West Wing: I did not like West Wing last year, including its apparent attempt to solve one major national problem an episode and the now tired idea that season finales should involve killing off some disposable supporting character (and/or injuring a less disposable one). The fact it started this season off with a continuation from the finale, including a solution to the Israel/Palestine problem, led me to boycott the show.
After being annoyed at another subpar episode of Gilmore Girls, its continual desire to apparently punish viewers by departing from the show's usual fun tone (the grandparents are particularly calculating lately, and it's on some level cruel to them), I decided to give the show a chance. And, for one episode at least, it was good that I did. Wednesday's episode of West Wing was one of the best ones I have seen in awhile. It did not try to do too much, but set up various storylines for the future. It had some major conflicts that it worked into its character dynamics and had some nice humorous touches.
I must say that having CJ take over the chief of state position felt a bit like the time when Dr. Crusher took over the helm on Star Trek: Next Generation, down to the height of the characters. Still, she is one of my favorite characters on the show (some of them are rather whiny and full of themselves), and the net effect of it all was for me to basically say "you go girl" as she struggled into the job. Jimmy Smits also looked good in his introductory scene, recalling the days when he was on NYPD Blue, and I still watched the show.
I'd like to have at least a few shows a week that I can enjoy, which has been a challenge lately. Hopefully, West Wing will retain the refreshness of this episode. Oh, Josh's haircut looks stupid, and Donna in a wheelchair is a striking image. I assume they covered a bit of that already, but how she is handling it surely could make some good asides (the coverage of the aftermath of the finale casualties generally was good, which is perhaps why they overused the theme). And, the scenes with CJ and Margaret were very good too. So, yeah, I liked the episode.
btw David Letterman was on Regis and Kelly recently, a major event given the rarity of his public appearances outside his show, even though those two are often on his show (Letterman greatly respects Regis, for instance using his appearance to announce his bypass operation). I would have liked to tape it, but my paper only mentioned it on the day of his appearance. Since I did not read the paper until after the show was over, I missed it. I also do not watch his show on a consistent basis, so might have missed him mentioning the date. Things like this are so annoying. It is the trivial stuff that will kill you, I'm telling ya.
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Baseball: As the final awards are given, talk is in the air about the next step for various clubs, including here in New York. The Mets started off well by choosing a GM and manager who promise to give new life to the team and allow fans to hope for good things to come. A primary job for these guys is to find a few key players, including a first baseman, as well as perhaps getting something for Mike Piazza. Piazza is on a downward slide, and his catching talents (if retained, he will likely go back to catching full time) leave a lot to be desired.
I do not like the rumors of getting Sammy Sosa, who is another older player on a downward slide, is expensive, and has a bad reputation as to his attitude. The suggestion of switching former Yankee Soriano for Reyes at short is interesting, though I'm not sure why Texas wants to give up someone who had a good first year for someone injury prone. Reyes is young, but Soriano is not particularly old, and has shown more resilience. Let's see also if they can regain the defensive abilities they had in the late '90s.
The Yanks just resigned their pitching coach and replace Willie Randolph (their old bench coach, now Mets manager) with former player Joe Giradi, which is a nice pick-up -- he always brought a steady presence to the team, and many say he has managing in his future. The Yanks have turned into the Braves -- fairly easily finishing first, but never going all the way, though they did get further a few times since 2000. One problem, though Lieber (who easily could have saved their bacon, if given a bit of help) deserves more credit than he is now getting (8mil is really not a lot of money for the guy, who now is healthy, and could give them a high win total), is pitching.
The true problem perhaps is coaching -- the team, unlike the Braves, cannot handle imperfect pitchers. The Braves' yearly acts of alchemy shows that you can go pretty far with fair pitching, if you handle it properly and have a few gems in the bunch. We saw how useful Tanyon Sturtze and even Loaiza was during the playoffs. The team was embarrassed because their bats didn't close the deal as much as the failure to have just one more arm in the bullpen, but the ability to make use of cheaper but still quite useful role players must be part of the Yankees' philosophy.
As the team seems to be destined to spend even more money, it might just be the case that what it truly needs is a full overhaul. The Red Sox winning the World Series sort of forces you to think that way, doesn't it?