Remembering when watching X-Files was about paranoia fantasy and West Wing was about liberal fantasy, and now realising in 2025 that one would become a better guide to US politics than the other.
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Its Babylon 5 being relevant which shakes me.
aug 27, 2025, 11:07 pm • 13 0 • view
But do we even have a Sheridan?
aug 28, 2025, 8:57 am • 1 0 • view
See also King Ralph
aug 28, 2025, 7:20 am • 1 0 • view
The West Wing may turn out to be the most politically damaging programme ever aired, in giving so many such unrealistic expectations of politics.
aug 28, 2025, 8:04 am • 102 10 • view
I dunno, the Sorkin era has liberals in their fantasy achieve… nothing really. The best bits, for me, are when Danny & Bruno - at different points - rip into the Bartlet admin for limiting themselves to “well-intentioned defense” & cowering in the face of republicans, saying “please don’t hurt me.”
aug 28, 2025, 8:15 am • 4 0 • view
Maybe, but I doubt that anything is as damaging as the fiction that you can learn what people want/think from surveys.
aug 28, 2025, 8:24 am • 0 0 • view
Even Veep is starting to look oddly optimistic, in hindsight.
aug 28, 2025, 10:06 am • 2 0 • view
See also The Paper Chase for law.
aug 28, 2025, 8:55 am • 1 0 • view
For fiction works maybe, but otherwise there's nothing quite like The Apprentice... Trump Sugar Hopkins Skinner Manigault
aug 28, 2025, 9:08 am • 0 0 • view
Needs a sequel: The Wild West Wing
aug 28, 2025, 8:05 am • 0 0 • view
The West Winged.
aug 28, 2025, 8:06 am • 0 0 • view
West Wing with a Vengeance. About some guy (if not Simon, let's call him Donald) extorting a major US city on the East Coast, demanding a series of odd performative acts - or else.
aug 28, 2025, 8:41 am • 1 0 • view
I gave up after about 2 seasons. Watching it while Bush invaded Iraq was just too much.
aug 28, 2025, 8:42 am • 0 0 • view
Seconded here by an American pundit and political consultant:
aug 28, 2025, 11:45 am • 1 0 • view
not having watched either I have no idea where this is going to
aug 27, 2025, 11:10 pm • 0 0 • view
The way the X Files hinged on there being one quirky agent who... didn't trust the government?! ...is a starting point hard to imagine now.
aug 28, 2025, 8:09 am • 2 0 • view
Don't forget The Simpsons www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhwd...
aug 28, 2025, 1:13 pm • 0 0 • view
It's what the X-Files reboot got wrong for me. Mulder should've been a broken man in a bedsit yelling at a world that didn't really care about the truth after all, thankyouverymuch.
aug 28, 2025, 9:52 am • 3 0 • view
Leo and Bartlett would entertain Mulder's theories on that day they let in the oddballs to make presentations for funding, while Scully would run rings around Sam, Toby, and Josh.
aug 28, 2025, 2:43 am • 3 1 • view
Conspiracy fiction in the 90s was still fun, because there was an implicit understanding that only a minority of weirdoes actually believed that stuff, and that the majority of the population had a firm hold on what was real...
aug 28, 2025, 7:49 am • 4 0 • view