Rogue Slayer Law Student Lawyer with Snark Movie Fan

I've been enjoying this new show, although often I find that the situations are either too conveniently resolved, unrealistic in their premise, or a little, well, smarmy. But I do enjoy it.

This week I had a lot of issues, though.

First, the title - the name of the unseen hometown friend of Kelly the press secretary's folks reminds me too much of the guy on ER who held a grudge against then med student Carter and who spewed his pent up rage and frustration years later on attending Dr. Carter. I just kept envisioning Red Buttons being a figure in Kelly's childhood. It was a problem.

Second, Mac to this point has seemed very much above the idea of string-pulling or influence peddling. But now, without a moment's hesitation, she's giving a call to some big wig at Brown University in order to arrange the admission of a mediocre student, in order to appease the Dubidoux family to the point that they won't reveal to the press that her greatest enemy made some incredibly racist statements when he was a young, aspiring politician in the1960's south?

Third - okay, enough with the numbering - Nathan Templeton dismisses his youthful exhortations that segregation is godly and part of the divine plan as simply what he needed to say in order to get elected, then assures Mac that he finds such sentiment vile and beseeches her to look at his voting record as proof positive of his magnanimous and nondiscriminatory heart and soul - and she accepts it? I would have found it more plausible if he owned up to having bought into the crap pushed upon him by the society in which he found himself raised, but that as he saw more of the world and became a wiser person he saw the error of his ways. As it is, all he's saying is that even though he disagreed with it, he was pushing this racist bullshit because it was politically expedient. Which is worse?

Speaking of "which is worse," I have the following answer for Horace - the cheat is worse! Especially a cheat who hears a guy that he specifically warned his sister about getting involved with because the guy is a manipulative skirt-chaser subsequently spouting off about having had sex with said sister, but he simply assumes the guy is telling the truth, and then defends his own act of plagiarizing by way of an essay purchased from "excellentessays.com" by challenging dear old dad with, "What's worse - a cheat or a slut? And you're ashamed of me?" Agh!!!!! You're not only a cheat, but you're a manipulative, opportunistic, back-stabbing cheat who forged your mother's signature and tried to pressure the assistant principal into ignoring the fact that you totally bought your paper online so that you could go to a party. Ass hat. And Kelly's not interested in you, you big baby.

And what was with the crack about not being able to find anything on Kelly other than that before being the White House press secretary she was the Vice-President/President's speech writer, and how that this fact alone speaks volumes? These aren't unrelated jobs. I thought we already dealt with her qualifications in an earlier episode when her disgruntled staffer accused her of majoring in being on her knees at UC Santa Barbara while pledging Phi Psi or something, and she pointed out that while she was born in Santa Barbara, she actually earned her degree (nothing knee-related) at Princeton, and was Phi Beta Kappa. And by the way, you're, uh, fired.

So we're to believe that while Vince is out to select people, such as Kelly, with whom he's worked for a long time over the course of campaigning, the Vice-Presidency and now the White House, he was afraid to come out to his boss, the woman he's spent his career supporting to this point, presumably because of her various stands on many political and social issues, who is not some rabid right-winger but is an independent? So much so that he omitted anything about his being gay and HIV positive from his security application? And by the way - where and why do they ask that on the security application? Do they really ask "Are you a homosexual?" "Do you have any disease for which you might be scorned and persecuted by those with narrow minds?" And if they by some chance do ask those questions, do you think Kelly and other high ranking White House staffers would have gone along with his keeping it all hush hush? Because that's really going to work out in the long run.

While we're on the subject of the long run - Mac, you can't have your husband be an official top advisor who is out of the chain of command, reporting to you instead of the Chief of Staff. It's just not going to work. Especially when your husband still holds a grudge that it was you who was approached to run for Congress way back when, not him. You can't be objective when it comes to taking or declining his advice, you're too worried about hurting his feelings, he's too pushy about forcing his strategies down everyone's throat because you know they know you're married to the boss. There's also the fact that he forced you into giving him that job with his threat that if you didn't, things weren't going to work out professionally or personally for the two of you. Blackmail really isn't the best reason for appointing your Top Strategy Advisor. Unless you work for Nathan Templeton. He values blackmail much higher than backstabbing.

So Nathan has known all along that Jayne and Jim are involved, but he was okay with it? I'm not buying. Maybe when he thought Jim was in his pocket, but Jim's made it pretty clear where his loyalties are. And Jayne seemed right on with the blackmailing, espionage and manipulation - why all of a sudden does she have this soft spot for Vince and a soft stomach for outing low ranking White House staffers? Not buying it.

But other than that, it's a great show!
|