'The West Wing': Lame Duck

The show has continued to "reflect a kind of hope that this was possible and we should aspire to this always," Sheen continued. "We were like a novel that -- the real world is like reality, but people were reading the novel and getting ideas and kind of having a hope and faith and trust in their leadership.

"If we can go out with that I don't think we can ask for much more -- all the rest was a gift."

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"My Name Is Earl" and "The Office" have each snagged a 22-episode order for next season; prime-time game show "Deal or No Deal" -- a ratings hit for NBC during its nightly, one-week run in December -- will become a weekly series in March, Mondays at 8, followed by "The Apprentice," which is moving from Thursdays; the Monday drama "Las Vegas" is moving to Fridays at 9; and "West Wing" is calling it quits, Reilly told shocked critics Sunday morning.

Barely stopping for breath, Reilly also announced he'd ordered 13 episodes of a drama series for the fall from Paul Haggis ("Million Dollar Baby," "Crash") called "The Black Donnellys," about four young Irish brothers involved with organized crime in New York's Hell's Kitchen neighborhood; Luke Perry will star in a new summer drama, "Windfall," about a group of young adult friends who pool their cash to buy a lottery ticket, hit the $386 million jackpot and do not live happily ever after; and the stand-up competition "Last Comic Standing" is returning in the summer even though it got nuked in the ratings last fall.

Oh, and Jason Lee, star of "My Name Is Earl," has the chickenpox.

Critics were taken aback by the electrifying performance of the New Bucked-Up Reilly, having grown accustomed to seeing him at press tours honing his impression of a Washington lobbyist refusing to answer questions without the advice of his attorney.

"You guys helped make ["The West Wing"] a huge hit . . . We're going to give you DVDs . . . Watch the work, connect with it or reconnect with it and let's try to give it the send-off it truly deserves!," Reilly urged critics -- a calculated risk, given how testy they can sometimes get when someone hints they are perceived as an adjunct to a network's marketing and promo departments. But no one seemed to take it that way -- there was only "You betcha!" in their eyes.

"I don't think this was a news flash to anybody," Reilly said of the decision to pull the plug on the seven-season-old series, which he denied had anything to do with the death of Spencer. "There is a point where you want to send the show off with dignity and some semblance of success."

He did a handspring over one critic's request to divulge information about the series's finale story line, deferring to the cast and crew who, he noted, would do a Q&A session later in the day, at which, he said, "I'm sure they will tell you really little."

Another critic tried to confuse him with a question about the move of "Las Vegas" to the "death zone" on Fridays. (On its new night, "Las Vegas" will be followed by a new, non-"Law & Order" Dick Wolf series called "Conviction," about a bunch of hot young assistant DAs.) "The death zone has been created by the shows we put on [Friday]," Reilly shot back confidently, noting that Friday used to be home to "SVU, " "CSI" and "X-Files."

"That was the era where there were great shows on Friday. . . . The networks, for the most part, have put leftovers [there] and frankly, not marketed them and not told America it was important," he said. Shows now doing well on Fridays are "winning by default," he said. "We're going to stop giving the competition a free pass."