Sunday Night TV

The West Wing isn't what it once was, and I recognize the ongoing campaign (especially done a year early) is a pretty transparent attempt to increase ratings. And I think they are doing pretty well with it, in any case. But whoever decided last night to focus an entire episode on the wedding of a character that no one cares about was ridiculous. Having said that, the show wasn't that bad, but I just don't understand the need to have a "wedding event" in the first place unless it's for someone meaningful to the story. It just seemed awfully forced. And I would like to see a little more coverage of the Vinnick campaign as well. I like Jimmy Smits and Alan Alda, but I'm rooting for Santos, because Vinnick's character just doesn't seem the slightest bit realistic. An atheist pro-choice Republican may exist, but he's not running for President, much less winning the nomination, much less leading the race. Either way, watching the show always makes me sad because all the characters are better choices than what we have in real life (even Bingo Bob).

I'm still pissed that they have the Survivor finale on Sunday when the show airs all season on Thursday, and I may have started boycotting it for that reason, as I might have mentioned last year sometime, but now that I have my DVR, it doesn't bother me too much anymore. Anyway, it's always interesting to see how those people look in real life on the finale after getting used to how they look living in the jungle for all that time. I think Stephanie might be the first person who actually looked worse after cleaning up. Anyway, it was an ok show, I guess, Danni looked like she could have balanced on that board for weeks. Rafe actually looked fairly comfortable too, if he had paid attention to what he was doing. I didn't think Stephanie would do well in an endurance competition after how quickly she jumped off last year for a slice of pizza. I think Survivor does a good job of changing the rules (even if it doesn't always make it better) to make sure the show isn't predictable. it will be interesting to see how they implement that Exile Island next year.