The truth is, I don’t think I actually watch everything. Sure, I watch a fair amount. Probably more than the average person. But I don’t watch everything.
I think I watch much less TV than I used to. Where I used to have to watch everything from start to finish, now I have no problem giving up on a show or movie that’s just not grabbing me. I haven’t seen Survivor in about a decade. I don’t watch a lot of reality TV (though I’ve gotten sucked into Drag Race, Are You The One?, and Too Hot To Handle, so it’s not like I’m immune). I made it 20 minutes into the pilot of Wynonna Earp and quit, despite many people telling me it’s a pretty good show. I’ve never seen Space Jam and I probably never will, because 36 is too old to see that movie for the first time and like it.
But according to almost everyone else (my boyfriend, my parents, my sister, my coworkers, and my friends), I absolutely do watch everything. Something new on Netflix, I binge in a day. I have notifications for when my favourite YouTubers put up a new post, so I can watch it as soon as possible. I lurk on Reddit far too much, and check r/AmITheAsshole, r/relationships, and r/relationship_advice multiple times per day. I’m considered my company’s Tumblr “expert” (I, too, think that’s a stupid thing to be an expert on, but here we are). I’ve seen not one, not two, but three different movies with the title Escape Room, to completion, on purpose, spending my own money to rent each one. My friends joke that I can watch a full season of television in less than the total runtime of the season itself, and that I spend my days in front of about a dozen television and computer screens.
And yeah, my Reddit addiction is real, and with the current state of things, Tumblr has actually helped me feel a lot better. I do watch a lot of bad horror movies, because I just can’t help myself. I have a whole podcast centred on watching and discussing movies and television, and I listen to a ton of podcasts as well. I do probably watch — and read and listen to — more than some people.
SO. That’ll be what this newsletter is about. Sometimes it’ll be about whatever TV I’m watching at that moment. Sometimes it’ll be a roundup of the weird stuff I saw on Reddit, or the Tumblr posts that made me laugh. Most of it will be free, but if you feel like showing your appreciation by buying a subscription ($5 a month, or $50 a year), I’ll like you a lot, and you’ll be rewarded with at least one bonus post a month just for paid subscribers. I’m not sure what the bonus posts will be about yet, but I did recently buy the entire run of The O.C. so maybe I’ll do a re-watch for paying readers.
Right now, I’m working my way through a The West Wing rewatch. The whole series was on sale on iTunes for $40 (Canadian!) and I’ve never seen it the whole way through, so I thought why the hell not? (I mean there are many reasons why not, and my decision to do this has confounded some.)
The thing about Aaron Sorkin is that he’s extremely talented and he writes very compelling scripts that are also completely infuriating. They’re earnest, but so self-satisfied with their earnestness, like he’s staring straight at you, smirking and saying, “Isn’t it great that I’m the only good person left alive? You’re so lucky I’m sharing my views with you.”
I’m like the seven billionth person to say this , but he has a huge problem with how he depicts women. Other characters will constantly talk about how brilliant and talented the women characters are, which I think makes Sorkin think gives him license to make those women act like complete idiots. I’d long thought CJ Cregg was the exception to this rule, because my memory was that she was both smart and exceptionally capable.
But nope. In the first season it comes out that she doesn’t know or understand anything about the census and has been conducting entire press briefings — plural! — flying by the seat of her pants. Granted, this is absolutely a plot device so that Sam can explain to her (and more importantly, the audience) why there’s a census, but why this had to be the way to get that explanation in there is ridiculous.
There’s a flashback episode where as a Hollywood publicist, CJ somehow didn’t know the Golden Globe nominations were that morning — Joe Reid has previously talked about this, and as a former entertainment reporter, I agree with him that there is no fucking way she wouldn’t have known for weeks that the Globe nominations were coming up. (In the same episode, she falls into a pool with all her work documents.) She goes to the dentist an hour before an important press conference and lets the dentist give her novocaine. She frequently acts completely unprofessionally when there’s an issue that she’s Taking Personally That Week, as if she wouldn’t have been all the way fired the first time she broke with White House messaging. The way she’s portrayed in the first few seasons, it’s amazing CJ even finds the White House on a regular basis. (I’m now fairly sure that the only reason I remember CJ as capable is that Allison Janney is such a phenomenal actress.)
Ainsley Hayes is brought in during the second season to supposedly provide the show with some right-wing viewpoints, but instead the character is presented as this “Ideal Republican” who isn’t sexist, racist, or classist; no, she just believes in smaller government! She’s simply there so the show can pay lip service to “both sides” without offending anybody on either side. Any resemblance to an actual Republican is purely coincidental.
Donna accidentally votes entirely Republican on her ballot in the fourth season, and also believes that there’s a missile silo underneath the White House (and gives an interview asserting as much!).
Also Amy Gardner, FOH with your white feminism and get back to me when you’ve learned about intersectionality. And stop talking to Josh; he sucks.
The men also suck, but mostly in the ways they treat the women.
Josh Lyman is often outright cruel to people, but especially women. Sam and Josh sexually harass their coworkers and often their direct reports. There’s an entire episode where Sorkin uses Ainsley Hayes to claim that it’s actually good that Sam sexually harassed her; she prefers it actually, so calm down all you uppity people who don’t like it because IT’S YOU WHO IS THE PROBLEM!!!! Bartlett and Leo are okay, and Toby’s all right, too, though it’s hard to like them when they get all, “Gee shucks, look at these women, who try so hard even though they’re women, golly gee we’re so proud of their pluck.”
And of course it can’t be ignored that the only POC in the main cast for many seasons of the show was Dulé Hill as Charlie Young, who isn’t even a member of senior staff but is the personal aide to the President. (There are Black actors who play characters like the NSA advisor and Chairman of The Joint Chiefs, but they’re there simply to move the plot along; the show doesn’t care about nor elaborate on their inner lives or personal struggles like it does the rest of the cast.) Yes, later in the show (14-year-old spoiler alert for The West Wing) a POC is the Democratic nominee and later President of the United States, but Sorkin was long gone by then.
The whole show is smug as hell, and I know people remember it as Sorkin at his best, but it’s just Sorkin at his Emmy-est. People also remember the first episode of Studio 60 as really good as well, and trust me, it’s not nearly as good as you remember.
And yet. And yet. Despite my rage and painful eye-rolls, I’m gonna keep watching to the end. I can’t fully explain to you why. I’m just gonna. Sorkin’s stuff is so damn watchable, even as I get mad at it. I’m currently in the fourth season (to some people’s worry) so I know Sorkin was deep into his drug addiction at this point, but woof. Things are rough. At least he’ll be gone at the end of the season (and the subsequent seasons will present a whole new set of problems, but we’ll cross to that bridge when we get to it).
Talk to you next time, but until then, please enjoy these photos of John Gallagher Jr. on a 2002 episode of The West Wing and in a leading role on Sorkin’s The Newsroom ten years later.
Love,
Kat
P.S. This week’s episode of my podcast is about Big, and in fact, we’re doing a whole month of Tom Hanks movies for T.Hanksgiving, so it’ll be a good month.
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