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4thofelevenCertainly an improvement over the pilot. I’ve got more of a sense of the characters, and a lot more seemed to be going on.
On the downside, while I’m more interested in the characters, right now I don’t actually like any of them very much. There seems to be far too much focusing on establishing authority over each other – everyone seems to deal with everyone else with a rather stiff formality. Now part of that’s just a cultural difference between Australia and the United States, but it is turning me off the characters a little.
Sam’s quickly going into my ‘actively dislike’ column – I’m interested to see where his story with the callgirl is going. So far, Sam seems to be coming across as pretty damn passive-aggressive in his dealings with the woman, and his combination of veiled threats and effective demanding that she be friends with him pretty much destroy what sympathy his goofy incompetence and bad luck in the pilot might have earned him. As I said, I’m interested to see where this is going – as it is, it seems to me like he’s less interested in ‘reform’ and more in demonstrating his power over the woman, and I’m hoping the show will acknowledge that soon.
Mandy’s also pretty unlikable, and seems to have been saddled with some of the least-natural dialogue in the episode to boot – long angry or upset rants that are thinly disguised excuses for her to reel off her background.
The President, I’m still not sure about. On the one hand, he’s the most personable character so far – though that may just be because he’s one of the few I can keep track of. Everyone else’s job’s I’m kinda vague about, but ‘President of the US’ is pretty easy to keep straight. On the other hand, this is the second episode out of two where his power is equated with God, and yet I think the show is meant to take this as sincere, not as a symptom of overwhelming hubris. Cultural differences again, I’m sure. More to the point, in the scene where he explains the episode’s title, he comes across as insufferably pretentious – Frasier Crane without the charm. It doesn’t help that by the time he’s dropped the phrase, challenged everyone to explain it, then translated it himself, I’d quite lost track of what his point was in the first place (That it’s a fallacy to assume he did poorly in Texas because of his jokes, rather than because, say, he’s a Democratic candidate hailing from New Hampshire…)
Minor notes:
- I assume the vice-president’s going to be something of a recurring adversary? I think it’s interesting just how weak President Bartlett’s position apparently is here – his veep sees him as a rival (and apparently isn’t talking to him directly), his general popularity’s low, and there’s a rift between him and the military. And the Republicans still haven’t made an appearance…
- Come on. The only black character to appear so far spends the whole episode showing everyone the photo of his newborn daughter and wife, and then gets killed? What, him being two days from retirement too subtle a cliché?
- Huh. West Wing apparently displays its episode titles on screen. I’ve only seen that before in Star Trek (and spin-offs) and Babylon 5. Personally, I like it, but you don’t see it too often…
On the downside, while I’m more interested in the characters, right now I don’t actually like any of them very much. There seems to be far too much focusing on establishing authority over each other – everyone seems to deal with everyone else with a rather stiff formality. Now part of that’s just a cultural difference between Australia and the United States, but it is turning me off the characters a little.
Sam’s quickly going into my ‘actively dislike’ column – I’m interested to see where his story with the callgirl is going. So far, Sam seems to be coming across as pretty damn passive-aggressive in his dealings with the woman, and his combination of veiled threats and effective demanding that she be friends with him pretty much destroy what sympathy his goofy incompetence and bad luck in the pilot might have earned him. As I said, I’m interested to see where this is going – as it is, it seems to me like he’s less interested in ‘reform’ and more in demonstrating his power over the woman, and I’m hoping the show will acknowledge that soon.
Mandy’s also pretty unlikable, and seems to have been saddled with some of the least-natural dialogue in the episode to boot – long angry or upset rants that are thinly disguised excuses for her to reel off her background.
The President, I’m still not sure about. On the one hand, he’s the most personable character so far – though that may just be because he’s one of the few I can keep track of. Everyone else’s job’s I’m kinda vague about, but ‘President of the US’ is pretty easy to keep straight. On the other hand, this is the second episode out of two where his power is equated with God, and yet I think the show is meant to take this as sincere, not as a symptom of overwhelming hubris. Cultural differences again, I’m sure. More to the point, in the scene where he explains the episode’s title, he comes across as insufferably pretentious – Frasier Crane without the charm. It doesn’t help that by the time he’s dropped the phrase, challenged everyone to explain it, then translated it himself, I’d quite lost track of what his point was in the first place (That it’s a fallacy to assume he did poorly in Texas because of his jokes, rather than because, say, he’s a Democratic candidate hailing from New Hampshire…)
Minor notes:
- I assume the vice-president’s going to be something of a recurring adversary? I think it’s interesting just how weak President Bartlett’s position apparently is here – his veep sees him as a rival (and apparently isn’t talking to him directly), his general popularity’s low, and there’s a rift between him and the military. And the Republicans still haven’t made an appearance…
- Come on. The only black character to appear so far spends the whole episode showing everyone the photo of his newborn daughter and wife, and then gets killed? What, him being two days from retirement too subtle a cliché?
- Huh. West Wing apparently displays its episode titles on screen. I’ve only seen that before in Star Trek (and spin-offs) and Babylon 5. Personally, I like it, but you don’t see it too often…
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no subject
on 2010-01-16 04:03 pm (UTC)Oh - and Mandy is pretty much universally disliked, and disappears in a puff of smoke at the end of series 1, so don't worry about here.
What do you think of Donna, Josh's assistant? (I know she seems inconsequential right now, but...)
no subject
on 2010-01-17 12:48 pm (UTC)