So I was sitting at home plugged into iTunes, flicking through my comments from last year’s Which Decade Is Tops For Pops? on Troubled Diva (voting is still open on this year’s; don’t click if Su Pollard gives you nightmares). I discovered in the comments a sentence I’d written about Shame, Shame, Shame by Shirley & Company in which I said that I was surprised to recognise the song.
At that moment, iTunes shuffled and started playing that exact track. I can only conclude that my laptop is a witch.
At the weekend, I finished watching the first series of The West Wing. It’s a series that hits the ground running, but even so you can see it evolving. The top-billed characters of Sam and Mandy begin to fade early on: although Rob Lowe is the notional star, he quickly becomes an equal part of the ensemble, while the annoying Moira Kelly is sidelined with little to do and disappears entirely after this season. The charismatic President Bartlet, meanwhile, brought marvellously to life by Martin Sheen, takes centre stage from the moment he silences a roomful of arguing people by proclaiming the First Commandment.
It’s my impression – although until I’ve made my way through the next few box sets I won’t be able to confirm it – that the writing is a little rawer to begin with. Issues – and particularly moral ones – are dealt with less subtly than in future scripts and very occasionally a character gives a slightly unrealistic speech (of the sort to which characters in Babylon 5 were regularly prone). The humour is there throughout though, proving not only that you don’t have to be a comedy or a “comedy drama” to be funny; indeed, good drama needs humour. The whole season stands up well seven years on and it’s immediately clear why it was such a hit.
I’ve mentioned before the crossover of actors between 24, Lost and The West Wing, so my Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon Kiefer Sutherland brain was on the look out for more. The most notable in this season is Reiko Aylesworth – Michelle Desslar in 24 – who pops up in the penultimate episode playing a fellow student of “Sam’s friend”. Also making an appearance – in “He Shall, From Time To Time…” – is Harry Groener as the Secretary of Agriculture. He later appears in Inauguration Day Part 2, in which he turns into a giant snake and eats everyone. (“I’m suffering from relapsing-remitting gargantuan snakeitis.”)
One other actorly observation: in “20 Hours in L.A.”, Donna spots Matthew Perry at a party; apparently in season 4 she is too polite to mention to Joe Quincy that he’s the spitting image of the Friends actor.
Best episodes: “Six Meetings Before Lunch” (if only for CJ doing “The Jackal”), the recently much-cited “Let Bartlet Be Bartlet”, and the excellent finale, “What Kind of Day Has It Been?” (which, in retrospect rather ominously, features a problem with the Space Shuttle Columbia).
…and the brakes are apparently stuck. We were already 11 minutes late leaving Haymarket (precise time courtesy of FirstScotrail’s text alerts, which helpfully tell you when trains are delayed, albeit by a text that usually arrives once you’re already on board).
Ah, we’re now on the move. 20 minutes late for a journey that only takes 30. At least I can moan online.
Update: We’re stuck again.
“This train is a failure,” the conductor told us at Polmont and we all disembarked. I got the impression that he and the driver had been told that problems with the brakes meant that it wasn’t safe to carry passengers. The train then sat in the station for a while before finally pulling out to allow the services behind to pass through. Fortunately, the delay had now passed half an hour so the next half hourly service was just behind. Finally got home fifty minutes late.
Given that I have two train journeys a day, I guess I should be grateful that this sort of thing is very rare.
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