Spoilers Did Picard finally ''right the ship'' with Picard season 3?

Ah, okay.

 

Mrs. Landingham on The West Wing would occasionally get some nice scenes, but they never really did that much with her until

Spoiler: The West Wing Season Two finale

she died in a car accident.

Does that mean The West Wing was sending mixed messages?

 

I've never seen THE WEST WING, so I have no way of knowing.

And I mentioned in another post that there is some blame to be put on Paramount + execs or PR or whoever did those presses that helped put a spotlight on that disconnect.

 

I have to laugh because maybe my experience is way different but I grew up with trading cards and then the huge media push for various characters in the Phantom Menace, and almost every character got a special shout out and whatnot to promote the movie, even if they were there for 5 minutes with two lines. So, seeing things on a website I consider of lesser importance.

 

Threw this episode on while on my run this morning based on this recommendation and echo everything said here. This is a very nuanced and great conversation that covers a lot of ground and the varying opinions of the season and the final episodes as a whole. Gives a lot of time to and is very respectful of people who maybe weren't super thrilled and that needed to air out their problems while also giving a lot of time to people who got exactly what they wanted and needed out of this season. As said, there's a lot of callers on all the sides that are in line with a lot of the views here and share some of the stuff we've been saying here. Definitely worth listening to.

 

Constable Zuvio was a pretty decent part of the marketing push for The Force Awakens. He had two figures released on Force Friday. He appeared in a short story ahead of the release of Episode VII. Never heard of him? Well, according to Wookiepedia, he appeared “in roughly seven frames of the film during the Neema Outpost chase scene.”

 

Well, it's generally considered one of the greatest television shows in history, at least for its first four seasons when creator Aaron Sorkin was still the showrunner. It was nominated for and won about a million awards, critics hailed it, it was a huge hit.

Like Star Trek: Discovery, The West Wing features characters in a workplace setting in which there is a strict hierarchy. And like Star Trek: Discovery, The West Wing is primarily about some, but not all, of the characters in that setting: Star Trek: Discovery focuses on a combination of the commanding officer, the first officer, some but not all bridge crew members, and some but not all supporting crew members, and some civilians; The West Wing focuses on a combination of the President, the chief of staff, some but not all of the senior counselors to the President, and some but not all of the senior counselors' administrative assistants, as well as some characters from outside the President's staff.

The characters who are analogous to Detmer and Owosekun et al are the administrative assistants to the senior counselors who are not part of the principal cast or recurring guest stars -- they're day players whose characters are there for verisimilitude but receive very little narrative attention. But not all admin assistant characters are in that boat -- the character of Donna Moss, admin assistant to Deputy Chief of Staff Josh Lyman, starts off as a recurring guest star and then becomes part of the principal cast in season two. And the character of Charlie, the President's Bodyman, is a principal character from his first appearance.

So basically, my point in bringing up all this talk of The West Wing is that a workplace drama can star characters from a variety of positions in the workplace hierarchy, without that meaning it's a badly-written show. In short: Television workplace dramas do not have a creative obligation to center everyone who's higher up in the hierarchy. The Vice President on The West Wing is a recurring guest star but has a minor narrative role, for instance. And characters can be present without being developed without that meaning that the show is violating some principle of good writing.

 

Your Cult of Lord Terry Matalas posts certainly exemplify that.

Alright... I'll remember you said that the next time I post something similar.

 

*Happy May the 4th!

 

I’m sure you will. But I won’t get upset if someone calls me not cool. Already know that I’m not.

 

I'm on a Star Trek board, have done conventions, costumes and fan films. If someone calls me cool the lighting was bad.

 

You must have missed my laughing emoji earlier.

That's actually interesting.

 

Not really.

 

Hmmm. Maybe.

 

Before I met my wife, I was doing online dating. One of my comments in my profile responded to question about if you were odd or normal. My response was what’s normal? I kind of look at the concept of being cool the same way.

 

I feel like people are really reaching with their nitpicks about the bridge crew at this point and they just don't want to like the show. Now, there are valid reasons to not like the show but when you're complaining that you don't like it, in part, because minor characters have names and speaking roles I think it's a bad faith argument.

 

I see your point, and while I don't think it's always in good faith, I will speak up and share what I think might be the psychology around it. For many, watching a Star Trek show is pretty standard behavior, even if it isn't their favorite. But, when they really don't like it there is always a need to resolve the cognitive dissonance for why they don't like it. It's like the thought process is, "It's a Star Trek show; I'm a Star Trek fan. I should be loving this. But I'm not." So they try to find the possible reasons even though it just comes down to personal preference for entertainment.

A friend of mine told me a story that kind of illustrates this point. He worked in VFX and a lot of the producers he worked for didn't have much knowledge of the visuals and creating CGI. But, they felt that when he showed them a model they had to say something or give notes of some kind. So he would get odd notes like "Make the mouth brighter" or "flip the plate" because they didn't know how else to comment on the work.

I feel it's something similar here. I'm supposed to like this and I'm not; what's wrong?

 

Or...

The inability to give even the shallowest of depth to minor characters is indicative of how the writing has been unable to get a significant swath of the potential audience to connect with the protagonist of Discovery.

That maybe the reason the main character of the show has become a meme for being an over-emotional whispering character might be because they've based their plotting in bad cliches.

 

The meme isn't even accurate. @Richard S. Ta has been revisiting it and keeping track of crying scenes. Like Shatner's supposed stilted dialog that has been used in most caricatures and impressions.

 

Obviously not that significant a swath, since it's lasted five seasons (an eternity in streaming TV) and seven years.

Wait. Which is it -- does DIS fail to give even the shallowest of depths to its characters, or are all its characters overly-emotional? Which is it?