I am a third of the way through season 4 of the west wing. I'm really enjoying it, I'm glad I was finally able to watch it.
The last few episodes have just dealt with a crisis developing in the fictional African country of Equatorial Kundu. Now what I notice is that the situation is contrived such that American intervention is clearly the only ethical option and the main question is if the president can do that politically. And as someone observed, West Wing is very effective propaganda because it primes people to be familiar with the situations it describes, whether it's intended to be or not. And certainly "we should intervene, can we have the political will to do so" is a reasonable message. But I'm also scared, because of how often in real life I've thought intervention was a good idea, and been really wrong, that "lets save lives by military intervention" is a bad message to send :(
Other things I noticed, how shocking it is that someone is a member of the american communist party. I know that's the case in american politics, but it's so different to what I'm used to.
How much the show manages to give us an idea of the characters, when it actually spends quite little time on each. Some characters have disappeared for two seasons, and then show up with extra history never mentioned.
The last few episodes have just dealt with a crisis developing in the fictional African country of Equatorial Kundu. Now what I notice is that the situation is contrived such that American intervention is clearly the only ethical option and the main question is if the president can do that politically. And as someone observed, West Wing is very effective propaganda because it primes people to be familiar with the situations it describes, whether it's intended to be or not. And certainly "we should intervene, can we have the political will to do so" is a reasonable message. But I'm also scared, because of how often in real life I've thought intervention was a good idea, and been really wrong, that "lets save lives by military intervention" is a bad message to send :(
Other things I noticed, how shocking it is that someone is a member of the american communist party. I know that's the case in american politics, but it's so different to what I'm used to.
How much the show manages to give us an idea of the characters, when it actually spends quite little time on each. Some characters have disappeared for two seasons, and then show up with extra history never mentioned.