Poor woman’s West Wing

September 27, 2005 by Jeff Jarvis

Boy, I’m unimpressed with Commander in Chief: speeches that make Bush sound profound, silly and anachronistic gender-role-reversal gags, cheesy plotting, cardboard characters. C-

  • tonynoboloney

    I wasn’t very impressed with the speech either.

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  • Mumblix Grumph

    I missed the show…were there a lot of Bad White Men® saying things like “Listen, missy, a girl can’t be President!”?

  • rick gregory

    David,

    Don’t demean a C-… This show wasn’t even that good…

  • http://www.tonypierce.com/blog/bloggy.htm tony

    whats your grade for the real thing

  • http://jimtreacher.com Jim Treacher

    Whenever she has to play anger at terrorists or mean people or whoever, I bet she just thinks about Renny Harlin.

  • http://flamingflivvers.blogspot.com/ Carson Fire

    “Listen, missy, a girl can’t be President!”

    You must have seen the promo!

    The theme is at least 20 years too late. Both major political parties now have strong women that a majority of partisans would be overjoyed to see in the White House. One party has been an admirer of Brit PM Thatcher since the 80s, and the other party had a female VP candidate in the 80s. The current pres has women advising him at very high levels. It’s just not the issue it once was.

    Judging from another new “show” I’ve seen this season, there seems to be a new push to use badly-scripted network dramas to promote hoary old liberal ideas like “Americans are still too lunkheaded to accept a female president”. This other one, a show I wanted to like because of the performers, was split between a lawyer in court giving long, uninterrupted speeches about the evils of intelligent design, and an amorphous tale about a short man who didn’t think people were taking his murder seriously enough. I think the message was supposed to be “human rights for diminutive murderers”, but I’m not really sure, and the writers certainly weren’t.

  • http://www.alexandrefuchs.com Alex Fuchs

    Scratching the seven year itch – unsatisfying.

    The show’s only redeeming quality seems to be in renewing a long-existing deep love affair for the West Wing.

  • Jimmy

    Granted the pilot episode was nothing to be excited about. I grew tired of both the Hillary Clinton shots and the cardboard Republicans. I will, however, give the show a couple more episodes before throwing in the towel. Hell, I hated the West Wing for several episodes, but continued to watch because nothing better was on. Tuesday night is not one of the strongest nights of television, but I can always find somethng else.

  • ppr

    You should have watched The Amazing Race Family…..much more exciting!! All the way to the last minutes.

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  • Monte Davis

    One minor redeeming feature: Donald Sutherland beginning to snack on the scenery, and obviously preparing to chew the lights and mike boom next…

  • Superwoody

    I only liked the token jabs at Hillary being a bitch when she was in the WH.

  • whodat

    Wait–you people actually watched that? And thought it might be good?
    C’mon now…

  • http://moveleft.com Eric Jaffa

    I didn’t like it or hate it.

    I’ll probably watch the next couple of epsisodes and then decide whether to watch more.

  • Catherine

    Didn’t watch Commander in Chief, but I did watch E-Ring last week. Now THAT was bad. I think I rolled my eyes about 800 times. So cliche, so unrealistic, such bad acting. How did poor Dennis Hopper get roped into that one?

  • JBK

    Of course, it turns out CIC was the #1 rated show of the night. Guess Buzzflash and his acolytes are not quite as representative of America as they think. Why don’t you kiddies go back to constantly bashing the NYT and Dan Rather and leave the media analysis to experts.

  • http://moveleft.com Eric Jaffa

    JBK -

    The ratings next week will say more about what the public thought of the pilot episode than the ratings for the pilot itself.

  • whodat

    #1 ratings do not mean anything for a premiere. It means it had good long-lead promotion, which it did. The true test is the next few weeks.

    #1 ratings do not also mean it is a good show, merely a highly watched show.

    And here’s guessing Eric from moveleft will watch a few more times and if it is like Jed Bartlett’s white house he will like it.

    This has to be the dumbest post of the week: “Why don’t you kiddies go back to constantly bashing the NYT and Dan Rather and leave the media analysis to experts.” Who exactly are the “experts”?

  • brabc1

    You should have watched the second half of the Bob Dylan special (PBS). I never realized his background and how deep he really is.

  • http://lesterblog.blogspot.com Jon Lester

    Actually it just reminds me that I missed “NCIS” and “My Name is Earl” again last night. Maybe it’s time to get a TiVO after all.

    Having missed “C in C” but reading everybody’s reviews, I wonder, could they be purposefully portraying a ditzy fictional president to make Hillary look strong and competent?

  • Mark

    I thought it was semi-interesting, I’ll probably tune in a few more times to see how it develops. If I were “Mr. First Lady” though, I’d have tossed out that chick that was showing me around in a matter of seconds and tossed the pink sofa out behind her.

  • http://www.brunoandtheprofessor.com frankbruno

    Catherine –

    Dennis Hopper was actually pretty excited about it, if Entertainment Weekly is to be believed (and it almost always is!). Apparently he’s turned hard-core Republican. Seriously.

  • http://seattleweekly.com Tim Appelo

    It should’ve starred Susan Sarandon.

  • http://www.hottitude.com blogger

    I am not impressed with this show either. It is lacking something. I am not sure Davis is convincing enough as a predisdent.