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Librarians, among others

This is a site where we write articles when we have meaningful things to say, or share. When we want to bring shows to people’s attention, have podcasts we are releasing, but this is not a site dedicated to making sure an article is posted hourly or daily.

With that in mind, I found it hard to not flood the site with articles today, which felt ironic given we do not guarantee to write even 1 article every day.

While Sundays are not famous for being the best night on Television, it looks like tonight is going to be a very good night for a lot of viewers.

The second season of The Librarians, on TNT, is starting. While John and I have not yet recorded a podcast about the first season, we do have one about the movies that led up to the show, and this is another example of a show doing a nice job of taking a character from the movies, and world where viewers had come to understand the logic and how that world operated, and from those things a fun and entertaining show was created.

If you have not already listened to the podcast we did about the movies, now may be a great time to do so. Noah Wyle’s character is in all three movies, and recurs in season 1, and he and the Library itself serve as the binding threads if you will between the movies and the series. The podcast discusses The Librarian: Quest for the Spear television movie including a little about the other two television movies The Librarian: Return to King Solomon’s Mines and The Librarian: The Curse of the Judas Chalice.

Madam_Secretary_CBS Also on Sunday night’s is Madam Secretary, a show I do not write about often, but do watch by appointment every Sunday Night. There are several reasons for this, one of which is they way they blend stories that are “ripped from the headlines” with things that have not happened, and yet once they toss out the possibility, you realize how they could, and there is something enjoyable about seeing a working government (and yes, this show strives to show a WORKING government) strive to tackle the problem. This CBS show avoids talk of specific political parties, instead it has scenes where two people who really ought to be working together but come from different divisions of government make statements along the lines of, “this isn’t your time to shine,” or you aren’t on “my time” and later discover why our government functions so much better whenever everyone in those positions is working towards the single minded goal of the best America possible. (An idealistic view, no doubt, and yet one that perhaps we need to see if we are not to become to cynical to both survive, and find a way through, gridlock.)

Quantico - Parrish Finally a show I have not yet taken an opportunity to write about, in part because I am still forming an opinion on it. Quantico on ABC. If you watched the ABC show The Nine several years ago, Quantico has a similar format to the episodes — flashing back to FBI training 9 months ago in Quantico, while currently trying to solve the question of who is responsible for a present day terrorist attack, using 1 clue — a tip that the person responsible for the attack was a member of that class of trainees at Quantico. Their trainer Liam O’Connor, played by Josh Hopkins, is working the case in New York, and is convinced it is Alex Parrish (played compellingly by Bollywood star Priyanka Chopra), in part because she was found, unconscious, within the blast radius (ie where someone who had just set of the device might have been.)

Quantico - BOoth Why am I wavering in how I feel about the show? It is pretty solid entertainment, but most weeks it feels like we get the back story, or a reason to mistrust, yet another member of the trainee class. A bit expected to be honest. We are getting a lot of 9 months ago drama, which I am enjoying, but little in the way of compelling information today, few people being introduced as truly believable or viable terrorists, for me. I keep watching thinking I missing something, that they are giving me a set of characters I like, especially Ryan Booth (Jake McLaughlin) the one FBI agent that Alex Parrish is sure from the moment she knows she has been framed that she can trust. Part of me does not want one of Alex’s fellow trainees to have been the terrorist, and another part of me is begging the writers to have been playing fair with us as viewers.

In addition, I am particularly enjoying Yasmine Al Massri‘s portrayal of twins who are taking turns as 1 recruit, trying to prove that 2 people could go undercover as 1 person and share the responsibilities and role of an FBI agent. She has had some particularly good scenes with Aunjanue Ellis as the head of FBI training, Miranda Shaw.

Sunday has suddenly become an evening where my DVR and I are very busy… and very happy.

kay

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Madam Secretary has a full season order

Madam_Secretary_CBS Sunday night shows have long suffered from delayed starts after sporting events. It is, in many households, a joke that viewers wonder what it means about support from a network when a show is put on in time-slots that vary from week to week based on when the events earlier in the day end.

That being said, in this age of video-on-demand, shows that are delayed by sporting events, and other major events of the day, may suffer less than they once did as we viewers are now able to go find those missed scenes, whether they are from breaking news interruptions, or those infamous delayed starts. (And kudos to the stations and networks that run occasional crawlers announcing what time delayed shows will actually start so viewers no longer have to guess.)

Madam Secretary started the season in a tough position, airing on Sunday nights after 60 minutes, with start times that varied widely because of televised sports. Pairing the show about political events (national and international) centered in Washington, D.C., with 60 minutes may well have helped draw viewers… but I worried from the start that viewers might grow frustrated with it starting anywhere over the course of a one hour time-span.

Instead, the audience came to the first episode of the show, and the majority has returned week after week, even with episodes starting on the half-hour instead of the hour. Powerful scripts, well-written and showcasing the intricacies of complex events, have drawn an audience, with a strong cast knocking them out of the park week after week.

At the end of several episodes I have found myself wishing problems could be solved so succinctly, that governments truly could find a way to work together to find solutions to problems with far more moving pieces than I had initially realized, and grateful time and again that these episodes are airing, reminding me that there is more to the operation of a nation than it might at first appear.

Tea Leoni, Tim Daly, Bebe Newirth, and the entire cast are doing a great job on CBS of showing our government at work and working.

Madam Secretary airs Sundays on CBS @ 8 PM / 7 Centeral
And has been picked up for a full season!

Madam Secretary Applauding Cast tweet4-h_0

Madam Secretary (c) CBS, they can celebrate being picked up for a full season

Links:
Madam Secretary @ IMDB
Official CBS Website: http://www.cbs.com/shows/madam-secretary/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/#!/MadamSecretary
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MadamSecretary
Instagram: MADAMSECRETARYCBS
CBS Tweet: https://twitter.com/CBSTweet

Cast on Twitter:

Tim Daly @TimmyDaly
Patina Miller @patinamiller
Erich Bergen @erichbergen
Geoffrey Arend @GeoffreyArend
Kathrine Herzer @KathrineHerzer

Scandal vs. Madam Secretary

Madam Secretary continues to pull in a good size audience (well over 10 million viewers) each Sunday night on CBS, despite the fact that Sunday means audience members have to pay attention to sporting events and make sure they know what time the episode will actually start. Thankfully we live in a modern age where the crawler at the bottom of the screen is often used to announce exactly what time both Madam Secretary and The Good Wife will begin if it is different than what was announced in television guides.

So how does Madam Secretary measure up to Scandal? Both shows are set in the Nation’s Capitol. Both shows theoretically center around solving problems of great import and keeping our nation running.

The primary difference is that Madam Secretary has thus far focused primarily on big problems. Treaties between nations, treason, an operatives cover being blown while he is over seas and the decision having to be made does the government send in a Seal team ala going after Bin Laden or are diplomatic channels used to recover him. Complex issues are faced every week, and in the end someone, somehow, comes up with a remarkably simple solution. The twists and turns of the episode keep you wondering how these characters will pull it out, and how the real folks in Washington, D.C., get things done. There are subtle reminders not only about how much goes on that we will never see, but about how nations care who extends their hand first to shake on a deal, and that words matter in public statements that may well end up in the history books.

Madam Secretary can give someone unfamiliar with the workings of political machines a lot to think about. Scandal on the other hand delves into the behind the scenes in an entirely different way.

Scandal explores exactly what the title implies. The Scandals Washington, D.C. wants to make go away, where Madam Secretary is focusing on the events of their world and trying to cope with them. It might be fair to say where one is looking purely inside the beltway, the other has a much broader view, looking outward, where Scandal is exploring the hidden secrets of the lives of those who govern a world in which I’m grateful is fantasy, Madam Secretary rips multiple headlines at a time, turns them into an engrossing episode, and by the end of the episode I feel as though I have some understanding of just how complicated a world we live in… and why I am grateful I never chose to make a life for myself in our Nation’s Capitol.

For some, Washington, D.C., is the land of dreams, hope and potential, for others it is a place of back room deals, seedy plots, sequestrations, a land where two political parties take pride in being loyal opposition. Madam Secretary and Scandal are both imaginary works, taking very different perspectives on the same basic location. Where the President in Madam Secretary relies on his Secretary of State to solve the problem of the episode, in Scandal the problem of the episode needs to be solved by Oliva Pope, a keen problem solver, but someone who, in most episodes, is not a part of the political machine.

If you are watching one show, give the other a try. Both Madam Secretary and Scandal have a lot to offer in terms of making you stop and think about how Washington, D.C. functions, how you might wish it functions. Where Madam Secretary highlights the complexities and details of politics and makes me marvel that anyone survives treading in those waters Scandal makes me particularly glad that is not the world we live in.

Madam Secretary airs Sunday nights on CBS.
Scandal airs Thursday nights on ABC

Madam Secretary – Sundays on CBS

Madam_Secretary_CBS

When I tuned in to the first episode of Madam Secretary, starring Téa Leoni as newly-appointed Secretary Of State Elizabeth McCord I am not sure what I was expecting. Politics in Washington D.C. should be a given. A President (Keith Carradine) I would wonder if I had voted for or if these writers were crazy to have decided to put in the White House? Possibly.

What I was not expecting was an intriguing home life that would keep Elizabeth McCord grounded and extraordinarily human. Tim Daly, as her college-professor husband Henry McCord does not press her to violate confidentiality, and yet manages to give her advice and help her think through problems… and in a very true married couple moment realizes he is not finding the right words to tell his wife both what she needs to hear and what he genuinely wants to say so he simply asks her “tell me what to say!” And the moment works.

Their children, Alison (Kathrine Herzer) and Jason (Evan Roe) are further used to drive home the point that these are real people, well and realistically used to frustrate their parents, try their parents patience and yet not come across as brats but simply as teenagers struggling to grow into adulthood in modern America.

Elizabeth McCord is a qualified candidate for the role of Secretary of State, who knows the role, who knows the players in Washington, who knows what she wants to accomplish, and understands diplomacy and leaders and leadership as her meal with the King of Swaziland so beautifully shows.

If I was expecting a by the numbers Washington D.C. show, that would explain why I found myself watching something else entirely, because this was compelling real world drama that had politics in it, but was not about political parties trying to obstruct one another, rather it was about running our country.

I am unsure where the dynamic between a few characters is going, and there is the potential that a few things I will not like is going to happen — but sometimes that is part of the fun in watching a show like this. There is a reason for that expression ‘character you love to hate’. Sometimes it works. Time will tell if this is one of those cases, or not.

For now, I am glad I tuned in to the first episode, and I will continue watching, eager to see how the events unfold in this variation on our nation’s capitol.