This NBC series stimulates thought. Yet it moves the audience to experience powerful emotions. Parenthood (2010 to 2015) accomplishes this through intricate and intelligent characterization playing to an overarching theme that parenting can and ought to be both rational and rewarding.
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Family is not an end in itself, according to Parenthood. It’s a unit of unique individuals that exists primarily to serve as a rocket launch and refueling center. This is why a family can be integral to creating, making and forging the meaningful, purposeful, selfish life.
Parenthood, created and written by Jason Katims and based on the Nineties movie by Ron Howard (Frost/Nixon, Solo: A Star Wars Story, Apollo 13), essentially tells the tale of four children who choose to have children. Two sons and two daughters and their parents sputter, propel and revolve in multiple relationships, professional, romantic and otherwise. They do so with humor and poignancy in each of its six seasons.
These are the characters in the Braverman family, led by Bonnie Bedelia (Sordid Lives, Presumed Innocent) and Craig T. Nelson (Coach, Poltergeist) as the parents. Favorite son Adam (Peter Krause) is a buttoned-down establishmentarian; he lives to lead. Younger brother Crosby (Dax Shepard) is the free-spirited comic relief; he strives to achieve. Julia (Erika Christensen) is the perfectionist; she thrives on striking the ideal balance. Black sheep Sarah (Lauren Graham) is the single mother mess; she seeks to create and cash in.
Through her lens, the audience first sets sights upon this warm, intelligent and inviting family.
Bravermans are sharp, unpretentious and intellectual. They think about what they do before they “just do it”. They use words. They talk. They also listen. But these are depictions of humans that know how to communicate through verbal means. But they not only like communicating with each other—they thrive on it. They draw strength from it. They get powered by it. They refuel. This feeds the interplay that makes Parenthood go.
Bravermans think about how to love and raise a child, as well as how to tend to themselves. They are biting, flawed and competitive—in unhealthy and healthy ways—and they can be bitches and brats behind one another’s backs. Like your family.
This is what makes Bravermans go and do. They go for the gold in life, even when there’s less and less time left to live, too much that’s been said in anger, or too much alcohol involved, or too few moments together in plain, honest talk. Mother and daughter, father and son, sibling rivalry—the pretty one, the smart one, the responsible one, the overindulged one—it’s all here wrapped inside a series of gilded parenting fables.
With a neat timeline tie-in which pre-dates its thematically similar cousin, NBC’s excellent This Is Us, Parenthood depicts the child in the family and the inner child within each parent. It shows how each among us must guide and parent the self and it shows how parenting is properly done.
No problem goes unaddressed. No deficiency goes unnoticed.
The whole series is an enveloping, unfolding story of these Northern Californians (without the superiority complex) arcing toward a bittersweet resolution which reminds the viewer that life is finite, rich and breathtaking. But only if you choose to think first, put yourself first and go after what you want.
With baseball as a leitmotif, Parenthood’s is a distinctly American family orientation. Each Braverman works to play, plays to compete, competes as a whole person—playing more than one position—and each player aims for the grand slam. The show often hits and scores. But they are united.
This is family as it can and ought to be. Perhaps the one you’ve never had, always wanted, desperately miss, read about and long to have and hold.
Watch Parenthood for its fresh surprises. You’re likely to find yourself questioning and challenging your own ideas about parenting. The series depicts certain dilemmas, some that may be familiar and some that may not, that prompt you to think twice about your own upbringing, family and child rearing.
Whether it’s raising a kid with Asperger’s, starting over, fielding calls from police, making time for sex or parenting the child neglected for her ability, Parenthood covers it all. There’s a memorable call for help from a truck stop in Gilroy, marital strife and a son named Jabbar (Tyree Brown as the most honest and appealing child character).
There’s the kid that dyes her hair black, the dance audition, the hobbies, practices, rehearsals and nights climbing into windows and stumbling into sofas. There’s Craig T. Nelson hilariously memorizing and trying to remember why it’s important to invoke the line “I hear you and I see you”, the importance of getting credit and giving gratitude and saying ‘thank you’.
One of my favorite episodes occurs on Crosby’s houseboat. I like it because it dramatizes the character’s progression toward his choice to commit to being a parent. It is rare that any show tackles the abstraction of what Ayn Rand describes as man as a being of volitional consciousness.
Parenthood, filled with meaning, pathos and insight, does—from its theme that Crosby has the power to put what he loves up for sale by owner to how deftly it displays and honors the value of owning material possessions, whether a home or a piano. Other second season highlights include a character played by Michael B. Jordan (Black Panther) as an alcoholic, which dovetails into an ex-husband’s alcoholism and a daughter’s drug use.
But, whether it’s camping with Grandpa for the purpose of studying bugs at dawn, cancer, being fired, adoption or enduring Parenthood’s most irritating characters — Max, Adam and Kristina and controlling Jasmine — there’s always an organic reason for each plot point, each character arc and every plot twist. Even when Adam dresses like a rapper to get new business.
The cast is excellent. Look for all-around good casting — recurring guest stars turns include Richard Dreyfuss, Ray Romano and Jason Ritter — forethought, screenwriting and carefully crafted arcs such as Sam Jaeger as a businessman, husband and father.
Flaws include that Sarah’s always apologizing, scenes don’t play out and overacting. Characters constantly talk over each other.
As the Bravermans’ family tale comes to a close, season five’s “Promises” episode is among Parenthood’s most profound. I’ll leave it at that. But know that this show presses every subplot into marvelous tales of redemption, letting go, dying, grieving, moving on and finding the goodness in each new day.
Ice skating with the kids—playing hooky to surf in the ocean—starting a school—opening a recording studio—running a political campaign—dating an Afghan war veteran—releasing the scream—coming out as gay—embracing moving day—leaving California—the meaning, memory and mining of road-tripping with Grandpa in a Pontiac GTO—meeting the other mother in Wyoming—accepting the marriage proposal—and, beautifully, leaving the 1972 Reggie Jackson baseball card in the rafters as a benevolent legacy for strangers, stressing the importance of chosen values over the importance of going merely by blood.
Enjoy Parenthood as a fully circular voyage of the child’s and parent’s—and grandparent’s—life. You will probably cry and laugh, often during the same episode. I did. But you almost assuredly will be provoked, if deftly and down to your core, to think.
The DVD’s deleted scenes often fill in gaps as important action sometimes happens offscreen; the extras’ flaws include a lack for original air date stamps and music that’s too folksy.
The Golden Globes are an awards ceremony which are essentially and primarily a broadcast to promote Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) influence in Hollywood and to make money for HFPA and its designated broadcaster through advertising revenue. In other words, it’s meaningless except as a tool for promotionalism, offering no real value except as advertising for the industry of mass entertainment.
This isn’t saying much, especially now. I watched the awards broadcast this year for one reason: comedian Ricky Gervais. He hosted the show. This far left environmentalist is a passionate spokesman for his pet causes, such as his crusades against hunting, animal cruelty and for various laws aimed at controlling man’s life. But he’s also a biting satirist.
Gervais did not disappoint. The comedian launched into a scathing monologue against Hollywood, pointing out that the raging, pigtailed anti-child touted as a mascot for environmentalism is deprived of knowledge and explicitly naming Hollywood’s — and Silicon Valley’s — hypocrisy.
As Apple boss Tim Cook, a decent man who defied the Obama administration on principle and won, sat stoned-faced, Gervais skewered Apple and other technology companies for breaching while claiming superior business ethics. Above all, he was irreverent without being malicious. His humor was hilarious. I laughed out loud.
Why? Humor, like music, is complicated. One’s responses to humor are, I think, the byproduct of what lies deep inside one’s innermost premises, thoughts and psychology. That said, in this case, I think I laughed — and, apparently, so did many other Americans — because Hollywood deserves the criticism. That it was done with conscious, self-aware, self-mocking vulgarity unmasks the hubris of California’s preachy, leftist technology and entertainment celebrities.
There were finer moments, including for the celebrities, most of whom laughed at the host’s jokes. They did laugh at themselves, though some of them didn’t appear to know whether this was appropriate, an unfortunate sign of suppressive or repressive times.
The best performing artists elegantly or smartly exercised the right to free speech. Stellan Skarsgård, who won an award for his outstanding performance in HBO’s Chernobyl, joked at his own expense in appreciation of a crew member’s ability. Comedienne Kate McKinnon came out as gay in a humorous display of appreciation for comedienne and TV hostess Ellen DeGeneres, a lesbian who, in turn, expressed admiration for comedienne Carol Burnett, namesake for the award DeGeneres won.
DeGeneres appeared in a montage in which she was shown telling a post-9/11 audience: “What would bug the Taliban more than seeing a gay woman in a suit surrounded by Jews”. The comedy succeeds in that clip because, as delivered, hers is a statement, not a question. This goes to what’s good about DeGeneres; her sense of irony.
DeGeneres was shown in various clips dancing through her life, which with her irony taps the essence of her appeal. It was fitting that she won the Carol Burnett Award — Carol Burnett sat with DeGeneres, demonstrating her grace and elegance as always — and she’s a testament to the power of mass media, especially television.
“Live your life with integrity,” DeGeneres told an audience of graduates in a clip, before sending up Hollywood pretentiousness herself in a humorous acceptance speech.
Integrity defines the night’s winner for lifetime achievement. Tom Hanks (Sully, Philadelphia, The Post, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, Bridge of Spies) displayed honesty during an emotional acceptance of the Cecil B. DeMille award. This was the best moment of the Golden Globes, which aired on NBC. I say this because Mr. Hanks, an impeccable actor of ability, took the opportunity to share his thoughts and insights on his own ability. This alone is a remarkable departure from the usual pandering, bootlicking, sniveling, smearing and ranting that emanates from Hollywood awards podiums.
An old white male — at a time when the old white male is under siege in Hollywood — had the audacity to reject the status quo and imply that today’s industry needs to do better, to be better, to strive to be the best. Hanks made a strong rejection of the Me, Too movement’s proposed codification of egalitarianism, the basis for feminism, multiculturalism and other offshoots of tribalism. He emphasized instead the singular pleasure of doing one’s work, of doing it right, of doing it on deadline (and, by implication, on budget) and of doing it for one’s own sake.
Tom Hanks made this radical breach of altruism and collectivism after a woman of ability, Charlize Theron, thanked the old white male. Theron thanked Mr. Hanks for choosing to be supportive, subtle, decent, kind and deft in hiring her for his movie (That Thing You Do!, innocuous and enjoyable fluff chiefly of value for its Americanism) early in her career.
Showing genuine emotion for his wife, children and family, following an exemplary reel of moments from his greatest performances, Tom Hanks accepted his winning the award for, as he put it, “showing up on time”, which he rightly called liberating — he told Hollywood that “you [should] do it for yourself” — and for his lifetime of achievement.
This, not momentary hilarity of satire by Ricky Gervais, who distinctly, notably, wisely and, to his credit, did not mock or joke after Tom Hanks spoke, displayed man at his best.
Other artists also shined. Quentin Tarantino, winning an award for his overrated Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, plainly declared “I did it” rather than parrot the status quo of an artist acting as if he exists at the mercy of the lives of others. Tarantino also acknowledged writer Robert Bolt, who wrote A Man for All Seasons, providing the evening’s most intellectual moment of justice. Laura Dern (Star Wars: The Last Jedi), unfortunately beating Kathy Bates (Richard Jewell) for an acting acknowledgment which Bates deserves, acknowledged the importance of the story — as against merely pictures and effects — to the movie for which she won, The Marriage Story.
Best Picture clips were ads, not scenes, and the Best Song award presentation— an actor singing to promote his upcoming appearance in a musical was granted more musical performance time than the nominated songs, which mostly went unheard — was awful. Even director Sam Mendes was shocked that he won an award for his movie, 1917, which does not qualify for serious consideration of a great, let alone best, movie. Michelle Williams, a talented actress, accepted an award with what amounts to an attack on the virtue of selfishness pushing more of the same collectivism. Unfortunately, she did this under the guise that she was defending rights, i.e., woman’s right to an abortion, which needs (and does not receive) a proper defense.
For his satire, Ricky Gervais is the host of the moment. But the best part of the Golden Globes, heralding egoism, implied if not made explicit by Tom Hanks, came from Elton John, accepting an award for the first time with Bernie Taupin for a song they co-wrote. Elton’s exuberance, enthusiasm and title and meaning of his memoir, Me, and his movie (2019’s best), Rocketman show that art exalts life. Elton spoke, appeared and expressed himself with a style of his own. True to themes of his movie, book and life, he did so for his own sake, neither excoriating nor appeasing, placating or seeking for the approval of others.
That Elton John was acknowledged and recognized for his ability, and that he welcomed the recognition without pleading for altruism or collectivism, happy to bask in his own glory — this, not satire as such — is the mark of progress. This, man’s pride in his own ability, is what is worth celebrating. This is what we ought to strive to regard as golden and make universal.
The Moneychangers, a four-part 1976-1977 winter miniseries that aired on NBC, is based on the bestselling novel by Arthur Hailey, who also wrote Airport and Hotel. The miniseries has a varied broadcast history as it’s been re-broadcast in a few incarnations, having been split into shorter or longer segments of varying lengths. I watched the approximately eight-hour series on DVD.
The television drama is better than I’d expected. Combining subplots that feed into the history, conflict and survival of an American bank, which is what makes this miniseries appealing, The Moneychangers shows how general consumer banking works. How many TV series, then or now, revolve around the boardroom discourse, daily operations and profitability of a bank? I’ve never read the novel, though I’ve read some of Hailey’s fiction, which I’ve enjoyed as light industrial or business-themed entertainment.
Buy the DVD
The Moneychangers, produced by Ross Hunter, who’d previously adapted Hailey’s Airport into one of Hollywood’s first major blockbusters in 1970, makes me want to read the novel. With a musical score by Henry Mancini (The Pink Panther, “Moon River” from Breakfast at Tiffany’s), a cameo by Marla Gibbs (Florence on The Jeffersons), a radical, anti-profit Elizabeth Warren-type character and leading performances from Christopher Plummer (The Sound of Music) and Kirk Douglas (Paths of Glory) as two bankers competing for the bank’s top executive position, the miniseries has potential.
The Moneychangers bundles its variety, potential and possibility for good drama, or at least melodrama. Especially with pre-Dynasty Joan Collins as an upscale prostitute on a crooked banker’s (post-Bonanza Lorne Greene) payroll. Look for Robert Loggia (The Jagged Edge), Stan Shaw (Scared Straight) and Patrick O’Neal (The Doris Day Show) as a crime boss, young black activist and advertising crony.
Timothy Bottoms (The Last Picture Show) plays a handsome young bank employee who embezzles the bank, gets caught, tried and convicted. He then serves time in prison. After he’s gang raped, he succumbs to an interracial same-sex relationship for protection. Later, upon his release from prison, the bank gives him an opportunity for a fresh start but it involves going underground to bust a counterfeit ring, with help from a single Latina mother and bank teller with whom he falls in love.
So, this is not typical mid-Seventies network television programming. Anne Baxter (All About Eve) co-stars as a top notch bank executive. Hayden Rorke (Dr. Bellows on I Dream of Jeannie) and Ralph Bellamy (Roots) also star in key roles. Look for Helen Hayes (the Boeing 707 stowaway in Airport) as an empathetic doctor.
The central plot involves the contentious rise of the two bankers seeking the bank’s top position after a grandson of the bank’s founder announces that he’s been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Add to this a run on the bank, the “social justice” warrior (Susan Flannery), class and racial strife, a terrorist bombing, a mentally incapacitated spouse, suicide and a crime syndicate and The Moneychangers moves briskly with a sense of purpose. Unfortunately, the theme’s not an endorsement of capitalism. But, for a pre-high technology, pre-mergers and acquisitions showcase of banking, as with Airport and Hotel, I found the dramatization of the industry fairly accurate, relevant and absorbing.
Kirk Douglas is relatively subdued for a change, not hamming up every scene, gritting teeth and overacting, though he does show off his muscles. This is some of Douglas’s best acting. Plummer strongly plays a Puritanical second-hander and pulls off a powerful climax. The late Percy Rodrigues, in the best acting performance and role of his enduring career, plays the bank’s security chief. He catches the Bottoms character in crime and serves one of the The Moneychangers’ best performances and subplots. Anyone who works in banking or wonders what’s involved (or was in the mid-70s) in money-making, saving and changing will probably find something here to appreciate and enjoy, even if half-naked Collins and some of the cast are cheesy in that melodramatic acting style.
The Moneychangers does not depict high finance. But it entertains.
The recent cancellation of Megyn Kelly Today demonstrates the folly of putting popularity abovegood business principles. When NBC, which is owned by NBCUniversal (which is owned by cable corporation Comcast), recently signed the Fox News personality to a reported $69 million contract, the broadcasting unit severely overestimated Kelly’s value.
NBC’s executives should’ve read my review of her debut on Fox News. Kelly’s hard, self-centered manner may have been suited to the Fox News cable television brand, but her brand is defective. It’s not surprising that audience reception and ratings have been mediocre at best.
The astronomical price tag for such a vapid hostess, or, if you insist, “celebrity journalist”, underscores the media industry’s fixation on ratings, metrics and short-term gain to the detriment of quality and credibility, proper standards and practices and long-term profit and progress.
Megyn Kelly, an intelligent lawyer who has more in common with the president and other vulgar, showboating sensationalists than she does with able-minded journalists, has never been serious (read my comparison of Kelly and NBC’s other overpaid darling, Trump, here). By hiring Megyn Kelly as it did, NBC showed its desperation and a willingness to do anything for a hit as a presumably non-leftist counterpoint to its leftist brand. Unfortunately, NBC’s supposed goal to gain intellectual balance probably will be abandoned, as against the network’s fixation on getting up fast hits.
While NBC backtracks on Megyn Kelly, with whom it’s apparently still negotiating, for dubious reasons, Comast’s competitor AT&T has made the call to cancel its Turner-branded streaming service for independent films, FilmStruck. This service, affiliated with the Criterion Collection and Turner Classic Movies (TCM), represented a real commitment to streaming thoughtful, harder-to-find motion pictures. AT&T terminated FilmStruck, which was part of Turner’s parent WarnerMedia company, for FilmStruck’s lack of a wider audience. WarnerMedia may launch its own streaming service to compete with Disney’s proprietary streaming service and outlets such as Netflix.
The termination is another AT&T mistake. As Comcast fails to grasp why metrics and popularity alone are not proper tools for forecasting success, AT&T’s decision to nix FilmStruck shows the media corporation’s failure to understand the same idea. While FilmStruck, which for full disclosure I wrote scripts for last season, was too focused on intellectuals and with an ivory tower slant, as a brand FilmStruck showed potential for appealing to wider audiences.
Experimenting with new ideas is crucial for media success. AT&T, which, in my experience is mostly incompetent at delivering goods and services, doesn’t know how to cultivate its assets any better than NBC knows how to apply better judgment to the business of earning its television, streaming or media customers’ trust (i.e., NBC News, especially MSNBC).
FilmStruck ends its operations in America and the world late next month. I think that, in the current cultural context, it’s unlikely that WarnerMedia will replace it with a classic movie streaming service or brand, though the company, with its vast Warner Bros. archive of great movies, should do exactly that. Cynical Megyn Kelly, on the other hand (or more empty vessels like her), is unfortunately likely to return to media in some other program or format.
Both cancellations, with Kelly’s cancellation coming in the aftermath of her controversial comments — further eroding the media industry’s commitment to defending the freedom of speech — are a sign that the culture’s plunging down. Ditching Megyn Kelly for being controversial — her problem is lack of coherence, consistency and authenticity, not any among her ginned up controversies — and abandoning movie streaming for being intellectual portend more of the anti-intellectualism already spreading fast in American culture.
America is already besieged by increasingly bloodthirsty irrationalists, from assaults on softball diamonds and gay nightclubs to mass shootings at the nation’s churches and synagogues. The United States needs more serious, controversial and thoughtful programming, not fewer choices among the status quo.
Americans in media, producers and consumers alike, should ease up on the asinine pictures, memes and clips and focus instead on producing and consuming more intelligent, radical material and make and watch it faster than ever. Comcast and AT&T, through whomever remains subversive at NBC, Universal, Turner and Warner Bros., and I know you’re out there, should take note: replace Kelly and FilmStruck with more rational programs, discourse and ideas, not more pap. There’s value to gain. There’s little value, such as credibility, left to lose.
The West Wing debuted on NBC on September 22, 1999. The long-running drama, which aired until 2006, was developed after the success of 1995’s The American President, a good movie written by Aaron Sorkin (Steve Jobs, Molly’s Game) and directed by Rob Reiner (Stand By Me, Misery, The Bucket List, The Story of Us). Its writers and consultants included former Clinton White House press secretary Dee Dee Myers and former Carter White House press secretary Patrick Caddell. The show centered upon the daily work of the White House staff of a Democrat who had been elected president of the United States. Dramatically, The West Wing succeeds because it is purposeful, engaging and comes with a degree of authenticity. It helps that the show revolves around relevant, controversial issues and ideas.
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The West Wing never goes deep, despite its reputation, and I never watched a single, entire episode partly for this reason. What I’d sampled during its early to mid run struck me as sanctimonious, smug and superficial. I recall that I hated how the characters talked. I remember thinking that the dialogue, which is essentially the foundation of the program, was contrived. Every line, whether uttered by a bit player or a leading man, seemed overly designed to reach the plot’s outcome. These characters aren’t like real people, I thought at the time. They seemed more like puppets for certain political positions.
In light of today’s lousy political discourse, and knowing that a show can be better understood in time, I watched the first season on Apple TV (so without the original broadcast’s commercials). Though I confirmed some problems, the first season of The West Wing is entertaining.
On one hand, as a procedural about executive government, it’s not exhausting. This show is light, topical television programming. I don’t typically engage in what’s known as binge watching, nor do I think the best series are best seen in clusters of episodes. I think the best shows, like the best novels, require time to watch in intervals, as against watching in a steady stream, giving the viewer time to think about its themes. This is how I viewed The West Wing. One can watch and indulge in the character personality and plot conflicts, i.e., getting a bill through Congress, streamlining press communications, protecting the president’s daughter, without getting too steamed or invested in the show’s political philosophy. By the way, its political philosophy settles with age. At the end of the 20th century, Democrats sought to temper their welfare statism with realism. This makes watching The West Wing‘s first season an exercise partly in wide-eyed nostalgia.
On the other hand, the facts of reality and, in particular, America’s dreadful, dire political status quo (especially the current chief executive and his staff, Congress and last two American presidents), give one an appreciation for the show’s depiction of leaders and their staffers who take American politics and government seriously. Sorkin does not create safe spaces to hide, ignore or evade controversy. The West Wing is not all personality, all the time, with bitchy, gossipy ankle-biters constantly jockeying for status, position and power, which would be realistic, perhaps, but also boring and depressing. Besides, for tripe, smears and gossip all you have to do is read the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal or watch MSNBC or Fox News, which ape tawdry, tabloid press with names like BuzzFeed, Gawker and Breitbart. The West Wing in its first season touches on what’s become of politics and the press but its initial 22 episodes aired before 9/11, which I call Black Tuesday, and the wreckage that’s come in its wake. It’s impossible not to see a show about running the presidency without thinking about what’s become of the nation, the presidency and the press.
Indeed, the hard, bitter truth hangs over the first episode. In the series premiere, refugees from Communist Cuba are a plot point. But, here, contrary to what would happen in reality two months after the episode aired, the Democratic president’s White House chief of staff asserts that the moral position is to let the illegal immigrants, because they are fleeing from a totalitarian regime, come to America. In The West Wing, the refugees are a nameless, faceless collective — Democrats then and now only welcome immigrants in collectives — and the Democrats generally seek to admit them. Yet, within weeks of this first episode, the child refugee from Communism named Elian Gonzalez — the individual who floated alone after everyone else on his raft including his mother had drowned or been eaten by sharks — was on his way to being refused refuge in America by the entire United States government, and overwhelmingly opposed by the press and public, with the executive branch ordering the child removed at gunpoint, an action which made today’s anti-immigration purge possible.
The show’s first episode underscores this fact/fiction contrast, which is both a monstrous contradiction with America’s founding ideals and a historic plunge into darkness for the nation of the Enlightenment. It shows that Trump, as with ObamaCare’s worst tenets and other examples of anti-capitalism, merely finishes what Democrats started (and vice versa). The West Wing, in this sense, dramatizes what some viewers take as idealism (which I take instead as indicative of Sorkin’s and Clinton-era politics).
Other striking differences in the highly-rated show’s first season include depictions of Americans exercising their pre-surveillance state freedom to walk in front of White House, pagers (remember those?) and predominantly white male principals preaching and practicing against this or that government intervention for this or that group, cause or gain without premise-checking. One of the show’s most embarrassing plot points, which goes to one of its weakest links, is the hiring of a black man named Charlie (Dule Hill, soon to be on House of Cards and recently on USA’s Psych) by a condescending leading character named Josh Lyman (Bradley Whitford, recently in Get Out). Lyman shoehorns Charlie into a job as personal assistant to the President without so much as letting Charlie finish a sentence. Indeed, in the opening credits, Hill’s Charlie is the only character whose action sequence includes the appearance of another major character; as if Charlie exists in the White House only as an extension or appendage to Lyman’s paternalism, which is neither really dramatized on the show’s terms nor earned. It’s as if Charlie’s tethered in the opening credits to some sort of moral credit for Lyman, who, of course, has nothing to do with Charlie’s skills, merit and performance. Lyman simply hires Charlie for a job Charlie says he doesn’t want because he has the power to do so and thinks it’s good for Charlie. Both characters rarely interact after the hiring episode. When they do, it’s always pegged to Lyman hiring Charlie.
Whitford’s Lyman is the most problematic character, the one I found most annoying when I tried to watch The West Wing during its original run. Besides pushy, bigoted hiring practices, Josh Lyman makes anti-gay comments against a senator and is so greedy for power that he regards the shootdown of an American Air Force pilot as a political opportunity. Lyman does apologize for that last transgression to the White House chief of staff, who’s a veteran, but he is also the least introspective, least enjoyable character. Lyman’s constantly walking around the White House flailing his arms and flapping his lips often without advancing the plot. He only seems human when he’s trading barbs and conversing in the show’s rapid, rambling style with women, particularly his secretary, Donna (Janel Moloney), one of the drama’s two characters (both female) to raise objections to the smug men. The women characters, including a somewhat stereotypical deaf character played by Marlee Matlin, react to the men with arch, dry replies — men do the thinking — making them more like accessories.
Another irritating point is the use of the acronym POTUS, which became the Obama-genuflecting media’s go-to term of endearment for that disastrous American president, who spied on and persecuted journalists and whistleblowers alike. The widespread use by Washington types of this acronym proliferated in proportion to the decline of the West — like Pennsylvania Avenue barriers erected by President Bush after Black Tuesday, using the term POTUS is a way of detaching the office of the presidency from its accessibility and accountability to the people — and, unfortunately, I think it traces to this popular TV show.
Rob Lowe co-stars as Sam, who runs White House communications, representing Sorkin’s doubts about government intervention in people’s lives. Lowe does some of his best work in certain, if sporadic, scenes, though Sam doesn’t get nearly enough to do as Lyman dominates the show. Other characters include the dark, grumpy observant Jew and far leftist Toby (Richard Schiff), recovering alcoholic Leo (the late John Spencer, LA Law), and press secretary CJ (today’s heir to roles played by Eve Arden, Allison Janney, Path to Paradise, Mom, I, Tonya), who is the most fully developed character thanks to Janney’s superior skills. Martin Sheen (TV’s Sweet Hostage, The Subject Was Roses) plays the president as blustery, crisp and sugary, stern when necessary in making military decisions, with post-Grease Stockard Channing as his doctor wife and pre-Mad Men and Handmaid’s Tale Elisabeth Moss as his college student kid. Also, look for John Amos (Kunta Kinte in Roots), the Reverend Jesse Jackson and Tucker Carlson debating on CNN in the background and Karl Malden (On the Waterfront) as a priest opposing the death penalty.
Watch for the smart and often clever interplay, an asset which is commonly known, as it can be sharp, humorous and entertaining. Don’t expect each episode to make you think, though characters brush up against principled thoughts and actions, such as contemplating a stay on the death penalty and approving gays in the military, and kick back for an uncanny glimpse of those who think they’re decent men and women helping the president to shape policy, make laws and govern the country.
Most of all, relish the rapid rambling for the occasional breaks with specific emotional rewards, as when White House Chief of Staff Leo grants a pardon to a leaker over his past drug use, which enhance The West Wing. It’s hard not to care about characters in their most sincere and better moments, such as when the president stands by Sam after he meets a law school student who’s moonlighting as a prostitute to give her a graduation gift and a London tabloid photographer being paid $50k to get the picture drives off to violate their privacy.
Other plot points, such as the last episode’s cliffhanger involving an assassination attempt after subplots about the endangered (and now destroyed) Space ShuttleColumbia and the plight of an American Stealth fighter pilot in Iraq deepen the viewer’s appreciation for rotten policy, good government and decent political discourse and inadvertently take stock of how far and fast we’ve dipped into this steep decline.
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The Golden Globes are an awards ceremony which are essentially and primarily a broadcast to promote Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) influence in Hollywood and to make money for HFPA and its designated broadcaster through advertising revenue. In other words, it’s meaningless except as a tool for promotionalism, offering no real value except as advertising for the industry of mass entertainment.
