Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Followup Report From The White House

Well, I'm now six episodes from the end of The West Wing season five, and I think I have sort of changed my opinion. I'm not especially inclined to jump up and wave my arms around and start shouting "Worst! Episode! Ever!" or to make sweeping allegations about sharks, and I'm still intending to watch the rest of the series, but... Yeah, it's lost a bit of its zing. More than that, I kind of get the feeling that the writers read somewhere that good drama involves conflict, so they decided to create some by making all the characters like each other a bit less and resent each other a bit more, and to turn up their general bitchiness and nastiness levels a couple of notches. And since, really, the relationships have always been the heart of the show, and the fact that these people have been able to survive in the harsh realities of the political landscape while still keeping a tiny spark of idealism has been its soul, the result is that the show's lost a little bit of its heart and a little bit of its soul. *sniff*

3 comments:

  1. As much as I like Allison Janney, and as much as I think she deserved at least one Emmy for her work elsewhere in the series, I'm pretty sure this was the worst episode ever I saw. And that was Season 4.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hmm. I didn't actually dislike that one at all, although it did seem a bit out of place. I think the fact that I found CJ's dad to be an engaging character probably helped with that a lot.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I found it almost unendurably trite and obvious.

    They actually used the broken watch as a metaphor for time running out. They actually said it.

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.