well Brolin tried to do something and whatever it was, it didn’t sound right.
I hope Sorkin makes this interesting by making Brolin a formidable challenger.
Originally posted by Pundit Lisa
[q]I figured they’d just send some fighter pilots to shoot the Kumaran (sp?) plane down and then act surprised and send their regrets about the tragic accident. Shooting them down in cold blood seemed a little…public. What? Does no one work at the Bermuda airport that would greet a foreign head of state???[/q]
It was not the regular Bermuda airport, it was a small strip on the island–just a road and a a clear spot, I believe. And fighter pilots couldn’t shoot down the plane because it couldn’t be a military operations–the military is not allowed to assasinate civilians.
On the whole, this episode left me disappointed and a little scared about the show’s future.
First, we all know that Sorkin and Co. see guns as being among the ultimate evil. That’s fine and dandy, they’re certainly entitled to their views, and although I disagree with them 100%, as long as the debates/arguments about them (like between Bartlet and Hoynes) are reasonably intelligent and well-written, it doesn’t really bother me.
However, when they completely ignore reality, regulations and physics to show guns as Satan-spawned, it bugs the thundering hell out of me.
Problems:
- SA Summer School would have had a vest on. It’s regulation wear, and he was on duty.
- The shots from the 4" .357 the bad guy was carrying wouldn’t have penetrated the vest (woulda busted the hell out of SASS’ ribs and maybe killed him that way, but then we wouldn’t have seen the bloody squibs go off on his torso). Of course, you could get around this by throwing out another demon (“Cop-Killer” armor piercing bullets), but those would almost certainly have exited, and we didn’t see any exit wounds.
- If SASS wasn’t wearing his vest, it’s pretty likely at least one of the rounds would have exited the back (in a really grisly way). That didn’t happen. What, did Aaron blow the squib budget on the three shots to the front?
That’s why I’m disappointed, Lily Tomlin is why I’m scared. As soon as I saw her in the previews for the episode, I had the absolute prescient certainty the my favorite show was about jump completely over the shark without so much as a drop of salt water on its leather jacket.
I don’t know why I had that premonition, but it’s rarely been wrong. I hope it’s off this time. Maybe they can do with her what Seinfeld did with Jeanine Garaffolo (sp?) and just make her go away during the hiatus.
I, too, had the impression that Tomlin’s firing had racial undertones.
So much for the schtupping I predicted between Harmon and CJ.
As an aside, I’m wondering what Sorkin will do if the show has legs and lasts a while. I think that it’d be a pretty creative move to completely retool the show and put a Republican in the White House.
I believe Armin Shimerman played one of the Congressmen who were briefed about the assassination. It seems to me that it doesn’t take a lot to get a credit. David Huddleston got a credit and all I can remember him saying was, “Posse Comitatus!”
I didn’t think it was the preference, I think it was the way that his preference of baseball over theater was handled. Had he merely gone to the game, or even had he said “I prefer baseball to modernized Shakespeare with musical interludes - that just doesn’t do it for me.” I think it would have gone over better.
But his bizarre statement (that he later repeated word for word to Bartlett, showing that he was coached to say that, rather than it being an original thought, or off the cuff statement) that real americans don’t like theater is annoying. In fact, it’s insulting. I love baseball, I can think of very few things more enjoyable than a late afternoon/early evening at the ballpark. However, if a candidate I supported ever said something like that, I’d think twice about voting for him/her. If someone I was opposed to said it, it would further entrench my dislike for the candidate. I still can’t see how that would win anyone points.
The more I think of it, I really think Sorkin dropped the ball on Brolin’s character.
First of all, nobody is going to get that far in national politics being that stupid. As little regard as I have for our current president’s intellect, Bush isn’t that stupid. He wouldn’t have belittled someone for going to the theater and he would have expressed regret for the death of a Secret Service agent.
I don’t picture Bush on 9/11 saying, “Terrorism, that’s a tough thing.”
And how many people attending a Yankees’ game are going to vote Republican anyway? That’s not exactly the GOP’s prime demographic despite all of the well-heeled fans.
I don’t think the “Crime, boy, I don’t know line” was just meant to sound stupid - it was a sarcastic (and rather cruel) jab at Bartlet’s crime policy. Like, “Maybe if you weren’t such a wussy liberal, your friend wouldn’t have gotten killed.”
It was supposed to make him sound like a jerk, not to make him sound stupid.