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S04E15 She Lives in a Showplace Penthouse

Daniel Avery

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I actually think the reason they almost never mention the political party of any TV candidate/politician is because the actual members of that party might object to the actions of that fictional character being identified with their party. Writers often include politicians in plotlines to write stories of corruption, abuse of power, vanity, etc. and they might not really like their party being characterized that way by fiction writers. So rather than pick a fight, they just gloss over party affiliation. If you come down on one side or the other in a non-political show, you immediately alienate half your audience, so smarter producers just gloss over it all.

In season one they had a line or two of dialogue that pretty much confirmed what we all believed regarding their personal politics, as Celia and Blake were in the midst of some marital strife. In front of the press, she said that Blake's company was going to do some outreach to "what you call those s#it-hole countries" (a contemporary reference to something President Trump had said about poor countries overseas), equating Blake's outlook toward the third world to Trump's. It was a throwaway line that did an effective job of letting us know how the two existed on opposite sides of the political divide, made even sharper when one recalls Celia was from "one of those countries".
 

Grant Jennings

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I actually think the reason they almost never mention the political party of any TV candidate/politician is because the actual members of that party might object to the actions of that fictional character being identified with their party. Writers often include politicians in plotlines to write stories of corruption, abuse of power, vanity, etc. and they might not really like their party being characterized that way by fiction writers. So rather than pick a fight, they just gloss over party affiliation. If you come down on one side or the other in a non-political show, you immediately alienate half your audience, so smarter producers just gloss over it all.

In season one they had a line or two of dialogue that pretty much confirmed what we all believed regarding their personal politics, as Celia and Blake were in the midst of some marital strife. In front of the press, she said that Blake's company was going to do some outreach to "what you call those s#it-hole countries" (a contemporary reference to something President Trump had said about poor countries overseas), equating Blake's outlook toward the third world to Trump's. It was a throwaway line that did an effective job of letting us know how the two existed on opposite sides of the political divide, made even sharper when one recalls Celia was from "one of those countries".
Fallon once mentioned that Blake voted for Trump (I don't think his name was said but it was clear who she meant), she didn't agree with his choice.

I remember a scene on Dallas where J.R. and Sue Ellen were attending a fund raiser for a political candidate and Sue Ellen asked J.R. why he was supporting a candidate from that party; J.R. said he only supported him because he was a shoe-in.

It amuses me that TV can depict characters who are clearly of one political party or the other (Archie Bunker and Michael Stivic) but are loathe to mention their actual party affiliations.
 

Daniel Avery

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There was a CBS daytime soap opera in the 1980s, Capitol, which was set in Washington, DC and concerned two politically-connected core families (dynasties, if you will)---Senators, Congressmen, etc.---and for the entire run they had to do this whole dance around which parties they belonged to. It made the series a lot less "genuine" when they had to avoid all references to "real" American political events and the politicians who ran the town.
 
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