The West Wing

Last night's episode about a potential nuclear melt down in Southern California was a thinly veiled analogy to the Katrina disaster. It was as if the writers wanted to show how a "real" President handles a disaster.

In the episode there are some pipes that leak at a nuclear plant and right away Jed Bartlett takes charge. He calls the governor of California and tells him that the Federal government will give California every available resource and that the area around the plant is now a disaster area. That's pretty much it for the role of the governor in the show even though in real life the governor is the person in charge and federal support cannot come in without the invitation of the governor.

The writers make it a point to have "one voice" in the disaster (as opposed to the chaos caused by babbling Blanco and empty noggin Nagin in real life). I had to laugh when Jed Bartlett asked if there were enough buses available to evacuate the people from the area.

The show also took swipes at nuclear power in general (Matt Santos' wife came right out and called it "unsafe"). As for what I think of nuclear power - to quote a great man, "Lord, we are especially thankful for nuclear power, the cleanest, safest energy source there is. Except for solar, which is just a pipe dream."

Last night's show also comes on the heels of the announcement that West Wing has been canceled.

Have you ever seen those commercials where the guy is working with a bunch of monkeys? I think that guy works at NBC.

They cancel West Wing which is still compelling enough to take a guy like me away from one of the biggest football games of the year and they decide to give Howie Mandel his own game show? Things are bad right now at NBC - so what do they decide to do? They're going to tinker with two of the shows that are already a success - moving Law and Order and Vegas to new time slots. No doubt - an office full of monkeys.