Matt the Great

Most Awesome Thing I Saw On TV This Week

"Mack, you are the first female president. If Moses had been a woman leading the Jews in the desert, she would have stopped and asked for directions. They'd have been in Israel in a week."






Those of us who have been on the edges of our seats since the 2001 cancellation of The Geena Davis Show finally got our guerdon when ABC loudly debuted Commander in Chief this Tuesday. The NYT copped an "alright-so-it's-pretty-good" attitude on the show, and that's most likely how each felt of the 16.15 million viewers who made the pilot that night's most watched show.

teaMMatt sponsored a party to welcome the spicy redhead's Next Big Thing. Nine guests attended and were, if I gandered correctly, disappointed to find the show pretty damn decent:

(from the E-vite e-sponses)

• "Its [sic] like West Wing written by fifth graders. POLITICAL FIFTH GRADERS!" --Ian
• "I also don't think women should be in MENSA, as they could never be as intelligent as men. AND Geena Davis is Fat." --Dave

Maybe Ian was right by just a little; the writers seem to have the right idea of how to do this show, but plenty of the gloriously bad dialogue you'd expect with this topic slide right into the final draft. Alessandra Stanley chose these as her most laughable lines of the evening for her NYT review:

[Donald Sutherland] assures [Geena Davis] that Islamic nations will never accept a woman as leader of the free world. "Not only that, Nathan," she retorts sarcastically, "but we have the whole once-a-month, 'will she/won't she press the button?' thing." He laughs nastily and says, "Well, in a couple of years you're not going to have to worry about that anymore."

But it was that gem up there at the top that commanded multiple DVR rewinds from the nine party guests, and that was totally The Most Awesome Thing I Saw on TV This Week.

posted by Matt the Great @ 10/01/2005