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Madam Secretary

I've confessed to watching Hee Haw, so I'm not sure why confessing that Madam Secretary is a very powerful show to me, is slightly embarrassing. I'm not sure why it's taken me 9 years to get to it, and I'm only onto season 3 today, but season two was a real serious season for me. 

Catharsis isn't a word I throw around easily, but I can't tell you how many different kinds of tears I've shed watching this show. Tears of meaning, tears of sadness, tears of joy. 

I know you're supposed to get value out of real relationships, and that fiction isn't really the central stream in your life.

I know it's made up, I know it's pulling at my heartstrings, I know it cuts corners, and could even be manipulative at times. It does for me.

It compares to West Wing. I'm not a big halls of power drama watcher, I'm not sure if there are other comparable shows after West Wing. Yes, Prime minister and House of Cards. I don't really know this genre. I, Claudius maybe. Shakespeare's history plays.

I find it disconcerting that the Philippines didn't actually elect a president who was pro-China. Sometimes I get confused about the reality. It wasn't confusing to have the Dalai Lama portrayed, he looked nothing like him, and looked suspiciously like various other Asian small parts in the past. 

What I do like is the interconnections. Some wacko in the USA bought arms from someone who's selling it in Somalia, and they're trying to get the big fish.  


(We have all 6 seasons now.)


Season 3 was pretty good, just finished it. Starting to feel a little formulaic and repetitive, but not significantly.  


Some of the dramas hit better than others. I'm rounding onto season 6 now. I really like the ethical stories and ethical dialogue. Reminds me of The Good Place sometimes, a show I really enjoyed, because I studied the academic subject of ethics in college, and have followed the subject since.


Season 6 is shortened, and we only get 10 episodes instead of 22, 23 or 20. TV weddings are hugely popular, and you can see why they happen so frequently. It's a natural denouement. It's a little rushed, dramawise, and there are other not quite hollow notes, but it's fiction about a fictional presidency, so it's going to have differences, right? It's not perfect, but wow, after all the bullshit we've been going through it was a breath of fresh air quite often.

I cry a lot more watching dramas, but this show really got me going quite a few times. Crying for happiness at the fortune of fictional characters, catharsis for triumph through struggles, and crying because it was just so darn meaningful. And crying because bad things happen to people, in fiction and in real life. Sometimes I think I just need the emotional release, and I'm not into breaking my hand punching the wall, and this was a perfect vehicle for me. Thanks you everyone who helped produce this great show. This show ended in 2019 and I'm finishing it 2023. It holds up 4 years later. I want to live in this timeline.

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