(no subject)
Apr. 8th, 2005 03:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
avevale_intelligencerI didn’t watch a lot of the last season of The West Wing at all.
This was sad, given that I still think it was the best thing on telly outside sf/fantasy, and better than many things in those genres. Part of it is that I’ve been spending too much time on the computer rather than downstairs watching telly, but there were two other reasons why I didn’t make the time.
The proximate cause is Aaron Sorkin’s leaving. The man could write. It didn’t take me five minutes into the new season to notice that the music had gone. Not the music music, but the music in the words, the tight, intricate, brilliant weaving of phrases and rhetorical flourishes that made the show “Must-Hear TV” as someone called it. The dialogue was still intelligent, witty and well-done, but so is the dialogue in dozens of other shows. Sorkin’s style was unique, and I missed it.
The primary cause goes deeper, and has been growing on me for some time now. WW is a show about a fictional American president, a Democrat, an idealist, and a man with the wisdom to know what needs doing and the will to do it. Early on, in an episode called “Let Bartlet be Bartlet,” he and his staff both upbraided each other for holding the other back, not doing the necessary good for reasons of political expediency. It was then that I began to realise this was going to be a story about failure. It has to be. The country is now under a man who is so far from Jed Bartlet that they might be separate species. If the writers gave the characters free rein, if they really honestly “let Bartlet be Bartlet,” the reality of the show would immediately begin to diverge from current reality, more and more every week, till it became as fantastic as “Earth: Final Conflict.” The writers can’t let that happen. Not only would it increase their workload a thousandfold, having to maintain and describe an alternate Earth in the detail necessary to tell the stories, but unfavourable comparisons between reality and the fictional world might invite the wrath of the Powers That Be.
So Bartlet has to fall short, each and every time, and the dreams have to remain just dreams, and his America has to stay just as messed-up as the real one. And knowing that kills the show for me. I can’t watch those wonderful, flawed, funny, brave people fail again and again.
Sorry, guys. It was truly a blast.
This was sad, given that I still think it was the best thing on telly outside sf/fantasy, and better than many things in those genres. Part of it is that I’ve been spending too much time on the computer rather than downstairs watching telly, but there were two other reasons why I didn’t make the time.
The proximate cause is Aaron Sorkin’s leaving. The man could write. It didn’t take me five minutes into the new season to notice that the music had gone. Not the music music, but the music in the words, the tight, intricate, brilliant weaving of phrases and rhetorical flourishes that made the show “Must-Hear TV” as someone called it. The dialogue was still intelligent, witty and well-done, but so is the dialogue in dozens of other shows. Sorkin’s style was unique, and I missed it.
The primary cause goes deeper, and has been growing on me for some time now. WW is a show about a fictional American president, a Democrat, an idealist, and a man with the wisdom to know what needs doing and the will to do it. Early on, in an episode called “Let Bartlet be Bartlet,” he and his staff both upbraided each other for holding the other back, not doing the necessary good for reasons of political expediency. It was then that I began to realise this was going to be a story about failure. It has to be. The country is now under a man who is so far from Jed Bartlet that they might be separate species. If the writers gave the characters free rein, if they really honestly “let Bartlet be Bartlet,” the reality of the show would immediately begin to diverge from current reality, more and more every week, till it became as fantastic as “Earth: Final Conflict.” The writers can’t let that happen. Not only would it increase their workload a thousandfold, having to maintain and describe an alternate Earth in the detail necessary to tell the stories, but unfavourable comparisons between reality and the fictional world might invite the wrath of the Powers That Be.
So Bartlet has to fall short, each and every time, and the dreams have to remain just dreams, and his America has to stay just as messed-up as the real one. And knowing that kills the show for me. I can’t watch those wonderful, flawed, funny, brave people fail again and again.
Sorry, guys. It was truly a blast.
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no subject
Date: 2005-04-08 04:43 pm (UTC)And the season finale had me standing and cheering, screaming "YES! YES!! YES!!!!" at my poor, startled television. My neighbors must have thought I was having a really good time :)
no subject
Date: 2005-04-08 05:21 pm (UTC)I have fairly unsophisticated tastes in fiction. I kind of like the characters' lives not to suck the way real people's lives do. I hoped for so much...exploration of the unforeseen consequences of *really* controlling guns in America, *really* putting money into education, *really* addressing the evils of poverty. It was a blow to realise that they couldn't be allowed to make *any* difference at all. In a way the brilliance of the acting makes it worse: well-acted frustration, disappointment and rage hurts more.
But, if they've actually managed to achieve something by season end, maybe there's some hope...
no subject
Date: 2005-04-08 09:13 pm (UTC)That's not actually a bullet that they've dodged. Accusations of hypocrisy don't play well with the current tenants of the West Wing...