Isaac & Ishmael
As I’ve alluded to many times before in this blog, my absolute favourite TV show would have to be The West Wing. It’s such a high standard show as a rule, that when it fails to meet that standard, it’s quite disappointing. Last night we finally finished watching season 2, with the final episode ‘Two Cathedrals’. This is an example of The West Wing at it’s finest, memorable for (among other things) the President cursing God in Latin in the cathedral before intentionally leaving his cigarette on the cathedral floor, and the wonderful use of Dire Straits’ ‘Brothers in Arms’ at the end as Bartlet travels in a freak storm (an act of God?) to a career turning point press conference.
Following that high point, I was most keen to get straight into Season 3, the DVDs of which I just got from the UK last week. What I hadn’t reckoned on was ‘Isaac & Ishmael’, the first episode shown that season. This was a specially produced episode, written and filmed hurriedly as a response to the terror attacks of Sep 11, 2001, originally shown in the US on October 3 that year. I don’t remember finding it so annoying when I first watched it (probably some time in 2002 here in Australia) but even then the memory of the attacks was still fresh in everyone’s minds. Watching it today I found it a big disappointment. Not only was the script and acting far below the usual high standard of The West Wing, but the pro-American, politically correct, black and white rhetoric bordered on offensive. “Why does everyone want to kill us?” was the question asked by high school students in the episode. The answer was basically : “because we’re so good and they’re not” Okay well maybe that’s an oversimplification but there was not even a hint of consideration that America may have at any point been at fault in any way. Use was made of poor analagies which attempted to paint the issue in simple black and white terms, when in reality it is much more complex and difficult to grasp. For example “”Islamic extremist is to Islam as KKK is to Christianity.” My impression is that the “Islamic extremists” enjoy a much greater degree of public support in Muslim nations than the KKK do in Christian nations, where the huge majority would condemn them. The other example of a black and white oversimplification “terrorism has a 100% failure rate” I don’t think you can ever be so absolutist about such things, although this may be easier to say now in the aftermath of Madrid, where the terrorists saw at least a measure of success in achieving their aims. Anyway you can’t really blame the producers of the West Wing for putting out such a piece of propaganda when you consider the environment in which it was produced, but for me it’s a blight on an otherwise unsurpassed piece of television, which often provides quite incisive social commentary, best done in a more subtle not so in-your-face manner.
Categories : Entertainment | 0 Comments
