Thoughts
I have been watching the West Wing for the first time today. I'm choosing to think of it as my treat to myself for getting all my essays in on time. Anyway, yes everyone is right, this is a fantastic show. I have been missing out on the pure joy that is watching these characters being incredible and idealistic. Although since it first aired when I was nine and I don't live in the US I do have some excuse I feel.
Watching it now is amusing in some ways and sad in others. For one the mobile phones are so big! The computers so old! It is rather strange watching a show like this set in the near yet distant past. Which, I guess, is where the sadness comes in. I'm only on the first season. Five episodes in. Its set in 1999. First episode aired 22nd of September. I would have started year five just a few weeks earlier. The next year my family would move to New Zealand for a year and the year after that was 9/11. Which I only really found out about a couple of days after it happened. I was eleven I didn't watch the news and my parents weren't going to call me into the sitting room to watch the people dying on telly. I remember 7/7 a lot more clearly but that isn't really the point. People say things like: 'That's when everything changed.' And its true in a way. But, I wouldn't say that my life has been significantly changed by the events of 9/11. Even after 7/7 I've never been scared. But now I live in a world where two dates have so much significance and have resulted in so much fear and badness. And that's permeated the world these past ten years. A date. And I didn't know back then. And I watch this show, with the optimism and the inspiring speeches, and... its like watching a red squirrel sitting in the middle of a road. Cause you know a car is going to come along at any minute...
I was going to talk about Being Human and how amazing I thought the final was but I think I'll save that for another time now.
Watching it now is amusing in some ways and sad in others. For one the mobile phones are so big! The computers so old! It is rather strange watching a show like this set in the near yet distant past. Which, I guess, is where the sadness comes in. I'm only on the first season. Five episodes in. Its set in 1999. First episode aired 22nd of September. I would have started year five just a few weeks earlier. The next year my family would move to New Zealand for a year and the year after that was 9/11. Which I only really found out about a couple of days after it happened. I was eleven I didn't watch the news and my parents weren't going to call me into the sitting room to watch the people dying on telly. I remember 7/7 a lot more clearly but that isn't really the point. People say things like: 'That's when everything changed.' And its true in a way. But, I wouldn't say that my life has been significantly changed by the events of 9/11. Even after 7/7 I've never been scared. But now I live in a world where two dates have so much significance and have resulted in so much fear and badness. And that's permeated the world these past ten years. A date. And I didn't know back then. And I watch this show, with the optimism and the inspiring speeches, and... its like watching a red squirrel sitting in the middle of a road. Cause you know a car is going to come along at any minute...
I was going to talk about Being Human and how amazing I thought the final was but I think I'll save that for another time now.