Further thoughts on K Street
Apr. 5th, 2012 12:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
next_to_normalHaving now watched all 10 episodes of K Street, I have come to several conclusions:
1. I totally get why HBO pulled the plug on this one. While I found it enjoyable, if at times hard to follow, I suspect anyone outside the Beltway would find it completely incomprehensible. It's unrelentingly realistic (sometimes painfully so), but it's also insider baseball taken to the extreme. Seriously, it works better as a How-To guide to lobbying than as entertainment. I'm contemplating recommending it to my grad school professor as something to show in class.
2. It was already one of my favorite shows, but I have so much more admiration for The West Wing now, for managing to make politics compelling and entertaining. Because, frankly, from a storytelling perspective, the legislative process has the shittiest plot structure ever. Victories are few and far between - bills stall in committee for years, or they get derailed by idiotic side issues, or the thing you fought for gets traded away for something unrelated, not to mention that entire years are wasted because anything controversial has zero chance of moving during an election year - and even defeats don't happen all that often (and if they do, you can always try again next year). All of which means that not a single storyline in K Street ever gets resolved. Issues ebb and flow in importance, but nothing's ever finished. Which is extremely realistic (I know people who have been lobbying for the same issue for over a decade without success), but it does not make for good television.
3. Okay, this is what I do for a living. And I'm more aware than anyone that politics and lobbying aren't nearly as glamorous as Hollywood makes them seem. But it never really occurred to me before exactly how boring it is to watch lobbyists do their thing, lol. Basically, we have the same conversations over and over with different people until we can recite the pitch in our sleep. And then we do it all over again. And the conversations are typically so esoteric and "in the weeds" that we don't even understand half of what we're saying, and that is just not the kind of thing normal people want to listen to. Again, props to Aaron Sorkin, who managed to make a discussion of THE U.S. CENSUS, of all things, interesting and funny.
1. I totally get why HBO pulled the plug on this one. While I found it enjoyable, if at times hard to follow, I suspect anyone outside the Beltway would find it completely incomprehensible. It's unrelentingly realistic (sometimes painfully so), but it's also insider baseball taken to the extreme. Seriously, it works better as a How-To guide to lobbying than as entertainment. I'm contemplating recommending it to my grad school professor as something to show in class.
2. It was already one of my favorite shows, but I have so much more admiration for The West Wing now, for managing to make politics compelling and entertaining. Because, frankly, from a storytelling perspective, the legislative process has the shittiest plot structure ever. Victories are few and far between - bills stall in committee for years, or they get derailed by idiotic side issues, or the thing you fought for gets traded away for something unrelated, not to mention that entire years are wasted because anything controversial has zero chance of moving during an election year - and even defeats don't happen all that often (and if they do, you can always try again next year). All of which means that not a single storyline in K Street ever gets resolved. Issues ebb and flow in importance, but nothing's ever finished. Which is extremely realistic (I know people who have been lobbying for the same issue for over a decade without success), but it does not make for good television.
3. Okay, this is what I do for a living. And I'm more aware than anyone that politics and lobbying aren't nearly as glamorous as Hollywood makes them seem. But it never really occurred to me before exactly how boring it is to watch lobbyists do their thing, lol. Basically, we have the same conversations over and over with different people until we can recite the pitch in our sleep. And then we do it all over again. And the conversations are typically so esoteric and "in the weeds" that we don't even understand half of what we're saying, and that is just not the kind of thing normal people want to listen to. Again, props to Aaron Sorkin, who managed to make a discussion of THE U.S. CENSUS, of all things, interesting and funny.
