More West Wing
Aug. 19th, 2014 09:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
avevale_intelligencerI just finished season five and started on season six and I'm not sure I want to go on.
Season five ends with a bomb killing three Americans and critically injuring Donna in Gaza. Leo, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, all Bartlet's team, both parties in Congress and apparently the entire American people all want Bartlet to respond with force, to hit back, to kill some Palestinians because they killed some Americans, just like what the Israelis and Palestinians are doing to each other right now. Bartlet refuses. He digs his heels in. The only person on his side, the only person even willing to consider alternatives, is a new cast member. This isn't right. I would have expected Leo to take that stand, being an old soldier and a well-known hawk, but everyone else?
Bartlet continues to resist. He and Leo fight. Over the first two episodes of the sixth season, unwillingly and with much protest, his staff (excluding Leo) help him to broker a peace accord, which involves stationing American troops in the territory as peacekeepers. Leo, who was willing to commit him to an action which would have led to all-out war, refuses to support this, and Bartlet fires him. Bartlet has confounded the warhawks and made peace, at great cost to himself.
But of course he can't be right. Peace can't be a good thing. So the writers hit Leo with a massive heart attack, and he gets left behind, all alone in the wilderness, because cruel, heartless Jed Bartlet wouldn't kill up to fifty innocent Palestinians for him.
God doesn't make cars crash, as the late Mrs Landingham pointed out in happier days. Television writers, however, can and do. George W Bush is in the real White House, wiping out people's freedoms. Peace can't be a good thing.
The signs were there in season five. Sorkin's Bartlet was never a free-trader; the very first time Josh Lyman saw him he was admitting to stopping a price-fixing deal between dairy farmers because he didn't want to make it harder for people to buy milk. He is one now, though, supporting the outsourcing of millions of jobs to India, making it harder for anyone to buy anything. It really doesn't matter what the price of anything is when you have no income.
This is not The West Wing. This is nuWing. And I don't like it.
I may want rid of seasons five and six when I've finished going through. If anyone's interested, let me know.
Season five ends with a bomb killing three Americans and critically injuring Donna in Gaza. Leo, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, all Bartlet's team, both parties in Congress and apparently the entire American people all want Bartlet to respond with force, to hit back, to kill some Palestinians because they killed some Americans, just like what the Israelis and Palestinians are doing to each other right now. Bartlet refuses. He digs his heels in. The only person on his side, the only person even willing to consider alternatives, is a new cast member. This isn't right. I would have expected Leo to take that stand, being an old soldier and a well-known hawk, but everyone else?
Bartlet continues to resist. He and Leo fight. Over the first two episodes of the sixth season, unwillingly and with much protest, his staff (excluding Leo) help him to broker a peace accord, which involves stationing American troops in the territory as peacekeepers. Leo, who was willing to commit him to an action which would have led to all-out war, refuses to support this, and Bartlet fires him. Bartlet has confounded the warhawks and made peace, at great cost to himself.
But of course he can't be right. Peace can't be a good thing. So the writers hit Leo with a massive heart attack, and he gets left behind, all alone in the wilderness, because cruel, heartless Jed Bartlet wouldn't kill up to fifty innocent Palestinians for him.
God doesn't make cars crash, as the late Mrs Landingham pointed out in happier days. Television writers, however, can and do. George W Bush is in the real White House, wiping out people's freedoms. Peace can't be a good thing.
The signs were there in season five. Sorkin's Bartlet was never a free-trader; the very first time Josh Lyman saw him he was admitting to stopping a price-fixing deal between dairy farmers because he didn't want to make it harder for people to buy milk. He is one now, though, supporting the outsourcing of millions of jobs to India, making it harder for anyone to buy anything. It really doesn't matter what the price of anything is when you have no income.
This is not The West Wing. This is nuWing. And I don't like it.
I may want rid of seasons five and six when I've finished going through. If anyone's interested, let me know.