Since I’ve been at homr during the daytime, I’ve gotten familiar with daytime TV programming. But I have cable, so I’m not stuck with Jerry Springer.<\/p>\n
I’ve really gotten into West Wing. They show it on Bravo. Let me explain, I’m not the kind of person who sits still and watches TV or movies straigt through. I like to have it playing while I do other things.<\/p>\n
So, Bravo has been playing the same set of episodes of West Wing for a while. I catch snippets as I’ve been writing and emailing and doing other things.<\/p>\n
Chris declares that he hates the show, because it always takes place in the dark. I ignore him, and he goes into the bedroom to watch the history channel on the occasions I refuse to relinquish the remote.<\/p>\n
Anyway, I was getting confused about what was happening. And right about this same time, my friend Jenn started talking to me about how she <\/em>liked the show. This whetted my appetite.<\/p>\n I wanted to dig in and figure this show out. Break out the library card! the LA county library has the first two seasons of West Wing avilable on DVD.<\/p>\n So I’ve spent the last two days…okay, including today, three days, wathing 22 episodes. I’m on the last episode.<\/p>\n Watching them all in order, and paying attention, has dramatically increased my respect for the crafting of the show. Oh, and hey, the WRITERS are impressing me.<\/p>\n Thr pilot itself was bombastic. The characters that I had already come to know from reruns were not really the people I had come to know. They were new, and not really who they were yet.<\/p>\n But watching the show in order…There were stories that had been started, then laid to rest, then brought up again. It was like a nice tapestry.<\/p>\n And they have this device, where they say, “Previously on the West Wing..” and then they take clips from other episodes that give you the setting of what you are supposed to think about before they go into the current episode.<\/p>\n Very smart. They respect the viewers to follow what is happening over time, and yet they still give the Cliff’s Notes for it.<\/p>\n Smart. I am very impressed. I liked the show before, but now I am a real fan. It made me want to go to a chat board and talk about the different characters and the way the story evolved.<\/p>\n But I realized quickly that discussion of that sort was not the kind of thing you’d find on an internet chat board. And really, it’s in season 6, I’m late to the game.<\/p>\n And I thought about what the people who do the show were dealing with a vrey distracted audience. Their craft would not be noticed by people who maybe tuned in once a week. Most people who encounter the show would not be able to grab onto the good stuff they were putting out there.<\/p>\n And it made me feel a small sense of kinship. I have this blog, that is not usually paid too much attention to. My audience does not read everythng I write.<\/p>\n This is not to say that I am crafting this graffitti board. But I sometimes think about putting more effort into it. Maybe even spell-checking.<\/p>\n Sometimes I think about writing long posts with links to prove certain opinions I feel strongly about. And then I think, It would be a waste of time because no one reads this blog.<\/p>\n But then again, they do. I have upwards of 50 readers a day. Why they heck anyone would read this stuff, well…Hard to say, if they were total strangers.<\/p>\n I do know that my homemade popcord recipe is consistently in the top 10.<\/p>\n But anyway, I was inspired that the writers took so much care to make the show good, even if noone was going to notice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Since I’ve been at homr during the daytime, I’ve gotten familiar with daytime TV programming. But I have cable, so I’m not stuck with Jerry Springer. I’ve really gotten into West Wing. They show it on Bravo. Let me explain, … Continue reading