Tonight was the season premiere of “The West Wing”. Overall, I feel it has gone downhill since Aaron Sorkin left as the main writer. But, things had to change… they couldn’t change the laws so President Bartlet could keep being president beyond his 8 year limit. But, their attempts to keep working the Donna Moss character into the story line is getting old. She left to go work for the VP and left her job as Josh’s assistant. Her candidate lost and now she tries to be Josh’s deputy… she’s still an opening-credit star, so, WTF are they going to do with her? Overall, the opener was a decent start to some short term and long term running stories.
I can say, unequivocally, I hated the opening. When I hit Play on the DVR, and I saw “Three Years Later” at the bottom of the screen, I rolled my eyes. They cut to an older President Barlet with a lot more grey hair walking through a library… his library, it turns out… All the gang is there… except for Mrs Barlet, wonder where she was… they were dedicating his library, and Josh comes in and says “The President is here.” They show a person getting out of the back of the limo and cut to the intro as the camera pans up his body. You can’t tell if it was an older white man’s hand (Alan Alda’s character, who btw, gets top billing in the opening credits), or a younger latino hand (Jimmy Smits, who gets billed as second to last as “With Jimmy Smits” followed up with “and Martin Sheen”). Oh, we’re almost at the face… cut to intro. Sigh. That’d be too easy.
But, one thing truely excited me. I scrolled through to ensure the new Comcast DVR was going to record next weeks show… and it is… And the two line intro displayed in the guide says Janeane Garofalo is joining to be a press consultant. I actually got giddy. I wish I was about 10 years older sometimes because then she’d be about my age, I would have watched “The Larry Sanders Show” and been able to enjoy her standup when she still did standup. I think about the only truly funny thing in “The Cable Guy” was her line “There was no silverware in medieval times, therefore there is no silverware at Medieval Times. beat Would you like more Pepsi?”
And now, it’s 12:47. I’m still up, and I’m not tired. Guess I’ll piddle around a little bit longer before going to the bedroom…