on TV

I love it.

Don't get me wrong.  I love books, too.  I read.  I read a lot.  I read novels and short stories, I read literary journals (online and off!), I listen to podcasts of people reading and even when I don't have time for the rest of a New Yorker issue, I still never toss it before reading the fiction.  I almost always have a book in my purse, and even if I don't, I read on my iPhone.

Oops- Do I sound defensive?  It's just that, occasionally, some of the writerly types I know get a little snobby about TV.  Oh, I don't even own a TV, they'll say.  I mean, how in the age of the internet and Hulu does this mean anything?  But secondly, come on.  It's possible to love books and words and believe that literature provides an experience that nothing else can and also feel the same way about television.  We are all multi-faceted human beings, after all.

I think I have ranted about this on the internet, before.  So maybe we'll just move on to the real point?

I love TV.

Not all TV, of course.  There is plenty of trash that I object to and lots of shows I feel pretty neutral about.  Most reality TV falls into those two categories.  There is a lot of TV I love, though.  And I think that really great TV shows offer something that other forms of entertainment don't.  One of the biggest things I think TV does is shape and reflect common narratives or experiences.  Everyone knows about "FRIENDS", but if you knock out wild outliers like Harry Potter, there are few books that are as well known as popular TV shows.  People will often say something like, "Oh, this reminds me of that Seinfeld episode..." or hang around co-workers' desks to discuss last night's "LOST".  Outside of book clubs and MFA programs people don't have this experience with books.  And though movies have some of this affect as well, they tend to come and go, whereas TV stretches out for months and years.  "LOST" started in 2004 and here we are, right on the cusp of 2010 and people are still talking about it, watching it, spending hours speculating and reading theories about it.  (I know it's not just me!)  But who is talking about the big movies of 2004?  "Shrek 2" was one the top-grossing films, but what impact does it have now?

More than all of that, I love TV because a good show requires a lot of talent.  There has to be good writing and good acting, of course.  There have to be camera shots and sets that have to work to allow the writing and acting to be fully realized.  Good TV shows have to be written and edited in such a way that people are both satisfied by a single episode and want more.*  For me, personally, I think the best TV shows work because they layer comedy and drama, and create characters that you can both love and hate at different moments.  Which is probably why "The West Wing" is one of my favorite shows.

And why I am going to use it as my first example of my favorite TV moments, the new little blog theme I'm gonna throw out there, to help me get through the second half of NaBloPoMo.

The list of reasons to love "The West Wing" is long.  There is the quick, amazing dialogue and ensamble cast that play off each other beautifully.  The plot lines almost always ring true and the characters are complex, yet consistently written.  I could go on, but what I really want to talk about is the element I already mentioned, the idea of comedy and drama working together.

[Minor spolier below, just FYI]

20 Hours in America is a two-hour episode from the fourth season of the show.  "The West Wing" is a show about the Presidency and the life of the people who work in the White House.  Most of the episodes take place in the wing for which the show is named, but not exclusively.  This episode is an extended "day in the life" style, and takes us through a day on the campaign trail.  And ok, I admit it.  Half the reason I am going to post two clips from this episode is because I want an excuse to post this video, which I find extremely funny.

The scene is brilliantly absurd.  Toby, Josh and Donna get left behind by the motorcade and are vainly attempting to get back, and when this tiny mistake is piled onto their day of mishaps, Toby and Josh lose it.  It's short and amusing, and works so well in part because it plays off the fact that Toby and Josh take themselves and their job seriously.  In fact, they miss the motorcade because Toby can't handle hearing the President give a speech he doesn't approve of and needs to walk far enough from the stage so he can't actually hear the words he knows the President is saying.

I think it also highlights the nature of TV, in that TV works when it is fun.  If you want people to keep coming back week after week, there needs to be a basic level of entertainment, which is almost completely what this moment is.

But there is a larger message and theme at work in this episode, beyond just the three staffers getting lost.  The President is running for re-election and everyone is getting bogged down in the minutia of governing, worrying about small pieces of strategy and relatively minor campaign issues.  Toby, Josh and Donna getting lost is mimetic of this.  Until everyone is blindsided by the bombing of a college swim meet and suddenly everything else is seen in a new way, by both the characters and the viewers.

This scene brings together so many great elements of TV, and of the "The West Wing."  The speech that President Barlet delivers is amazing writing, and is performed perfectly.  It is also a well edited shot, with the camera panning around to everyone listening to the speech.  We see Josh, Toby and Donna watching on a tv, still lost in transit and moves to begin from behind the President, showing us his vantage point.  It briefly pass over other important characters, like Dr. Bartlet and Leo sitting in the audience and C.J., Charlie standing to the side.  The Tori Amos songs that plays is well chosen and of sets the mood in a way that we wouldn't get from the speech alone.  And of course the last beat of the scene is bitter-sweetly funny with Bruno calling Sam a freak for the talent of his writing- emphasizing, again, the dual nature of comedy and drama.

I mean, truly, how could you not love it?

*This "rule" does not apply to LOST.  Go ahead, try to think of an episode of that show that left you feeling satisfied.  It's ok, I'll wait.  ....  ....  ....  Yeah.  I couldn't think of one either.

Comments

[Maddy]

I *love* this episode of WW, especially the scene about the changing timezones (btw, I drove through that part of Indiana this summer with a group of friends - half of our phones changed first and the other half took a couple more minutes to change...). One of the other great parts of that episode is an earlier scene which explains why Toby says "I work at the White House" in the timezone scene - he had a bet with Josh, the result being he had to say "I work at the White House" whenever he introduced himself... I can't find the scene on YouTube, but he does say it again later in yet another great West Wing scene from that episode: Love it!