Reflections on the TV shows "The West Wing" and "Heroes"
I'm finally getting around to watching the final season of the series The West Wing, and surprisingly, it has revealed to me something I never figured out before: Why the series Commander in Chief failed. For those who don't remember, Commander in Chief was another presidential series about a woman who becomes president due to the death of the previous president. It used Donald Sutherland as the "evil" Republican Speaker of the House, and well, the series just kind of went off that premise.
The West Wing used to be about those people in the White House who really cared about what they were doing. Then it became, from the end of the previous season and then all the way through this season, a show about the presidential election with special guest appearances of the White House staff. Instead of great decisions and drama by the people who run this country, the premise changed to "crisis of the week" which is solved by some fly by the seat of your pants solution maneuver. People don't want that. I didn't want that. Like me, people tend to want a White House show to be about solid, enlightened leadership, which the previous seasons were all about. Instead, we got this issue of the week crap, the same exact reason why Commander in Chief failed; it was never about the White House but in outdoing the evil Speaker of the House.
This points to something that tends to bother me about television these days. We're getting more and more crap of the week stuff. Now that Lost has become a huge thing, we're starting to get a mixture of crap of the week and fantasy opera. Lost does a wonderful job, but one of the most popular shows today is Heroes. And while I watch it week to week, I watch it because I keep thinking that a show about superheroes is going to be, oh I don't know, about superheroes. Instead, it drags on and on and on and on....
This is the problem of why Heroes is not going to survive into subsequent seasons. They're playing really stupid drama games, like sending a main character to India because I'm sure some producer/writer thought "India is different. People will think it's drama." He had to think this because even though main sections of the season's plot have been about a main character going to India, he could have gone to the local Wal-Mart and STILL completed the same exact scenes that were done in India. I really want to like this show. I really do. But it has shoddy writing that everyone and his brother is claiming is wonderful writing. It's boring. And it keeps pointing to a possibility of being wonderful, but it just never goes there. It has some great potential characters, but it doesn't do anything with them. It's got so much promise, but it's living up on the hype of that promise without actually delivering anything and then claiming that it's the new hip thing. It's the new hip thing mainly because everything else tends to really suck. Sorry to say it, but that's the case.
I figure I'll give it a few more episodes in the next season and then I'm giving up on it. For some reason the critics are complaining about Lost, but I still love the show and have watched it all the way through this season.
Stumble It!
The West Wing used to be about those people in the White House who really cared about what they were doing. Then it became, from the end of the previous season and then all the way through this season, a show about the presidential election with special guest appearances of the White House staff. Instead of great decisions and drama by the people who run this country, the premise changed to "crisis of the week" which is solved by some fly by the seat of your pants solution maneuver. People don't want that. I didn't want that. Like me, people tend to want a White House show to be about solid, enlightened leadership, which the previous seasons were all about. Instead, we got this issue of the week crap, the same exact reason why Commander in Chief failed; it was never about the White House but in outdoing the evil Speaker of the House.
This points to something that tends to bother me about television these days. We're getting more and more crap of the week stuff. Now that Lost has become a huge thing, we're starting to get a mixture of crap of the week and fantasy opera. Lost does a wonderful job, but one of the most popular shows today is Heroes. And while I watch it week to week, I watch it because I keep thinking that a show about superheroes is going to be, oh I don't know, about superheroes. Instead, it drags on and on and on and on....
This is the problem of why Heroes is not going to survive into subsequent seasons. They're playing really stupid drama games, like sending a main character to India because I'm sure some producer/writer thought "India is different. People will think it's drama." He had to think this because even though main sections of the season's plot have been about a main character going to India, he could have gone to the local Wal-Mart and STILL completed the same exact scenes that were done in India. I really want to like this show. I really do. But it has shoddy writing that everyone and his brother is claiming is wonderful writing. It's boring. And it keeps pointing to a possibility of being wonderful, but it just never goes there. It has some great potential characters, but it doesn't do anything with them. It's got so much promise, but it's living up on the hype of that promise without actually delivering anything and then claiming that it's the new hip thing. It's the new hip thing mainly because everything else tends to really suck. Sorry to say it, but that's the case.
I figure I'll give it a few more episodes in the next season and then I'm giving up on it. For some reason the critics are complaining about Lost, but I still love the show and have watched it all the way through this season.
Stumble It!
posted by Duane @ 12:08 PM
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