On Wed, Jul 18, 2012 at 4:07 PM, Kevin M. <[email protected]> wrote: > Saw the first two hours on iTunes. At first I was ready to slam yet another "West Wing" ripoff wherein we, the viewers, are reminded that the rich and powerful are people too with real feelings and egos that can be hurt. Problem is, I found myself caring about some of the characters. I didn't check the credits, but I'm presuming a female writer, only because comparatively speaking the male roles were stereotypical.
> http://itunes.apple.com/us/tv-season/pilot/id541755477?i=544418122 On Wed, Jul 18, 2012 at 1:14 PM, Jon Delfin <[email protected]> wrote: > Greg Berlanti (Brothers and Sisters, Everwood). I endured the premiere to > the point where the caricatures became characters (it took about 45 minutes > for all of that exposition to be exposited), after which I decided I liked > it enough to watch next week. > I just got around to watching the first two episodes this evening. I give it maybe a C-. It is not just the male characters that were stilted caricatures; the take on the Hillary-Bill-Barack triangle is simplistic and distorted, the acting is by the numbers for the most part, and the dialogue is leaden. I am not familiar with Berlanti, but the show is almost exactly at the level of that mediocre legal soap Raising the Bar on TNT a few years ago - I would have bet a little money someone from that staff is running this show. I will no doubt keep watching it (after all, I saw every episode of "Commander-in-Chief"), but I am amazed that this show seems to be getting fairly positive reviews, while Sorkin is getting hammered. The people writing dialogue on this show can not carry the bucket that Sorkin's jock gets washed out in, and the implausibilities in the plots make Valentine decorations in a TV newsroom look like Cinéma vérité.This show, though set in a more fictional universe, seems to be set in the recent parallel past, yet I have not seen anyone criticize them for that. Again, Sorkin suffers from the much higher expectations critics bring to his work. I like the actor Ciaran Hinds previous work, and enjoy him the most of his colleagues here, though it is a scene-chewing, over-the-top job. He seems to have put LBJ into WJC's biography, and it is kind of fun to watch, at least for a while. * * -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en
