pain and anger through fiction, in a hastily constructed special episode that aired Wednesday night. Written by Aaron Sorkin, the show was designed to deal with the questions and issues currently facing the world, but not with the specific events. It was reverent. It was, or at least it was intended to be, educational. And it also was a crashing and often condescending bore. Titled "Isaac and Ishmael," this well-intentioned but ultimately disappointing hour was almost entirely built around static conversations.

As it opened, Josh Lyman (Bradley Whitford) is speaking with a group of high school students when a red phone flashes and the White House is locked down. "Something happened," he tells them  but he doesn't know what. The crisis, we learn, was triggered by the discovery that a man who has the same name as a suspected terrorist is employed at the White House. You might expect the show to follow the search for the suspect, but he's easily caught. Instead, the show alternates between his interrogation by chief of staff Leo McGarry (John Spencer) and the rest of the staff lecturing the captive-audience students. We start with Josh expounding on the dangers of succumbing to prejudice against Muslims. He gives way to Toby Ziegler (Richard Schiff), who compares the people of Afghanistan to Jews in Nazi concentration camps. They're then joined by Sam Seaborn (Rob Lowe), who helps Toby explain the origins and history of terrorism, and C.J. (Allison Janney), who defends the CIA. By this point, you could be forgiven if you began to fear that a quiz would be given at the end of the episode. It turns out, they should have been hectoring Leo, whose racist remarks to the Arab-American suspect would have been offensive if they were not so unbelievably out of character. Given the rushed schedule, many of the episode's flaws  from the claustrophobia and lack of movement to the absence of plot and dramatic urgency  may be understandable. Yet as quickly as the show was completed  Sorkin scrapped the show's planned premiere and put this episode into production less than two weeks ago  events have moved more quickly still. Tolerance for American Muslims is an incredibly important issue, but it's one that has been addressed on television by everyone from President Bush to Muhammad Ali. Sorkin always has been preachy, but this time, he's preaching to the choir. Though some may have feared that West Wing was using the tragedy as a ratings stunt, there was nothing exploitative about this special episode. There may even be some who found the lessons useful. But many more, I suspect, would have preferred an hour of typically stirring West Wing entertainment to a pedantic, undramatic series of speeches. Now, more than ever, TV needs to tread carefully. If West Wing can't handle this subject, perhaps the time has not yet arrived for anyone.