Goodbye WW, Hello Battlestar
Pic Courtesy Entertainmenttoons
The West Wing has finished, permanently.
Alleluia!
If I had to watch that bland, idealised, rock-jawed, sensitive ‘aren’t we just good guys’, vaseline-lensed leadership bullshit one more time I’d throw up even more than I am already. My son was addicted to it on Channel 4. And that torture-porn bollocks ’24’. I fear for our youth.
I also blame the West Wing for the prevalence of the cult of the presidency that so quickly morphed into leader-worship and neofascism.
The network has gone so far in replacing real political discourse with its fictional counterpart by actually running a fictional tv election as though it were real. The fictional candidates in the fictional West Wing election even have blogs – oy, beyond parody.
I think WW is totally unrealistic – you can see the strings, the emotional manipulation is blatant and for political realism compare and contrast the highly superior The Thick Of It, for instance – but many feel it does reflect reality. My own take on that is that there is such a deep, keen desire in some Americans to believe, to know, that their leaders are at heart good and acting in their best interests ; it’s the old need for a strong daddy, one rock of certainty in an uncertain world. Gullible fundies get that need filled by the carefully crafted messianic image of Bush: but finding it wanting in that example, moderates turn to the West Wing, where the president is aways clear-eyed, sane, and in control.
Russell Shaw of HuffPo thinks it realistic and has has a interesting take on why it was cancelled – because to portray current reality in the White House would be just unbelievable:
When the Clinton Administration was succeeded by the Bush administration, “The West Wing” clung to the nation’s increasingly conservative political reality by showing increasingly difficult clashes with a conservative-dominated Congress. The Bartlet administration was still believable because by that point, it already had been implanted in fans’ minds as an alternate, tv-universe reality.
With the departure of the Bartlet administration, though, that tv-universe reality will be harder for “The West Wing” to emulate.
The current season’s main plot line is the Presidential campaign between moderate-conservative Republican Arnold Vinick (Alan Alda) and impassioned liberal Democrat Matt Santos (Smits).
Now, let us get to the real reason “The West Wing” was cancelled.
The real reason “The West Wing” had to be cancelled was that to realistically portray a White House headed by either of these men would either be that given political reality, a venture into total implausibility or distatesful television with despicable characters.
He means reality. Heavens to Betsy, we can’t have that. The viewing public couldn’t handle it. Another series of Desperate Housewives, stat!
Oh, not to worry, the gap is filled.
Battlestar Galactica and President Bartlet in drag to the rescue! Hurrah!
