Well, this is supposed to be a blog about me, and me as a writer, so it seems appropriate for me to announce that I'm working on a pilot script. I won't say much about it yet, but it's a science fiction story, with some fantasy elements (of course, as I've written before, the line between the two is not very easy to draw,) and I think there would be a lot of potential in it, though it would probably be expensive to produce (unless it were animated, but there's not a huge amount of non-comedic, non-childrens animation in the US.)
So far, I just finished Act Two and I'm on page 55. This will require cutting.
In other news, I've moved along with with my friend Tim and his girlfriend Rae to the west side, which is probably more convenient in the long run, but I'm feeling sad about leaving the Eagle Rock area. For one thing, Eagle Rock is maybe the most badass name for a neighborhood one could have. Also, I just kind of like it there.
So, while I'm working on the pilot script, Dispatches from Otherworld is on a hiatus. Once I get the first completed draft, I'll try to get back to updating that soon. (One of these days I've got to actually finish the damned novel, and hopefully get it shopped around a bit.)
Meanwhile, I'm listening to the Zelda 25th Anniversary CD that came with my copy of Skyward Sword. I love that there's a fully symphonic version of the Dark World theme from Link to the Past, even if it's a short part of the 25th anniversary medley (and there's a weird little piano frill that kind of undercuts the epicness of that theme.)
I've actually been contemplating getting a Wii U. I'm a die-hard Nintendo loyalist, and I figure I'll probably get it eventually (haven't been hearing a huge amount about the library, though, which is a little disconcerting.) But I've got to be there for the new Smash Bros. and the new Zelda. I've had every Nintendo system since SNES.
Ok, fine, a few details about the pilot: It is set on a space station after a really bad war, and one of the main characters is a Synthetic Human (don't call him a robot - that's racist.)
We finally got internet in the new apartment. It's glorious!
Tuesday, February 19, 2013
Thursday, February 7, 2013
The Enterprise. You know, the first one. I mean, the first chronologically, but the last...
So I've got to say, I owe Enterprise an apology. I had always heard that it was a crude facsimile of the Star Trek world, and that it got everything wrong and kind of stunk.
Yet, having just finished the series (with a somewhat abrupt ending, indicative of the frustration over the cancellation after Next Gen, DS9, and Voyager were able to have their entire planned 7-year run,) I have to say that the series was not bad, and was actually becoming close to what I'd like to see in a future Trek series.
There were a few issues that made things tough for Enterprise. First, I'm just going to talk briefly about the awful intro theme song. It felt tonally off. The images of the history (and imagined future history) of exploration are cool, but the song is really corny and lacking nuance. I realize they wanted to differentiate Enterprise from the 24th Century shows, which all had symphonic themes, but I don't think this one hit the mark.
The other thing is that a prequel is always a very tough proposition. Obviously, given that Star Trek is an optimistic vision of the future, we're not going to see Earth or the Federation obliterated (at least not without some kind of time-travel-related fix,) and because we're talking a full century before the original series and two centuries before the Next-Gen era, the isolated issues that occur to particular ships won't necessarily have huge ramifications. With the space of centuries, you've got some wiggle room.
Part of the goal of Enterprise was to link modern space exploration with the intrepid space adventures of the other shows. Enterprise certainly has plenty of that, but people look more modern, and Starfleet really does feel like an evolution of NASA. The characters' uniforms look like flight suits instead of spandex space clothes, and the ship feels a little tougher, a little more metallic.
Another opportunity provided by Enterprise was that, given that this was Earth's first true era of interstellar exploration, we could meet some of the original aliens and delve deep into their cultures. The Vulcans are one of the two iconic Star Trek races, yet we had never really delved into their culture to the extent that, say, we did with the Klingons, despite having two series regular Vulcans before T'Pol. Enterprise deals with the inner workings of Vulcan and the history of Vulcan/Human relations in great detail. Additionally, the Andorians, who were introduced in the original show, got a great deal of development thanks to Jeffery Combs' Shran (Combs also played Weyoun and Brunt in DS9, and was one of the shortlisted contenders for Riker when they were casting Next Gen.)
Enterprise did encounter its fair share of weird space thingies, but in the third and fourth seasons, the show embraced serialization, which allowed for far deeper exploration of the interstellar politics of the Star Trek universe. Season four's arc about the reformation of Vulcan society gives us a lot of insight into how the Vulcans went from super-advanced aliens who looked down on us to acting as equal partners in the Federation.
Some characters certainly got more time to develop than others. We got plenty with Archer, T'Pol, and Trip, a bit with Phlox and Reed, and very little with Travis and Hoshi. Star Trek shows are typically built on the strength of their ensembles, but this show was weighted a bit toward certain characters. Still, with a less episodic nature, it's not as easy to go with the standard Star Trek formula of "time for a Geordi episode" or "time to throw Tuvok and B'elanna together and see what happens." episodes. You want to use your cast, but you also don't want to force it at the expense of your narrative.
I wonder if this show would have done better if it had begun ten years later. Enterprise was darker and grittier, and benefits from Netflix as a venue. We had also just come off of Voyager, which, along with DS9, had carried on the legacy of Next Gen, both in its later setting and its visual style. Enterprise shifted both of those, which may have come as a shock for people who wanted more of the same.
In fact, Enterprise looks more modern than Voyager (big surprise, given that it's more recent) but in 2000, the new, more cinematic look of television was only just getting started. And while Enterprise continued into 2005, it was unable to pick up the steam it needed in the earlier seasons to be a success.
So I've reversed my former position on the series, and I'd say that if you like Star Trek, it's definitely worth checking out.
Just try to tune out the theme song.
Yet, having just finished the series (with a somewhat abrupt ending, indicative of the frustration over the cancellation after Next Gen, DS9, and Voyager were able to have their entire planned 7-year run,) I have to say that the series was not bad, and was actually becoming close to what I'd like to see in a future Trek series.
There were a few issues that made things tough for Enterprise. First, I'm just going to talk briefly about the awful intro theme song. It felt tonally off. The images of the history (and imagined future history) of exploration are cool, but the song is really corny and lacking nuance. I realize they wanted to differentiate Enterprise from the 24th Century shows, which all had symphonic themes, but I don't think this one hit the mark.
The other thing is that a prequel is always a very tough proposition. Obviously, given that Star Trek is an optimistic vision of the future, we're not going to see Earth or the Federation obliterated (at least not without some kind of time-travel-related fix,) and because we're talking a full century before the original series and two centuries before the Next-Gen era, the isolated issues that occur to particular ships won't necessarily have huge ramifications. With the space of centuries, you've got some wiggle room.
Part of the goal of Enterprise was to link modern space exploration with the intrepid space adventures of the other shows. Enterprise certainly has plenty of that, but people look more modern, and Starfleet really does feel like an evolution of NASA. The characters' uniforms look like flight suits instead of spandex space clothes, and the ship feels a little tougher, a little more metallic.
Another opportunity provided by Enterprise was that, given that this was Earth's first true era of interstellar exploration, we could meet some of the original aliens and delve deep into their cultures. The Vulcans are one of the two iconic Star Trek races, yet we had never really delved into their culture to the extent that, say, we did with the Klingons, despite having two series regular Vulcans before T'Pol. Enterprise deals with the inner workings of Vulcan and the history of Vulcan/Human relations in great detail. Additionally, the Andorians, who were introduced in the original show, got a great deal of development thanks to Jeffery Combs' Shran (Combs also played Weyoun and Brunt in DS9, and was one of the shortlisted contenders for Riker when they were casting Next Gen.)
Enterprise did encounter its fair share of weird space thingies, but in the third and fourth seasons, the show embraced serialization, which allowed for far deeper exploration of the interstellar politics of the Star Trek universe. Season four's arc about the reformation of Vulcan society gives us a lot of insight into how the Vulcans went from super-advanced aliens who looked down on us to acting as equal partners in the Federation.
Some characters certainly got more time to develop than others. We got plenty with Archer, T'Pol, and Trip, a bit with Phlox and Reed, and very little with Travis and Hoshi. Star Trek shows are typically built on the strength of their ensembles, but this show was weighted a bit toward certain characters. Still, with a less episodic nature, it's not as easy to go with the standard Star Trek formula of "time for a Geordi episode" or "time to throw Tuvok and B'elanna together and see what happens." episodes. You want to use your cast, but you also don't want to force it at the expense of your narrative.
I wonder if this show would have done better if it had begun ten years later. Enterprise was darker and grittier, and benefits from Netflix as a venue. We had also just come off of Voyager, which, along with DS9, had carried on the legacy of Next Gen, both in its later setting and its visual style. Enterprise shifted both of those, which may have come as a shock for people who wanted more of the same.
In fact, Enterprise looks more modern than Voyager (big surprise, given that it's more recent) but in 2000, the new, more cinematic look of television was only just getting started. And while Enterprise continued into 2005, it was unable to pick up the steam it needed in the earlier seasons to be a success.
So I've reversed my former position on the series, and I'd say that if you like Star Trek, it's definitely worth checking out.
Just try to tune out the theme song.
Tuesday, February 5, 2013
The Apotheosis of the Reboot
It's no secret that over the last decade or so, Hollywood has gone utterly batshit crazy over remakes, reboots and sequels. It's a fairly broad issue, with accusations of pure money-grubbing and creative cowardice - studios unwilling to bet on new IPs when they know they can at least make a bit of cash if you've heard of the thing before (Dishonorable Mention goes to Battleship.)
And yet, I would argue that this trend started with what was actually a good movie: Batman Begins. The Dark Knight trilogy was actually good, because unlike a lot of these written-by-committee cash grabs, there was a clear creative incentive behind them. The Dark Knight trilogy (and isn't it interesting that the series is named after the middle film?) set aside the campiness of the latter half of the 90s era Batman movies and took it to a darker, grittier, and more realistic place than even the better-remembered Tim Burton films of that era. It attempted to boil Batman down to its basic mythology - a superhero who becomes more frightening than the villains - and puts it in a reasonably believable modern Gotham. The Scarecrow isn't a madman with crazy gas - he's a psychiatrist who has embraced a radical ideology. The Joker isn't just a violent prankster - he's a genius who had dedicated himself to entropy.
Anyway, the point I'm making is that there is nothing inherently wrong with sequels, remakes, or reboots. If you come at the form with genuine artistic intention, it can be a great work of art. Think about how many Shakespeare plays were based on previously-written stories. They may have existed in other forms, but there's a reason why we talk about Shakespeare's versions.
Yet Shakespeare's stories were from a time when there was a kind of canon of stories people told. That's not to say that there weren't a lot of them, but it's interesting to note that complete originality is a relatively recent thing. Greek plays were based on previously-established mythology, tweaked to be relevant to then-modern audiences, but, for example, none of the Oedipus plays that have survived were actually part of the same trilogy.
To clarify: In Ancient Athens, every year there would be a theater-going festival that served as your annual worship of the god Dionysos (I imagine a lot of wine-drinking and partying was involved as well.) The theater was, literally, the Temple of Dionysos. Each year, the festival would involve watching a set of plays: the main event was the Trilogy - typically a series of three plays that told an evolving tragic narrative (though thanks to Deus Ex Machina, you could have happy endings,) there would also be a comedy, and something called a "Satyr Play." As I understand, no one today has any idea what a "Satyr Play" is.
The thing is, new plays would be written every year, but they would often go back to familiar wells for stories. The only surviving trilogy from the same year - as in, the three plays were meant to be performed back-to-back - is the Orestia, telling to story of Orestes, which is comprised of The Agamemnon, the Libation Bearers, and the Kindly Ones. But you've probably also heard of Oedipus Rex. Another Oedipus play is Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone, which are all by Sophocles and all about Oedipus and his family, but the three plays are believed to have been written and performed different years.
The long-winded point I'm making is that going back to old material is not a new practice.
So now I'm getting to the point of this article: the creation of Grand IPs.
Of course everyone is talking about Disney's acquisition of Lucasfilm and the obvious consequence that a new Star Wars film is in the works.
Star Wars is one of those stories to spawn an immense fictional world that many feel an intense tie to. Beyond just the movies (all three of them) there have been probably hundreds of books written about the series, expanding the universe with its own canon. The Star Wars "EU," or "Extended Universe," has become its own landscape of fictional material, serving as a kind of secondary canon that, unless I'm mistaken, is regulated by Lucas' company. The movies are of course allowed to contradict the EU as a kind of "primary canon," but writers in the EU take that world pretty seriously.
And now, with a rumor floating around that there could be a Yoda-centric film, perhaps telling his life story, I think Star Wars may be evolving into something very different.
While we do have myths in this time (no offense to the religious, but the stories in the Bible serve the same function to its adherents as classical mythology did to the Greeks and Romans,) these grand works of science fiction and fantasy give us an entire "Age of Heroes" to work within. Star Wars is now coming to a third generation (well, sort of - less of a gap between the prequels and this than there was between the originals and the prequels) and it even appears that it's spreading into other areas.
Star Wars has grown past George Lucas to become something bigger, and that fascinates me. As of yet, it's still unclear whether it will grow linearly - simply adding onto the ongoing saga - or begin to branch out, but I hope for the latter.
Imagine, if you will, a Star Wars film that breaks with the conventions - existing within a different genre, telling a different scale of story. You could have a Film Noir set on the rainy streets of Coruscant, or a personal drama about a Jedi Knight losing his faith.
I'm just spitballing here, but imagine if Star Wars were to ascend to become a mythological setting that anyone could use. Clumsy self-insertion Fan Fiction could transform into real art, utilizing the mythological context that we are all familiar with to tell a powerful and relevant story.
It's high hopes, and perhaps it would be foolish to expect anything other than big-budget spectacle with cash as its primary purpose. But a guy can dream, can't he?
And yet, I would argue that this trend started with what was actually a good movie: Batman Begins. The Dark Knight trilogy was actually good, because unlike a lot of these written-by-committee cash grabs, there was a clear creative incentive behind them. The Dark Knight trilogy (and isn't it interesting that the series is named after the middle film?) set aside the campiness of the latter half of the 90s era Batman movies and took it to a darker, grittier, and more realistic place than even the better-remembered Tim Burton films of that era. It attempted to boil Batman down to its basic mythology - a superhero who becomes more frightening than the villains - and puts it in a reasonably believable modern Gotham. The Scarecrow isn't a madman with crazy gas - he's a psychiatrist who has embraced a radical ideology. The Joker isn't just a violent prankster - he's a genius who had dedicated himself to entropy.
Anyway, the point I'm making is that there is nothing inherently wrong with sequels, remakes, or reboots. If you come at the form with genuine artistic intention, it can be a great work of art. Think about how many Shakespeare plays were based on previously-written stories. They may have existed in other forms, but there's a reason why we talk about Shakespeare's versions.
Yet Shakespeare's stories were from a time when there was a kind of canon of stories people told. That's not to say that there weren't a lot of them, but it's interesting to note that complete originality is a relatively recent thing. Greek plays were based on previously-established mythology, tweaked to be relevant to then-modern audiences, but, for example, none of the Oedipus plays that have survived were actually part of the same trilogy.
To clarify: In Ancient Athens, every year there would be a theater-going festival that served as your annual worship of the god Dionysos (I imagine a lot of wine-drinking and partying was involved as well.) The theater was, literally, the Temple of Dionysos. Each year, the festival would involve watching a set of plays: the main event was the Trilogy - typically a series of three plays that told an evolving tragic narrative (though thanks to Deus Ex Machina, you could have happy endings,) there would also be a comedy, and something called a "Satyr Play." As I understand, no one today has any idea what a "Satyr Play" is.
The thing is, new plays would be written every year, but they would often go back to familiar wells for stories. The only surviving trilogy from the same year - as in, the three plays were meant to be performed back-to-back - is the Orestia, telling to story of Orestes, which is comprised of The Agamemnon, the Libation Bearers, and the Kindly Ones. But you've probably also heard of Oedipus Rex. Another Oedipus play is Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone, which are all by Sophocles and all about Oedipus and his family, but the three plays are believed to have been written and performed different years.
The long-winded point I'm making is that going back to old material is not a new practice.
So now I'm getting to the point of this article: the creation of Grand IPs.
Of course everyone is talking about Disney's acquisition of Lucasfilm and the obvious consequence that a new Star Wars film is in the works.
Star Wars is one of those stories to spawn an immense fictional world that many feel an intense tie to. Beyond just the movies (all three of them) there have been probably hundreds of books written about the series, expanding the universe with its own canon. The Star Wars "EU," or "Extended Universe," has become its own landscape of fictional material, serving as a kind of secondary canon that, unless I'm mistaken, is regulated by Lucas' company. The movies are of course allowed to contradict the EU as a kind of "primary canon," but writers in the EU take that world pretty seriously.
And now, with a rumor floating around that there could be a Yoda-centric film, perhaps telling his life story, I think Star Wars may be evolving into something very different.
While we do have myths in this time (no offense to the religious, but the stories in the Bible serve the same function to its adherents as classical mythology did to the Greeks and Romans,) these grand works of science fiction and fantasy give us an entire "Age of Heroes" to work within. Star Wars is now coming to a third generation (well, sort of - less of a gap between the prequels and this than there was between the originals and the prequels) and it even appears that it's spreading into other areas.
Star Wars has grown past George Lucas to become something bigger, and that fascinates me. As of yet, it's still unclear whether it will grow linearly - simply adding onto the ongoing saga - or begin to branch out, but I hope for the latter.
Imagine, if you will, a Star Wars film that breaks with the conventions - existing within a different genre, telling a different scale of story. You could have a Film Noir set on the rainy streets of Coruscant, or a personal drama about a Jedi Knight losing his faith.
I'm just spitballing here, but imagine if Star Wars were to ascend to become a mythological setting that anyone could use. Clumsy self-insertion Fan Fiction could transform into real art, utilizing the mythological context that we are all familiar with to tell a powerful and relevant story.
It's high hopes, and perhaps it would be foolish to expect anything other than big-budget spectacle with cash as its primary purpose. But a guy can dream, can't he?
Sunday, February 3, 2013
That Wing on the Left Side of the Building
So I've started watching the West Wing. This was always one of those shows that I knew was good, and had heard was good, but for whatever reason I never watched it.
One of the fascinating things about West Wing as a show is that, unlike most TV shows, the head writer was really THE writer for much of the series' run. Aaron Sorkin is one of those writers whose voice is pretty clear in whatever he writes, and the West Wing is kind of the greatest vault of Sorkin available.
Even if I wind up a successful writer, I doubt I'll be able to do what Sorkin did, churning out entire seasons of intricate and snappy scripts (yes, I know there were other writers, but at the very least every episode is credited as "written by Aaron Sorkin.")
Part of the appeal of the West Wing, even though it began in 1999, with a full season and a half before George W. Bush took office, was that it portrayed a White House run by intelligent, thoughtful people who you could actually get behind.
I realize that this is a polarized nation, and that the current President turns quite a few people off, but by the end of Bush's administration, most Americans were sick of his "I'm just a dumb guy like you" antics and the duplicitous bullshit coming out of the White House. If you're a conservative, you probably didn't come to this realization until the second term, but for us liberals, the fact that Bush was an awful President became clear once he started pushing things like the Patriot Act and rattling the saber at Iraq while we were just figuring out the lay of the land in Afghanistan.
So, much as Jon Stewart's brilliant mocking on the Daily Show articulated many of the problems with Bush, the West Wing provided a kind of alternate reality where we actually had a good President.
I don't really want to make this a political blog, nor do I want to alienate any conservative readers who like my thoughts on science fiction and fantasy, but in the age of Obama, I don't really feel the need for a better President. Or rather, I would like a version of Obama who could kick the Republican Party in the correct area of the balls to convince them it was time to start compromising.
So watching the West Wing during the administration of a President I voted for in both elections, and for whom I was happy to do so, there's not the kind of wistful "oh, if only..." feeling that I imagine a lot of West Wing's audience felt at the time.
But the show continues to hold up, if you ask me. I've just finished the first season and the opening two-parter at the beginning of the second.
Part of it is due, of course, to Sorkin's mile-a-minute dialogue. West Wing was infamous for its "Walk and Talks," a sort of cheap trick to make scenes that were really nothing more than talking heads into something that felt like action.
There's a scene where Josh and Sam are doing one of these. Sam asks where they're going, Josh replies "I don't know, I was following you." Later, 30 Rock would spoof Sorkin (whose Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip began the same time as 30 Rock and just about everyone predicted it would be Sorkin's show that would succeed and Fey's that would tank immediately) by having Liz and Peter do a Walk and Talk that actually wound up doing exactly the same joke that Sorkin had on his own show.
The thing that strikes me about West Wing is that you could almost call it a sitcom. Every character is flinging witticisms around all the time, and those who aren't tend to be fairly ridiculous as well (such as Leo's secretary Margaret, who makes you wonder why the Chief of Staff, who's supposed to pick everyone who works for the President, got stuck with the most space-cadet-like PA.)
But of course, it's not really a comedy, because this is the White House, where serious stuff happens, and the show never tries to soften that fact. Really, the main thing that the show conveys is that working in the White House must be insanely stressful. Martin Sheen's Jed Bartlet makes it look easy, partially because he's a walking encyclopedia and partially because he (Bartlet, as opposed to Sheen) is capable of playing the part of a man who always knows exactly what he's doing, even if he can confess with no hesitation to his trusted staff that he's really just improvising.
And as if the normal stress of making sure that you convey the message you want to convey without any room for misinterpretation or misrepresentation isn't enough, we also get the added stress of a fictional setting where writers are free to be cruel to their characters, like having a couple of white supremacists shoot the President and Josh. That's not to say that this sort of thing doesn't happen ever, but it is a thankfully rare event in this country (the last President to be shot was Reagan.)
The show is still in its early seasons, and this is a show that came out of the gate well. At the beginning of the second season, I imagine I'm currently watching the show's golden age, so we'll see how it does as it goes on. Still, given that people still seemed to care about the show when Bartlet's second term was coming to an end, I'm fairly confident that this will continue to be a good watch.
I'm also watching Enterprise. Once you get past the crappy theme song, it's actually pretty good. More on that later, but for now enjoy the break from Star Trek.
One of the fascinating things about West Wing as a show is that, unlike most TV shows, the head writer was really THE writer for much of the series' run. Aaron Sorkin is one of those writers whose voice is pretty clear in whatever he writes, and the West Wing is kind of the greatest vault of Sorkin available.
Even if I wind up a successful writer, I doubt I'll be able to do what Sorkin did, churning out entire seasons of intricate and snappy scripts (yes, I know there were other writers, but at the very least every episode is credited as "written by Aaron Sorkin.")
Part of the appeal of the West Wing, even though it began in 1999, with a full season and a half before George W. Bush took office, was that it portrayed a White House run by intelligent, thoughtful people who you could actually get behind.
I realize that this is a polarized nation, and that the current President turns quite a few people off, but by the end of Bush's administration, most Americans were sick of his "I'm just a dumb guy like you" antics and the duplicitous bullshit coming out of the White House. If you're a conservative, you probably didn't come to this realization until the second term, but for us liberals, the fact that Bush was an awful President became clear once he started pushing things like the Patriot Act and rattling the saber at Iraq while we were just figuring out the lay of the land in Afghanistan.
So, much as Jon Stewart's brilliant mocking on the Daily Show articulated many of the problems with Bush, the West Wing provided a kind of alternate reality where we actually had a good President.
I don't really want to make this a political blog, nor do I want to alienate any conservative readers who like my thoughts on science fiction and fantasy, but in the age of Obama, I don't really feel the need for a better President. Or rather, I would like a version of Obama who could kick the Republican Party in the correct area of the balls to convince them it was time to start compromising.
So watching the West Wing during the administration of a President I voted for in both elections, and for whom I was happy to do so, there's not the kind of wistful "oh, if only..." feeling that I imagine a lot of West Wing's audience felt at the time.
But the show continues to hold up, if you ask me. I've just finished the first season and the opening two-parter at the beginning of the second.
Part of it is due, of course, to Sorkin's mile-a-minute dialogue. West Wing was infamous for its "Walk and Talks," a sort of cheap trick to make scenes that were really nothing more than talking heads into something that felt like action.
There's a scene where Josh and Sam are doing one of these. Sam asks where they're going, Josh replies "I don't know, I was following you." Later, 30 Rock would spoof Sorkin (whose Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip began the same time as 30 Rock and just about everyone predicted it would be Sorkin's show that would succeed and Fey's that would tank immediately) by having Liz and Peter do a Walk and Talk that actually wound up doing exactly the same joke that Sorkin had on his own show.
The thing that strikes me about West Wing is that you could almost call it a sitcom. Every character is flinging witticisms around all the time, and those who aren't tend to be fairly ridiculous as well (such as Leo's secretary Margaret, who makes you wonder why the Chief of Staff, who's supposed to pick everyone who works for the President, got stuck with the most space-cadet-like PA.)
But of course, it's not really a comedy, because this is the White House, where serious stuff happens, and the show never tries to soften that fact. Really, the main thing that the show conveys is that working in the White House must be insanely stressful. Martin Sheen's Jed Bartlet makes it look easy, partially because he's a walking encyclopedia and partially because he (Bartlet, as opposed to Sheen) is capable of playing the part of a man who always knows exactly what he's doing, even if he can confess with no hesitation to his trusted staff that he's really just improvising.
And as if the normal stress of making sure that you convey the message you want to convey without any room for misinterpretation or misrepresentation isn't enough, we also get the added stress of a fictional setting where writers are free to be cruel to their characters, like having a couple of white supremacists shoot the President and Josh. That's not to say that this sort of thing doesn't happen ever, but it is a thankfully rare event in this country (the last President to be shot was Reagan.)
The show is still in its early seasons, and this is a show that came out of the gate well. At the beginning of the second season, I imagine I'm currently watching the show's golden age, so we'll see how it does as it goes on. Still, given that people still seemed to care about the show when Bartlet's second term was coming to an end, I'm fairly confident that this will continue to be a good watch.
I'm also watching Enterprise. Once you get past the crappy theme song, it's actually pretty good. More on that later, but for now enjoy the break from Star Trek.
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