Live-Blogging Commander-in-Chief

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8:57 Live-blogging coming up shortly. Stay tuned — and comments are open. Let me know what you’re thinking, too.

9:01 Already I’m distracted by the collagen mouth.

9:02 The President is having a brain aneurysm and the Chief of Staff comes to the Vice President and tells her she must resign. That is SO implausible. Stoopid.

9:03 And what’s with starting it out in France?

9:06 Now she’s directing the military telling them how to move around individual ships in the Med. And she says “um” every other word. AAAARRRGGGHHHHH.

9:08 She’s canvassing her children, asking them what they think about whether or not she should become President.

9:11 The President asks her to resign. No WAY that would happen. No WAY.

9:14 Look, we all knew I would hate this show. But I would so LOVE to see a depiction of an American Margaret Thatcher ascending to the Presidency instead of this stammering lightweight scenario. . . And did I mention yet the collagen lips that are so puffed up it gets in the way of her talking??

9:18 See what I mean. What kind of real American woman politician would contemplate resigning in this scenario? None. It’s ridiculous.

9:19 Okay, finally I scene I really liked: her husband tells her she is making the wrong decision. They seem to be setting them up as a real team with a real marriage. That would be nice.

9:23 Check out Drill Sergeants observations in the comments!! Great catch on the Creationism line — that obviously makes the Speaker evil.

9:25 So the Speaker is trying to talk her into resigning and says the Islamicists wouldn’t follow a woman (the leader of the Free World can’t be a woman) I guess he’s forgetting Pakistan’s (former) Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. . .

9:29 On the plus side: it was a great scene seeing a woman taking the oath of office. It will happen some day. And people won’t be as freaked out as they are depicting. It will seem natural because once she gets there she will have earned it. She won’t say “um” every other word. No collagen either.

9:31 Voice-over from a news show saying “she was wearing a navy suit.” I like that — they do always comment on a female pol’s clothes.

9:33 She is in the Oval Office looking at the former President’s stuff. That wouldn’t happen either. They would have cleaned it up right away.

9:36 They just had a scene where the former President’s secretary declines to stay on and tells Mackenzie she won’t stay because it would make her feel cheap. I worked in the White House. Nobody talks like that to a President — or a Vice President. This is just so frustrating because I want to see a female President with real gravitas!

9:39 Okay that’s kind of fun: a scene where the husband is shown his office in the East Wing as the new “First Lady.”

9:40 First Cabinet meeting. Like Johnson, she keeps them.

9:46 Is it possible to jump the shark in the very first episode? You’ve just got to love this story line where she is planning to send in the United States cavalry to rescue one African woman who was caught in adultery and is facing torture. . .

9:53 Okay, been there done that with the kid spilling juice on the suit!

9:54 Hey, that’s the Richmond state capitol — we used to live there.

9:56 Ya know, if they are going to send the copters into Nigeria, couldn’t they fix the Nigerian email scams instead??

10:03 Special thanks to the Drill Sergeant for watching with us and adding his great comments! Very fun.

(And stay tuned: I’m getting my comments fixed this next week and will soon roll out new ones that don’t require moderation!)

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UPDATE: After dozing off in the middle, and who can blame him??, Jay Tea at Wizbang comes back with a great assessment of “Commander-in-Chiffon.”

Darleen says she could only take 23 minutes.

And here’s what I love about bloggers: Jeff Harrell notes that Geena Davis’ concluding speech is given at night, while they depict the rescue scene as happening at sunset in Africa — but in fact, Jeff says, “when it’s nine o’clock in the District, it’s one in the morning in Lagos.” Hah. I know it’s a minor point, but it goes to the cheesiness of the whole production.

I suppose that’s enough already, but I also liked Jeff’s point that on another show (which one? 24, I think?) there is a female president and her gender is never used as an issue.

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16 Responses

  1. The Drill SGT says:

    2111: President says the VP doesn’t share his vision and ought to resign? (She’s an convenient Independent, and he’s ?) What implausible circumstance caused him to pick somebody not from his party that didn’t share his vision and who the Pres felt was patently not qualified. I would expect that he was asked that question at every campaign event. Why did you pick her? Is she qualified? What if you were incapacitated.

    2116: because she is a genius and indpendent.

  2. The Drill SGT says:

    2119: ah, the Speaker supports Creationism, that must make him a Republican, and since he shares the vision with the Pres, that makes the President one of them. No wonder the Speaker is clearly evil.

  3. The Drill SGT says:

    2132: The First Spouse was dismissed by the Presidental Secretary? To Meet with the First Lady’s CoS? The VP’s spouse doesn’t know the name of the FL’s CoS?

  4. The Drill SGT says:

    Gawd: The FL’s CoS is a dumb blonde. Such a cliche.

    The Vice President’s spouse hasn’t see the First Lady’s WH office space till now?

  5. The Drill SGT says:

    The Joint session: The President’s CoS would never walk into the chamber just behind the President. CoS’s should be effective and not seen.

  6. The Drill SGT says:

    The extraction of the prisoner was a bit lame.

    Helo wasn’t a Seahawk. SOF guys looked old and fat. Seats in chopper looked civilian.

  7. charmaine says:

    Hey DSGT: I’m laughing out loud. That is so true about the extraction. I was thinking the same thing about that one soldier — he was supposed to be Special Forces?? Is it that hard to find buff actors in Hollywood these days?

  8. The Drill SGT says:

    Things ae getting fuzzy now. In the scene where the future Pres asked our Heroine to be his VP. He says something like:

    “You have how many Nobel prizes?” and

    “Your potiical analysis of the Middle East…”

    Somebody didn’t do their research. Nobels are awarded in:

    PHYSICS CHEMISTRY MEDICINE LITERATURE PEACE EECONOMICS

    Not Poly Sci

    They should have given her economics Nobels, like West Wing’s Bartlett.

  9. Charmaine!

    Why do you torture yourself??? I have never watched one episode of West Wing and never intend to. Isn’t bad enough having to watch the left in action in real life?????

    This is going to be nothing but Republican bashing and pro-feminist garbage. Do something else. Fold clothes, read a good book, get some work done….ANYTHING but waste your time on this.

    I do love you though!!!….*secret Cotillion handshake*

  10. CIC

    Look, I’m the last guy to say anything bad about the idea of a female president. The idea, that is….

    The show was liveblogged by Charmaine at Reasoned Audacity.

  11. The Drill SGT says:

    One last comment: The Secret Service seemed entirely too absent or passive. Particularly in unsettled times. 2 examples:

    1. President’s death bed scene. Situation: everyone in the world seems to know that the sick Pres doesn’t want the VP to take over. Yet the VP is allowed 1-on-1 access alone with the Pres? smothering witha pillow?

    2. Pre-speach to the Nation. Library scene: The VP is already a protected person. The old Pres is dead. succession is in question. Everybody knows the Speaker wants the job. Hell half the Cabinet are lobbying for him. The SS has to know. the VP, Hubby, Speaker and AG are sitting around and the Speaker orders everybody from the room? give me a break. The secret service would no more take orders to leave the VP in that situation than they would from Osama. It would take a direct order from the VP to get them to back off and I bet they’d fight that. In succession situations, my understanding is that the Service goes into full protection mode and the protected person doesn’t get much choice about security decisions.

    Remember 9/11 and the story about the agents grabbing Cheney by both arms and his feet not touching the floor as they took him down to the bunker? sounds like the scene from “Line of Fire” after shots are fired and they hussle the pres to the motorcade.

  12. Why I rarely watch the Big Three

    I tried, I really tried to watch the “new” ABC show, Commander in Chief. But at 23 minutes into the show, I just couldn’t take it anymore. The dialogue was inane, the initial storyline unbelievable, the acting abysmal, the director…

  13. Beth says:

    OMG, I am so glad I didn’t watch it…I would have been yelling at the TV, picking out all those stupid little things. Thanks for sacrificing an hour so the rest of us don’t have to! 😉

  14. Dan Ridley says:

    The other show Jeff was talking about was Battlestar Galactica. (He talks about it quite often, actually.) Mary McDonnell has been doing a fantastic job of the President of the Colonies. Still, I don’t buy his argument that a female president on a sci-fi show makes this one anachronistic… it’s the collagen lips that do that.

  15. 9:06 Now she’s directing the military telling them how to move around individual ships in the Med.

    That’s insane, it’s some kind of demented Liberal-think power-projection. Just because we call the President “Commander-in-Chief” doesn’t mean that they get to play “Batttleship” on a map and move squadrons and flags around.

    That IS what military Dictators do and I have to assume that the show’s liberal producers, directors, and writers believe they inhabit some fantasyland of Stalinist opression, but that’s not what we do or how we do it – no way.