Segacs's World I Know

Posts Tagged ‘west wing’

Janeane Garofalo has joined the cast of the West Wing.

Next, they’ll be hiring Michael Moore.

I was watching an old repeat of the West Wing the other day, from back when the show was good. And I couldn’t help but think of it when I saw this news item:

A divided U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Monday that putting framed copies of the Ten Commandments in county courthouses violated church-state separation, but it allowed a commandments monument in a larger display on a state Capitol grounds.

The two 5-4 rulings on the politically charged issue of displaying the Ten Commandments on government property came in a pair of cases regarded as the most important of the court term concerning constitutional separation of church and state.

Display issues aside, I can’t help but wonder what the Ten Commandments are even doing in a courthouse in the first place. To quote the West Wing episode:

Sam: There is a town in Alabama that wants to abolish all laws except the Ten Commandments.
Tobey: That’s odd.
Sam: Well they’re going to have a problem.
Tobey: Because the Constitution prohibits religious activity in any form connected to government?
[ . . . ]
Sam: I just mean, some of those Commandments are pretty hard to enforce [...] Coveting thy neighbor’s wife, for example. How are you going to enforce that one?

Yeah, I’m not sure how a court of law would prove coveting. Do you get witnesses to comment on longing glances?

The ever-spiralling West Wing takes another plunge into freefall by presuming that a peace treaty between the Israelis and Palestinians is a simple matter of getting Martin Sheen and some actors together at Camp David for a game of basketball. Oh yeah, and throw in a blonde cute actress who thinks she can charm the Arafat-like character into renouncing the “right of return”. Excuse me while I laugh hysterically.

Tonight’s episode kept hovering between propaganda and naiveté, and left me too busy rolling my eyes to truly be angry about its portrayal. It wasn’t even on-target enough to make me angry.

An article in the Forward disagrees (link requires registration). But I’m not sure what TV show the article’s writer was watching. Certainly not the same show I was.

I’ve written before about how upset I am over the West Wing’s plunge from brilliance to mediocrity. Now I can’t help but sigh… and miss what was.

Good television is becoming less of a reality and more of a myth. In my quest to avoid “reality” T.V. and other such crap, I’ve found I’ve been spending a lot less time in front of the small screen. There’s just nothing worth watching anymore.

This season, the saddest story has been the demise of The West Wing which, once upon a time, was one of the best shows on television.

It was already in trouble last season. But since Sorkin’s departure, the show has taken a steady plunge into crapville. Oh, I still watch, but more out of habit and wistfulness than genuine interest.

C.J. Cregg, who was one of the more refershing characters on television, has turned into a whiny, holier-than-thou crusader for nonsense causes she understands nothing about. Josh can’t seem to rise above petty snivelling and royal screwups. Leo has turned into a complete and utter cynic. And nothing that President Bartlet has said in the last year has amused or moved me in any way.

It’s a real shame, cause the show was so good. It makes me want to cry. Where has all the good T.V. gone?

This is my first experiment with realtime blogging. Mostly because, now that I’ve moved, I actually have the computer in the same room as the TV, so I can comment as things go along, exciting, huh?

So far the Globes are about as boring and predictable as you’d expect. Way too many women in chandelier earrings. WAY too many dresses without adequate breast-coverage. WAY too many dumb quotes. (Case in point: Mary-Louise Parker, accepting her award for Angels in America, says “Janel Moloney said she’d pay me a thousand bucks if I thanked my newborn baby for my boobs looking so amazing in this dress”.)

Commercial break, and a preview for the movie Miracle leaves me thinking how could they? I mean, “greatest hockey moment in history”??? Hel-lo? What about the Canada-Russia goal in 1972? But to those South of the Border, us Canadians don’t exist… even in a movie about our national passtime. *Sigh*…

Back to the Globes. Wondering why, in a show where just about every presenter is an actor – and usually an award-winning actor at that – everyone sounds stiff as a board while reading off the teleprompter.

Touching tribute to Michael Douglas. Extremely touching considering he’s not usually the “touching” type of actor. (Well, except in The American President, where he had the advantage of an Aaron Sorkin script, in the precursor to The West Wing.) I always find these lifetime achievement awards amusing, though. I mean, they make them sound like Nobel Prizes. Guy number one brokered a peace deal. Guy number two played someone in a movie who brokered a peace deal. Let’s honour ‘em both. Sure.

Michael Douglas’s speech. Zzzzzzzz.

Brittany Murphy is wearing one of the only nice dresses of the evening so far. A bit too glittery but at least it doesn’t look like it’s falling off her. The dress doesn’t seem to be helping her speaking ability though.

What’s with all the nominated movies about sex changes? Is everyone trying to be the next Hilary Swank?

It’s clearly Angels in America’s night. Hmmm, I guess I should’ve watched it while I still got HBO.

I’m starting to wonder how much longer I can blog like this about an awards show, of all things. Is there much of anything that’s more boring? Well, maybe the State of the Union address… I think I’ll go do the dishes while Al Pacino tries to get the frog out of his throat.

That does it. Awards shows are just too boring for real-time blogging. I was going to persevere out of sheer will, but what the hell, I’m not raising money for a good cause with this so I quit. And don’t look for a repeat at the Grammys cause I don’t watch ‘em.

I flipped on the TV at 9 for the West Wing, only to find Law and Order CI on in its place. When I checked NBC’s website, all it says is that tonight’s West Wing episode will be aired in 2 weeks. No explanation. Even next week is a repeat. I want my West Wing fix!

I gotta agree with Alex Strachan: the West Wing has pretty much lost its edge.

After watching tonight’s episode, I have to concede that, while the show started off as exceptional television, it’s since lapsed into merely ordinary.

What a shame.

The West Wing picked up the Emmy for Best Drama for the fourth year in a row.

It’s one of my favourite shows, but even I have to acknowledge that it went downhill this season. And I’m nervous about what the new, Sorkin-less season will bring. Lately, it seems the show has been ducking certain political issues in favour of standard prime-time melodrama, and I hope that the show doesn’t continue down that path.

There’s a great scene from the West Wing (which, as regular readers will know, is one of my favourite shows) when C.J. tells Josh, Toby, and Sam that she’s afraid that Governor Ritchie will win the election by “overcoming perversely low expectations”:

I’m absolutely terrified we’re going to lose the expectations game. You can’t believe how many times I get asked what would be a win in the debates. At this point I feel like if and only if Ritchie accidentally lights his podium on fire does the President have a fighting chance.

Of course, on TV everything works out great for the main characters. But this is real life, and I can’t help but thinking that the Palestinians keep “winning” the media war against Israel precisely because of those lowered expectations.

Everyone expects the Palestinians to break their word, violate truces, and send terrorists to murder children and babies. So when it happens, people claim shock for about 10 minutes and then promptly forget about it.

Israel, on the other hand, is held to a higher standard. As some argue it should be, because unlike the Palestinians, Israel is a democracy with lofty ideals about freedom and equality and human rights. So when Israel engages in self-defence, people are “disappointed”.

Governor Ritchie may not have had to light his podium on fire to lose the debate against President Bartlet. But the Palestinian terrorists keep lighting themselves on fire . . . and winning the propaganda war. And it’s precisely because of these lowered expectations.

My reaction to tonight’s West Wing: HOLY SHIT! (Pardon my French.)