For seven seasons, the West Wing was therapy for thousands of Bush-weary progressives who fantasized about being governed by a Nobel Prize winning scholar who didn’t believe that high-income tax cuts were a panacea. Now that America actually is governed by a Nobel Prize winning scholar with a real domestic policy agenda, however, it’s time to be honest about President Bartlet’s legacy. While the ability to rhetorically shame conservatives made him an appealing fantasy, the substance of Bartlet’s policies ranged from uninspired on issues like health care to downright destructive on Social Security and education. Bartlet had a lackluster economic record. He gave away a seat on the Supreme Court to the far right, and he consistently favored symbolic cultural victories over real opportunities to make life better for American families.

If you set aside the budget-busting Bush tax cuts, George W. Bush was actually a better president on domestic policy than President Bartlet. So Bartlet expanded Medicare to cover mammograms and cancer clinical trials? President Bush actually signed a prescription drug plan for seniors. And while George W. Bush at least had the decency to allow his plan to turn Social Security over to Bear Sterns and Lehman Brothers die a politically embarrassing death, Bartlet worked with Republicans to pass a massive Social Security reform at a time when Republicans’ were single-mindedly focused on privatization. If the Bartlet Social Security plan had actually been in effect when the market bottomed out in 2008, millions of American seniors would have been left with no safety net to fall back on.

Besides trashing Social Security, the Bartlet Administration had few bold ideas. What was the Bartlet plan to ensure universal access to health care? Or the Bartlet plan to combat global warming? What did President Bartlet do to close the education gap between poor and rich children? Or to ensure that every child who does succeed in high school will be able to pay for college? If anything, his education policy was as much a betrayal as his Social Security debacle. Although the first term Bartlet White House had ambitious plans for education reform, the second term Bartlet wound up supporting school vouchers.

After nearly an entire term in the White House, Bartlet’s economic record was so dismal that it is a miracle he was reelected. Consider his attempt to literally defend this record before God (who he also calls a “feckless thug”): “3.8 million new jobs, that wasn’t good? Bailed out Mexico. Increased foreign trade. 30 million new acres of land for conservation. Put Mendoza on the bench. We’re not fighting a war.”

3.8 million jobs sure sounds like a lot, but at the time Bartlet made this speech, it added up to just over 90,000 jobs during each month of his presidency — far less than the country needs just to keep up with population growth. This kind of stagnant growth could be excused if President Bartlet, like President Obama, presided over our emergence from an historic recession, but the Bartlet Administration experienced no similar economic calamity.

Bartlet does deserve credit for appointing Justice Mendoza, but the Mendoza appointment is overshadowed by his egregious decision to appoint Justice Christopher Mulready. Mulready’s appointment came about as part of a compromise to ensure that Senate Republicans would also confirm a chief justice whose very personal experience with Roe v. Wade would otherwise make her unconfirmable. While there is certainly symbolic value to having a chief justice who once had an abortion, such symbolism will come as cold comfort to the millions of American families impacted every time Mulready joins his fellow conservative jurists engaged in a systematic campaign to rewrite the law to leave workers and consumers powerless against the wealthy and the well-connected.

President Bartlet had his moments — they just rarely had much to do with economic justice. Bartlet was a strong supporter of both gay rights and reproductive freedom, for example, and he deserves credit for negotiating a peace between Israel and Palestine. Ultimately, however, his presidency advances a very small kind of liberalism that appeals mostly to people who’ve never worried if they could pay their medical bills or if their children can afford college.

President Bartlet’s inattentiveness to the 99 percent cannot be dismissed because economic justice doesn’t make good television. Screenwriters could not design a better villain than James Clark McReynolds, the Supreme Court Justice who systematically undermined FDR’s New Deal and routinely referred to President Roosevelt as a “crippled son-of-a-bitch.” Lyndon Johnson’s transformation from southern segregationist to civil rights crusader reached a climax that literally brought Martin Luther King to tears. President Obama’s drawn out battle over the Affordable Care Act is riddled with the kinds of crushing defeats, unexpected setbacks and narrow triumphs that fiction writers dream of recreating.

Ultimately, the Bartlet Administration was a failed opportunity because President Bartlet never once sought out these kinds of battles. Protecting choice or welcoming gays into the military (something the Bartlet Administration supported but never accomplished) are important prongs of the progressive agenda, but a liberalism that’s uninterested in income inequality or ensuring that no American ever dies because they cannot afford to treat a curable disease is both a recipe for electoral defeat and a tragedy of moral neglect.

The most high-profile case may not have been voluntary or planned: CBS subbed in Ashton Kutcher for Charlie Sheen on Two and a Half Men, ending the latter character’s run on the show with a fast and not particularly deep workaround. But it came at a time when lots of television shows were deciding that setting and concept were more important than individual characters. The Office saw the departure of Michael Scott, and if the show has seemed creatively moribund since his last episode, its problems really began once Jim and Pam got together. The core cast of the show may change further if Mindy Kaling’s show gets a pickup at Fox, ending her run on NBC as Kelly Kapoor. While it may not be totally clear what’s happening with Glee next year, some of the cast seems likely to depart, whether for a spinoff, or for other projects as graduation approaches for some of the kids at McKinley High. American Horror Story was specifically designed, even if we didn’t know it at the beginning, to replace almost the entire cast every season. And while a new show the CW has ordered may end up following its main character over multiple seasons, its combat-in-the-arena storyline sounds like it could accomodate a whole new cast every season, if need be.

I’d imagine that some of this is driven by the success of reality television on two fronts. Audiences have clearly become comfortable with swapping out contestants and Housewives as long as their replacements continue to fill the same tropes as their predecessors, and in shows like Glee where the characters are more schtick than actual people, and where the structure demands turnover, it probably wouldn’t been too wrenching for audiences to see actors phased in and out. Making sure actors on scripted shows know they’re replaceable also serves another function: it makes the actors who really need the work less powerful in contract negotiations if they know the show is comfortable replacing them at any point. And phasing characters in and out makes it easier for big stars to commit to television shows without worrying about waking up fourteen years later and having everyone forget that they used to compete for Academy Awards. It might have seemed inexplicable that Connie Britton would sign up for a three-year run of eating brains and having ghost-sex, but as a season-long reset button that lets her remind people she’s something other than Mrs. Coach, it makes more sense.

What does it mean in terms of storytelling? I think that’s yet to be seen. While rotating casts do make most actors less critical in favor of setting, atmosphere, and the internal rules of the world that will govern all characters’ behavior, a few anchor characters will still be important. What bodes poorly for Glee and well for American Horror Story, to take the two rotating-cast-shows from the same creator, is that Glee’s tentpole is the increasingly unlikable and not particularly rational staff, led by Will Schuster, while Jessica Lange still has scenery to chomp as creepy Murder House neighbor Constance in American Horror Story. And the concepts have to be good: both Glee and American Horror Story, while neither show is my cup of tea, have concepts that provide procedural-like structures. Every week, songs will be sung or people will die horribly, and folks will turn in to hear those songs and watch those killings. All of which probably lends itself to a focus on episodic, rather than serialized, shows. It’s difficult for me to believe that anyone is tuning in to Glee because they’re deeply invested in and attentive to the coherence of Rachel Berry’s journey any more.

Does that mean we’re going to enter a period of sloppy storytelling? I hope not. Episodic doesn’t have to mean inconsistent. And moving characters along can give a show an emotional integrity it might not have otherwise. But if characters are going to move in and out of shows, the main motivation shouldn’t be to break the power of actors, but to tell specific kinds of stories.

If you want people to put television on their calendars, make television that’s worth the appointment—in every way.
Executive: Paul Lee, President, ABC Entertainment Group
Lee isn’t alone in recognizing this. But he was the executive of the press tour to point out that if you want people to plan their weeks around television shows, you have to give them not just can’t-miss plots but visual spectacles that they want to see on television screens, which have gotten larger and cheaper even as we’ve added multiple smaller screens. “I think part of that is we are taking risks and having fun and a lot of feature [movie] directors are attracted to that…that’s one of the reasons you saw Phillip Noyce” (the movie director who helmed two episodes of ABC’s Revenge and an upcoming episode of HBO’s Luck) “coming in. I think you’re going to see feature actors as well as directors.” The profusion of movie actors, such as Anjelica Huston on Smash, Josh Lucas on The Firm, and Dustin Hoffman on Luck, coming to the small screen in mid-season seems to be proving him right. It may not have worked for The Firm, which is floundering, but we’ll see how Smash and Luck do.

With notable exceptions like Avatar (which was also downloaded illegally with very high frequency), audiences seem at least somewhat resistant to the idea that there are things that simply must be seen on the big screen in theaters or on a decent-sized television, and that lose all their power when shrunk down to tablet, laptop, or phone size. Certainly, the skepticism of 3D, which I think is seen as a means of cash extraction rather than storytelling, is one indicator that it’s going to be tricky to sell folks on gimmicks. I’d absolutely argue that something like the Luck pilot, with its gorgeous color and heart-stopping horse races, is much better on a decent-sized television than on your phone at the gym. But if networks or studios are going to claim that something needs to be seen big, and seen in its time slot, and expect audiences to believe them, they have to have both the storytelling and the visual chops to back it up.

“Bitcoin for Dummies” was one of those episodes of The Good Wife that revolves around everyone manipulating everyone else. Unfortunately, since Will is facing the very real prospect of jail time and Eli isn’t in the episode at all, the machinations are grim, without the undertone of playfulness this show often gives even cases involving serious issues. To make up for that, though, we get double Kalinda, as she plays a central role in both the case of the week and in Will’s legal woes.

A lawyer named Dylan Stack, who has Treasury agents literally following him around, comes to Lockhart/Gardner because of Alicia’s past dealings with Treasury. (This show is one of the best around at remembering to let previous cases affect new ones.) The Treasury department is after Stack’s client for supposedly creating a new online currency called bitcoin, and they’re after Stack because he won’t tell them his client’s identity. At first, Will is understandably reluctant to take on a possibly quixotic and high-profile case against the government in the middle of his own tussle with the State’s Attorney, but the representative of the brave new world of virtual money has arrived with piles of cash, and we know that Lockhart/Gardner needs cash. Judge Sobel quickly rules that Stack doesn’t have to give up his client’s identity, but since we’re still in the first half of the episode, that can’t possibly end things, and it doesn’t: Gordon Higgs, the same Treasury lawyer Alicia dealt with a few episodes ago, promptly arrests Stack for being the creator of bitcoin himself.

Perhaps characteristically, Will wants to go on the offense where Alicia and Diane are inclined to defense. They try to argue that bitcoin isn’t a currency at all, so it doesn’t matter whether Stack created it. But after some back and forth, including a fun cameo by CNBC’s Jim Cramer as an expert witness, Sobel rules that bitcoin is a currency, basically because it’s transferable and you can buy things with it on Amazon. I wasn’t entirely convinced – Cramer made some good points about bitcoin not having many of the characteristics of currency, including a central regulating bank, and another witness’s comparison of bitcoin to frequent flier miles seemed apt – but at least this outcome meant we got to spend the rest of the episode watching Kalinda run around a cryptography conference in pursuit of the real inventor of bitcoin.

Kalinda eventually figures out that bitcoin is three people, not one: Stack and his two partners all accuse each other in hopes of leading both Kalinda and the Treasury agents in circles. The most interesting element of this is that one of the partners is a beautiful young blond woman, and Kalinda astutely points out that the woman could use her gender and looks to deflect suspicion: Everyone assumes that the inventor of a revolutionary tech product must be male, and it’s satisfying to see a woman turn this discrimination on its head and use it to her advantage. In the end, though, it doesn’t matter that Kalinda is being manipulated, because she doesn’t need to have the true answer as long as she can play Higgs the way she wants, and no one on this show – with the possible exception of Eli – can manipulate like Kalinda. She sets up (and “accidentally” records) a meeting with Higgs at which she promises to unmask the real inventor of bitcoin, and this proof that Higgs doesn’t really believe that Stack is the inventor leads the judge to dismiss the case. At their last meeting, Alicia tells Stack that she bought one bitcoin, but that it didn’t feel real. Stack responds with unexpected words of wisdom that could be the tagline for the whole show: “Real’s gonna change. Just watch.”

Will’s storyline this episode starts when Wendy Scott-Carr – with Cary and Dana in tow – meets with Will and his lawyer Elsbeth and makes yet another attempt to get information out of Will before actually starting legal proceedings. Will and Elsbeth neatly play her, acting completely cooperative while giving her no information at all. Elsbeth is being weird, of course, but at this point it’s barely remarkable – except to the people who aren’t used to her yet. And I think this is one component of her strength: in addition to her ditziness making people underestimate her legal skills, her bizarre behavior keeps strangers distracted, so they’re automatically at a disadvantage when they negotiate with her or her clients. As the State’s Attorneys leave, Cary can’t resist rubbing it in to Wendy that Elsbeth played her, and so Wendy orders Dana to use her leverage with Kalinda to get something solid. Cary looks sincerely concerned at this turn of events, and I’m left wondering whether Wendy just hasn’t noticed that Cary is one of Kalinda’s few real vulnerabilities, or whether she’s waiting to use that against them later.

Speaking of vulnerabilities, Elsbeth insists that she and Will have a conversation about his, but he claims not to know what they are. (This made me wonder whether Elsbeth knows about his relationship with Alicia yet.) He comes up with one pretty quickly, though: When he quit gambling, his bookie forgave his debt of $8,000; this bookie was a friend and Will later invited him to join his notorious judge-filled basketball games. Will realized that Wendy will paint this as a payoff for introducing the bookie to the judges, and try to find a case that a judge supposedly threw for Will in return. This is exactly what Wendy’s doing, and since everyone knows that Kalinda is basically a investigative superhero, both sides ask her to find the case that would best fit this scenario. She produces a case for Will (who claims that “Sometimes the ball just bounces funny”) and then gives the files to Dana – who is threatening to go after Alicia for fraud (in regard to the possibly forged document from last week) if Kalinda doesn’t help her. Since Kalinda is Kalinda, it’s not at all clear what she’s up to; I think she’s basically on Will’s side, although even that could be questioned. Did she in fact find the most incriminating case, or is she sending both sides in the direction of an accusation that will be easy for Will to refute? Did she doctor the file before she gave it to Dana? And how does the threat to Alicia figure in? Is Kalinda still trying to make up for sleeping with Peter – and to win back one of her few real friendships – by protecting Alicia at Will’s expense? Will doesn’t know about the threat to Alicia, but if he did, he’d probably protect her as well. After years spent coping with the fallout of Peter’s misdeeds, it’s finally something questionable Alicia herself did (since even if she was tricked into it by David, she went along with it in the end) that may have huge ramifications on the futures of the men in her life.

And there’s manipulation on the home front as well, as Alicia hears Zach and his girlfriend Nisa say “I love you” to each other and quietly freaks out about her baby growing up. When she suggests that the young lovebirds slow things down and see a little less of each other, Zach immediately asks if it’s because Nisa is black, hoping that his mother will be so horrified by the suggestion that she’ll bend over backwards to make it clear that it’s not true. Alicia sees through this one immediately: “You know it’s not that, so don’t try to pretend.” But Zach gets a break when, to get out from under Alicia’s supervision, he takes Nisa to Peter’s apartment – where his grandmother is waiting, as apparently she has nothing to do but lurk around hoping to catch other members of the family doing things of which she can disapprove. Zach can barely hide his glee when Jackie expresses concerns about his relationship in almost the same words that Alicia used, and he takes the first opportunity to tell his mom that his grandmother agreed with everything she said. It works, of course: turning into a mother like Jackie is one of Alicia’s biggest fears, so she immediately reverses her position and the restrictions on Zach and Nisa’s relationship are gone.

CBS is airing a repeat next week, so I’ll catch up with you in two weeks, when, if we’re to believe the previews, Wendy will ask Alicia under oath whether she has ever slept with Will. Fun times!

Kate Linnea Welsh is a New Hampshire-based writer and taxonomist. (No, that doesn’t involve dead animals.) She’s a senior editor at TheTelevixen.com, on staff at Vampire-Diaries.net, and writes about other TV shows, books, and more at her blog (http://katelinnea.blogspot.com). She’d love to talk to you on Twitter: @katelinnea

So, caveat! I am almost but not entirely caught up on the first season of Downton Abbey, so I am relying a little bit on Wikipedia for backstory here. I will be caught up by next week, but for now, please be merciful.

I really am struck by the atmosphere of creative destruction in this episode, the way the war clarifies and distills the characters priorities. I agree with critics who say that Downton Abbey is predictable, more a product of its genre than a subversion of it. But it’s the rare thing that both can be qualified that way and that is executed so strongly that it’s a bracing reminder of why these cliches exist and are powerful. Even when I can see something coming from a mile away, whether it’s a hand injured in the war, a maid’s disappointment or a nobleman’s wrongfooting, it still lands like a blow to the chest. And there are enough surprises that are true to character that there’s fresh air in it.

The walls between the upstairs and the downstairs were already crumbling in the first season, whether in Lord Grantham’s tie to Bates or Carson’s confession to Lady Mary that “even a butler has his favorites” after he reassures her that her life isn’t over yet. But the war’s brought them down in force, with Isobel as something of an intermediary. First, there’s Sybil, who, after realizing bitterly that “Sometimes it feels as if all the men I ever danced with are dead,” decides she wants to try nursing, and by extension, learn how to be a functional woman rather than an ornament of the aristocracy. “Have you ever made your own bed, for example? Or scrubbed a floor?” Isobel asks her gently. The scenes of Mrs. Patmore and Daisy trying to teach her how to do the simplest tasks, including filling a kettle without drenching herself, are kind, revealing Sybil’s foibles but helping her work beyond them. It’s fascinating to see Violet and Lady Grantham’s response to her desire. Violet, surprisingly, sides with Isobel, insisting that “You can’t pretend it’s not respectable when every day we’re treated to pictures of queens and princesses in a Red Cross uniform.” And Lady Grantham’s concern for Sybil ultimately undoes her objections: her daughter’s emotional well-being trumps her concerns with propriety. “I was worried about Lady Sibyl. But I’m not worried anymore,” she tells the butler. “Carson, the cake will be a surprise whether you approve of it or not, so please don’t give it away.”

Sybil’s road is easier than Lord Grantham’s in this episode. Upon finding out that Bates is leaving abruptly (after being blackmailed by his wife, who is threatening to expose Lady Mary), he’s injured, saying “I thought we were friends. I thought we’d crossed the great divide successfully.” But that sense isn’t informed by real work on his part to understand who Bates is. Sybil’s commitment to learning, to becoming a different kind of person, is vastly different than her father’s fall into misunderstanding. It’ll be fascinating to see if the war forces Lord Grantham to become a different kind of man, or even if he can, after learning he isn’t exactly being welcomed back into the ranks. “Today has shown me that I am not only a worthless man but a bad-tempered and ungrateful one,” he confesses to his wife. But will he live with that knowledge or use it as the foundation for a very different self?

Downstairs, things are more complicated. Carson is doing his best to hold on to old ways, not only expressing concern for Sybil’s future as a nurse, but keeping to the spit and polish because “Keeping up standards is the only way to show the Germans that they cannot win.” And everyone’s on edge over Ethel Parks, the new maid who’s replaced Gwen, who is not particularly shy about speaking aloud the dangerous desires of the heart. “I want the best and I’m not afraid to admit it,” she tells her colleagues. “At the end, I want to be more than just a servant.” It’s a dangerous thing to admit, and some of the other servants punish her for it. It’s not so much that the servants don’t have dreams, but to articulate them is to risk terrible disappointment.

Then, there are the trenches, where everyone’s uniforms are the same color. Courting injury to get sent home isn’t surprising, given the themes of cowardice and bravery that stream through the episode. But that flame in the darkness, the wait, the worry that it might be worse not to be shot than to be maimed were lovely and terrifying.

That said, I do quite like semi-goofy gangster stories and Steve Van Zandt, so I’ll definitely check this out.

But I think the show, and the other originals Netflix has signed up for, including an Arrested Development continuation and a House of Cards remake point to a larger challenge for the service as it tries to develop a brand identity. What’s been great about Netflix as a streaming and DVD delivery service has been its breadth. Whether your thing is violent motorcycle gang soap operas, workout videos, or great sitcoms of the ’80s, it had you covered. It would likely be easier for Netflix to dig in and develop a couple of great sitcoms, or one or two great dramas, or to decide it’s going to do a couple of anti-hero shows across formats, effectively deciding that it’s going to court a niche audience for its originals business, or at least one niche at a time. But it’s a harder thing to develop consistently excellent programming across a wide variety of genres, tones, and subject-matter tranches. I can understand why the company would prefer to try for that, though: after causing a lot of confusion and doing itself a lot of damage, I’d want a master-stroke to bring in new or disaffected former customers, and to make a lot of my audience very excited. I’m just not entirely sure how it’ll pan out.

If you extrapolated back to form a party profile from the shows with the most purely conservative audiences, it would be a pretty easy guess from the top three shows — Barrett Jackson Auction (which I’d never heard of), This Old House, and the 700 Club — that the party is old, and somewhat religious. There’s a Ron Swanson-like streak in the fondness for Top Shot, New Yankee Workshop, and American Pickers. And it’s interesting to see a semi-anthropological streak in the Republican devotion to reality shows about working-class white folks like Swamp Loggers and Swamp People. Conservatives may insist that progressives treat working people with a combination of curiosity and condescension, but there are no reality shows in the list of programs with the most concentrated liberal audiences. And The Bachelor, which has a pretty grotesque perspective on marriage and family values, is in the top 10 for conservative shows.

Looking at the shows with the most concentrated liberal audiences, it’s easy to guess from mock news shows like The Daily Show, the Colbert Report, and the Soup that the audiences skew young, and snarky. In fact, six of the 15 shows with the most solidly liberal audiences are talk shows, which one could say suggests a penchant for (not always productive) introspection. Shows about real and alternate families are big among liberal viewers, ranging from Parks and Recreation and 30 Rock to Glee and Modern Family to It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. The Middle is the only real family show to be in the conservative top 15.

The funniest bit is probably the list of shows favored by moderate voters. I’m sure politicians would love to find some leading indicators in those results. But unless we’re supposed to take a fondness for HGTV as an indicator that housing is the biggest concern most American swing voters face, there isn’t much there to build a platform on. Instead, we like semi-reformed rock stars and heavier public servants, stories about how men found their wives and women going bonkers of their dream dresses. Swing voters will remain mysterious and variable.

There are certain issues mainstream TV will always have trouble addressing, and there’s no use complaining about it; TV is basically a centrist medium, held back from taking a definitive stand on almost anything divisive. But that doesn’t mean every character has to be completely without defined political views. It’s often hard to tell what political affiliation a character has—even when that character is a politician. In an era when almost everything is politicized in one way or another, and even a schoolgirl’s tweet can lead to an incident with the governor of Kansas, it can be limiting for characters to be without opinions on these things. We don’t need to know who every character votes for, but there are story possibilities when some of them are Republican or Democrat or Tory or NDP. After all, when families get together, one of the things they argue about is politics; if you take that away, you’ve mostly got arguments about technology and sex. And as TV is currently proving, there are only so many stories you can get from technology and sex.

While I’d prefer a world where television programs weren’t afraid to have clear worldviews that settled somewhere other than the absolute center of the political spectrum, I’d rather shows have characters who represent a range of definitive political opinions than that they have no politics whatsoever. The idea that political neutrality or uncertainty is a default position, and that viewers will identify more with characters who have no politics whatsoever, strikes me as rather strange. Sure, when it comes to opinion polling, people may pick at random to avoid admitting that they’re underinformed or haven’t reached clear opinions on issues or candidates. But that indicates at least a sense that having an opinion is more desirable than not. If people are having even cursory conversations in their own lives about politics, there’s no reason to believe that they’d shy away from watching such conversations on screen—people both watch television and talk about current events for pleasure, so there’s no reason to believe they’re mutually exclusive.

And at the end of the day, viewers are going to like some characters more than others for all sorts of reasons. It doesn’t seem to be a vastly greater risk to float a character who has definitive political views than to put one out there who is so gratingly annoying (a la many of the supporting characters in Whitney, for example) as to be unbearable. The more television from the eighties and nineties I watch, the more convinced I become that the “technology and sex” problem Jamie’s describing is real: the aperture of what non-cable networks seem to think they can portray is narrower now than it was when Tip O’Neill swung by Cheers or Max ran for borough council on Living Single:

That’s a shame, and I think it’s one of the reasons the networks have lost so much critical ground to cable. It’s not just a sex and violence differential.

And it’s even more bewildering to think that people would tune in for Chelsea Clinton. One of the more admirable things the Clintons ever did as parents was to fight hard to protect Chelsea’s privacy, especially at a time when Bill’s behavior was inviting withering media scrutiny. As an adult, she kept to that pattern, working a series of bland private sector jobs and venturing out only to campaign for her mother in 2008. I looked at some of her wedding pictures (Hillary rocked a really awesome caftan in the days beforehand) in a cursory way. But the same preservation of her privacy and stringent avoidance of public life or public service that don’t make her a particularly qualified journalist don’t make her a particularly interesting person either. I have no idea what Chelsea Clinton’s unique lens on the world is, and nothing about the deal with NBC has made it seem like I should really care. I say this not to be callous, but to suggest it’s puzzling that the network would pursue a hire that invites disapproval without a clear upside.

It’s one of the few things that is an order of magnitude easier on a digital service like Netflix than actually popping in a DVD or managing a folder full of torrented movie files: the service perfectly maintains your place in the series, no matter what device you’re using, and you can just hit “play next episode” over and over again. Or you can easily scan for a rewatchable favorite. (Readers with kids know this is particularly useful.)

Full seasons of old television shows perfectly suit the pseudo-ownership viewers have with streaming video. You might keep DVD box sets of some of your favorite series, but you’re not going to buy the complete run of Cheers just to see what the fuss was about. At the same time, you’re unlikely to wait to bittorrent the entire thing or see every episode in syndication, either. It offers a service above and beyond what you can get with a cable subscription or internet broadband alone, for which a broad base of viewer are happy to pay a small sum.

But I think he could have taken this a step further: these services are particularly appealing and valuable because they allow you to do a big-gulp catchup on things you might have missed. If you’re like me and grew up without a television; if you’re an immigrant trying to pick up a bunch of American culture all at once; if your tastes changed over time and where you once cared about 90210 you now care about Roseanne, the ability to sit down and watch all of Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Cheers in an extended gulp rather than spread out over the years is invaluable. There’s no question that the Internet’s sped up and fractured the conversation around culture, as it has with politics and almost everything else. But it’s also given us tools that let us catch up to and participate in that conversation. Services like Hulu Plus, Netflix, and Amazon Prime serve up nostalgia, but they also let people join in a set of references that would have been inaccessible to them before.

Whom are we protecting by not allowing fuck on broadcast and basic cable TV? I love the word fuck. Words with hard consonants are so much superior to other words. And what does fuck mean, anyway? Sometimes it is a synonym for darn; sometimes it is used in a phrase like “fuck you” (and I don’t really even know what that means, I just know it’s aggressive and useful when driving in Los Angeles); and sometimes it’s used as a verb to mean copulating. But even in that last context, it is far less evocative of a visual image than what I had heard on 2 Broke Girls or the nation’s favorite comedy, Two and a Half Men.

It’s always been fascinating to me that “fuck” is verboten while “bitch” isn’t just permitted, it’s used with gusto. Unlike “fuck,” which as Polone points out, can be used in a variety of contexts, and with a variety of intentions, “bitch” has essentially no uses except to degrade people. If a woman is powerful, if she’s mean to someone, if she doesn’t want to have sex with you or the character who is standing in for you, if a woman is in any way non-compliant, she’s not just a bad person, she’s a stupid animal. If a man is weak, or grating, or obstructionist, or available to be dominated, it’s not just that he’s a bad person. It’s that he gets demoted a gender level, and then a species level. “Bitch” is a far more hostile term than “fuck.” The fact that the former’s permitted while the latter’s banned says a mouthful.

10:56 Alyssa: Modern Family wins, and this night finally draws to a close. A few general thoughts:

-The general lockout of 30 Rock strikes me as a good thing. The show’s gotten complacent and stale. I hope Tina Fey finds a way to move it forward this season.

-It’s really unfortunate that Modern Family has a gay couple that it’s explicitly decided aren’t married (and I know that’s true because the actors who play Mitch and Cam told me that at the HRC Awards last year). It’s true that Mitch and Cam are humanizing gay couples, but the show really should have taken that step if it wants major credit for being groundbreaking.

-Too Big to Fail is really wonderful. I’m excited to see what HBO’s movie division comes up with next year. I hadn’t thought about it this way going into the awards show but it’s the thing I think I’m most sorry didn’t get more recognition. With any luck, Homeland will take off, and we’ll have a show with some social relevance that collects some statuettes next year.

-Peter Dinklage’s Emmy win was a nice way for Game of Thrones to force the wedge in the door. With any luck, this won’t be Lord of the Rings syndrome, and the show will get broader recognition next year. If I was a betting woman, I’d tell you to put money on Maisie Williams, as long as HBO puts her name in contention. Next season should be amazing for Arya.

Thanks to Libby for all the help. And thanks to all of you for tuning in. See you tomorrow morning!

10:55 Alyssa: I really don’t think hosting an awards show is an entirely impossible task, but people manage to make it look sisyphean every time.

10:48 Alyssa: Mad Men’s win here seems unsurprising, a fairly balanced allocation of the awards across the board.

10:44 Alyssa: I demand a Downton Abbey-Modern Family crossover. It can be like the Hawaii trip! Can you imagine Sofia Vergara and Maggie Smith?

10:39 Libby: If I had to judge a person’s acting ability by how convincing their acceptance speech is, Kate Winslet would not fair well.

10:37 Alyssa: Not remotely surprised by Kate Winslet’s win for Mildred Pierce, but I highly recommend Cinema Verite. Diane Lane and James Gandolfini are very, very good in it.

10:32 Alyssa: Guy Pearce might not want to say he’s had a lot of sex with Kate Winslet given her recent divorce. Also, the thought of birthing an Emmy? Men, for your information: NOT HUMOROUS, JUST PAINFUL.

10:24 Alyssa: “Hallelujah” is not really an appropriate song to play to memorialize the dead when you think about it carefully.

10:20 Alyssa: Okay, I wanted Idris Elba to win for Luther, but it adds insult to injury that Barry Pepper wins for a role in inaccurate, rightwing history over William Hurt in Too Big To Fail, which is a fantastic, useful general interest explanation of the financial crisis.

10:18 Alyssa: When Amy Poehler wins for Parks and Recreation someday, I hope she gives her speech as Leslie Knope.

10:17 Alyssa: I’m always sort of pleased when the accountants get their moment in the sun at awards shows. Hollywood needs its bureaucrats too!

10:09 Alyssa: Here comes the British invasion with the writing win for Downton Abbey. Idris Elba better get a trophy tonight or I am going to be very cranky.

10:07 Alyssa: Jane Lynch. Please, please stop. You are not a lesbian because you hate men. Even the men from Entourage. This is terrible.

9:58 Alyssa: My teenaged, Early Edition-loving self is so ridiculously happy for Kyle Chandler’s win for Best Actor. I really hope he sticks with TV instead of movies so I can see more of him.

9:56 Libby: “Comedic” announcer guy is pretty much the worst thing that’s ever happened to things.

9:54 Alyssa: I know people were upset by The Killing, but Mireille Enos is one of the smartest actresses I’ve ever interviewed. I hope she gets a better season next year.

9:45 Alyssa: Lannisters pay their debts out of the vast number of awards they’ve won and melted down to fill Casterly Rock. Peter Dinklage rules. And almost makes up for Maisie Williams not being put in contention for her work as Arya.

9:41 Alyssa: Well, I’m glad to know Boardwalk Empire is dandy since I’m going to watch all of the first season this week to catch up in time for recaps. Thanks, Emmys! Also, curious to know what the other competitors could have done if they had his pilot budget.

9:40 Alyssa: I’m using Loretta Devine’s presence on stage to suggest that people see Jumping the Broom. It’s a really nice little class comedy and she’s one of the best things in it.

9:34 Libby: I like to think that Margo Martindale sits at home and listens to Foster the People all the time. Alyssa: First Tim Olyphant reference! All my Deadwood peeps drink and lust after men with impractical senses of rectitude!

9:31 Libby: Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose. A fantastic win for Jason Katims and Friday Night Lights. This win makes my heart hurt in the very best way.

9:27 Alyssa: The combination of Kathy Bates’ narration from a Harry’s Law monologue and shots of Dany and Drogo from Game of Thrones made me laugh harder than anything has all evening.

9:20 Alyssa: Jon Stewart is a national treasure but he should mix up the men and ladies in his posse on stage, particularly when people are freaking out about the demonstrated maleness of the writing staff.

9:16 Alyssa: We’ve reached a point in the evening where Jane Lynch pretends to slap someone who works behind the scenes and it’s supposed to be funny. Send humor care packages. And failing that, bourbon.

9:12 Alyssa: And here for a badly-needed dose of self-mockery is Lonely Island and Michael Bolton. I will admit to listening to “Jack Sparrow” on repeat a lot. Although, seriously, the ridiculousness of “It’s not gay when it’s in a three-way” is really not making me love this night any more:

9:05 Alyssa: I feel like Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock Holmes, saying “Bored!” every fifteen minutes. However, I am not shooting holes in my wall. A nice State Department family lives next door and I feel like that would be anti-social.

9:03 Libby: How many times per season do you suppose they say “This is what it’s all about” on American Idol? I’m guessing 300,000. Alyssa: I offer a bounty to anyone who will do a supercut so we can determine the exact answer. For science.

9:00 Alyssa: Jane Lynch is a wonderful gay icon but I feel like she is playing to a ton of stereotypes tonight. “Call Rachel Maddow and find out what time spinning is. Take the pickup in for an oil change. No, I’ll do it myself. And there was a third thing but I left it in my fanny pack.” I mean, really?

8:59 Libby: On a slightly feminist note, I’m disturbed at how much of reality television is apparently women beating the crap out of each other. Seriously. Men host things, women punch each other while wearing too much makeup.

8:55 Alyssa: Okay, crossing over Breaking Bad and The Office may have saved the night for me. Aaron Paul makes everything better.

8:51 Libby: Louie is changing the landscape of television and entertainment as we know it. I know that I should just be grateful that I get to experience his amazing work and that the Emmys even know he exists. But what would we be if we didn’t keep hoping for something better? For people to get the recognition they deserve.

8:47 Alyssa: Libby and I are both surprised here as Melissa McCarthy wins for Best Actress in a comedy. But McCarthy was so go-for-broke funny in Bridesmaids that I sort of can’t bring myself to be upset about this. “This is my first and best pageant ever!” is pretty adorable.

8:42 Alyssa: I’m sorry. I’m glad that The Big Bang Theory exists for the purposes of nerd mainstreaming, but Louis C.K.’s performance on Louie is a genuinely genius starting point for a conversation about American masculinity, sex, and parenthood. I know this is so sincere it should break this liveblog, but I’m genuinely sad and frustrated that it looks like he’s going to be totally shut out tonight.

8:41 Alyssa: Zombie Charlie Sheen: classy to the coworkers his temper tantrums blew up earlier in the year.

8:40 Alyssa: Jane lynch on her daughter’s tea parties these days: “They complained about taxes, called Obama a communist, and wondered how the Latina kid got in.”

8:34 Alyssa: “Thank you to my somewhat satisfied wife,” is, sadly, the best laugh line of the night.

8:32 Alyssa: Louie loses for comedy writing, and my heart dies a little bit more.

8:30 Alyssa; Zooey Deschanel is always so deer-in-the-headlights that when she has to act surprised about something, like these patently ridiculous fake lines, it doesn’t remotely register.

8:27 Alyssa: Now that Modern Family’s won everything, I am imagining a spinoff of Game of Thrones called Medieval Family. The Lannisters would destroy the Dunphys, though I do think Gloria could take Cersei.

8:24 Alyssa: So, we agree that this is not good, right? I think the only way this ceremony will be redeemed for me is if Idris Elba wins for Luther and proposes to me from the stage.

8:18 Alyssa: When I think about it, I’ve met more actors from Modern Family than any other show nominated tonight. Ty Burrell can emcee the heck out of a Ford’s Theater Gala, and because he got me through that event without going insane last year, I’m pleased for him.

8:15 Alyssa: Julie Bowen: “I don’t know what I’m going to talk about in therapy now. I won something!” This feels like the right win to me. Claire Dunphy is a great straight woman, and one of the least cliche mothers on television. Libby: I can see as many of Julie Bowen’s ribs as Modern Family has supporting acting nominations tonight.

8:12 Libby: Much of this makes me sad, because, oh hey, look at all those awesome shows that didn’t get the recognition they deserved and that I could be having a much better time watching on DVD instead of something as POINTLESS AND FRIGHTENING AS THE EMMYTONES!

8:09 Libby: My husband has spent much of the weekend watching old Emmy broadcasts on YouTube and showing me the worst production numbers from them. It is clear that this broadcast has decided to attempt a return to terrible form.

8:04 Alyssa: Jane Lynch would destroy Pete Campbell. Also, this totally bolsters my idea that Mad Men should end with Peggy and Joan in a convertible running off to a lesbian commune in California.

8:02 Alyssa: This is sort of making me wish that Entourage had done a musical episode if only to see Ari’s profound discomfort.

8:00 Alyssa: Uh, Leonard Nimoy is telling Jane Lynch she’s the “most logical” person to MC the Emmys because “To men, you’re womanish. To women, you’re mannish.” We’re 60 seconds in, and this has already not been a good night for gay people.

7:59 Alyssa: Hosts have already told red carpet guests that they want to tear their faces off and wear them in public. Now, one asks Laurence Fishburne “Is there any chance you could kick me, or karate chop me in the neck?” The red carpet is always a horror show, but this is a whole different level.

7:56 Libby: KTLA just asked David Spade why his shows never get the recognition they deserve. ::Crickets::

7:52 Alyssa: Revelation of the night so far. LL Cool J’s secret passion is the History Channe’s gator huntin’ show Swamp People. Which may qualify as an *actual* guilty passion.

7:45 Libby: Additionally, Paula Abdul talked to the KTLA hosts for 2 minutes and said the words “The X Factor” no less than 2 dozen times. I think she’s ready to run for the Republican nomination now.

7:42 Alyssa: Rob Lowe explains the Hollywood definition of catching up on lost family time: bringing your kids to awards shows they were too young for the last time you had a good moment in your career.

7:40 Libby: TWatching the Emmy broadcast on KTLA in Los Angeles is fantastic. They scream at celebrities from the sidelines and force them, not just to chat, but to awkwardly meet other celebrities. Thus far, they’ve made Steve Carell and Peter Dinklage chat inanely and Alan Cumming and Paula Abdul hug while a random blonde rubbed Alan’s pants. I LOVE EMMY NIGHT!

7:33 Alyssa: Jon Hamm promises more vampires and Glee crossovers on the next season of Mad Men and a nation of advertisers gets misty over the possibility.

But in comedy especially, the need to suggest that a community is watching the show has become less and less important. In some respects, this is an outgrowth of our growing sophistication as an audience. My generation is only the second to grow up with television always present in the home; we’ve been raised on setup-punchline humor, so it’s essentially impossible for us to be surprised by it anymore…It might also have something to do with the fact that the Internet provides an instant community for viewers. A relatively small audience may watch Community every week, but the Internet makes it easy for fans to find each other. We don’t need ghost voices to laugh with us when we have our friends online spitting out LOLs…

I couldn’t honestly tell you if the episode I saw being filmed was funnier than the pilot, simply because the atmosphere of the event had me primed to laugh at every little thing that happened. The comedian was an expert at getting the audience just revved up enough to be ready to laugh uproariously without exhausting us. The DJ was great at picking just the right song (or sound clip) for just the right moment. And down on the floor, the people making the show worked diligently to pull the whole thing together, tweaking lines we weren’t laughing at quite as hard as other lines, and figuring out ways to zip the performances along even better.

I think the bit about the Internet is exactly it; instead of checking to see if I’m in synch with an anonymous community, I can find out for sure with a clearly defined community that I’m invested in. Watching True Blood this season, checking in with my Twitter pal BabylonSista helped me confirm that I wasn’t losing my mind with rage. I check in with folks about quotations and nuances as I watch Thursday night’s NBC comedy block. In an age of niche television, the whole point is that you aren’t part of an ephemeral, but low-engagement community; it’s that you can find a concrete, high-engagement one who loves the things you love.

More than any other form of criticism, television criticism has changed. A small percentage of it is devoted to telling readers if they ought to watch a show or not, but that’s far from its most important function. Instead, whether writers are recapping individuals episodes of shows, writing meditative essays on the course of single shows, or juxtapositional pieces that put television in a broader context, they are setting the stage for conversations between highly informed—or at least highly opinionated—viewers. They’re the beginning of the conversation, not the end of it.

Franklin’s pieces are very good, but they’re infrequent, and sometimes oddly timed given that larger shift in how television criticism is consumed. She wrote for the magazine roughly every four weeks. The September 12 column on The Hour came out almost a month after the show started airing in America, and is behind a paywall, so non-subscribers can’t read it, and even if they could, there’s no comments section. This is a larger philosophical issue for the New Yorker, of course. Comments sections take a long time to moderate, and while I find it a joy, it is not everyone’s cup of tea. Similarly, her column on Terriers came out a month after the show premiered last fall—it’s too bad Franklin didn’t get to write a preview piece that could have championed the show and tried to build an early audience for it. If you’re going to be in the business of using criticism to get people to watch something, those pieces probably need to be published in time for the sink-or-swim early weeks of new programs. And the magazine has blogs for books, film, and photography, but not for television (though Amy Davidson sometimes takes on the subject), which really seems like it might be the most natural fit for blogging.

So as the New Yorker thinks about who it’s going to hire to replace Franklin, I hope they pick someone who can help the magazine move into the new age of television criticism. Whether it’s Todd VanDerWerff at the AV Club, who’s proved you can build a community and set a tremendously high standard for the discussions it has; Heather Havrilesky, whose big, synthesizing pieces have been one of the best things about the revamped New York Times Magazine; Jace Lacob from NewsBeast, who brings a fierce reporter’s sensibility to bear, figuring out how what we watch comes together; Vulture’s wickedly funny Willa Paskin; and I’m sure you can all think of terrific alternatives. But in any case, I’ll hope for the New Yorker think not just about the person but about the job description.

As I’ve mentioned, I didn’t have a television for much of my childhood. Later, when we did have one, the only shows I watched regularly growing up where Ghostwriter, Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego, and later, Early Edition. And while I don’t necessarily wish that I’d watched a lot more television, I do wish I’d stumbled into, say My So-Called Life when it actually aired. Obviously no medium is inherently evil, but I’d be curious about what y’all think is a good balance between television, books, movies, music, and the Internet. And more importantly, how do you make sure that if your kids are going to watch television, they watch good stuff, not just in terms of making sure they’re not being exposed to things they’re not ready for, but in terms of making sure they’re getting hooked up with good stories?

When I was in elementary school, I absolutely smoked our town’s reading contest during Turn Off the TV Week (now Screen-Free Week) mostly because I didn’t grow up watching television, and had no sense that it was a satisfying experience in comparison to books. And this is what I’ve never particularly understood about parents who pretend they’re helpless to get their kids to read in the face of other distractions. If you value reading, read to your kids, and read them not just dry, lesson-oriented stuff, but the myriad exciting, compelling literature that’s written for children and young adults. If your kids are into a book series, read those books so you can talk about them with your children. The Hunger Games may not be Tolstoy, but it’s not bad! Obviously, it’s easy for television or the internet to be hypnotic, almost narcotic, but kids aren’t stupid, either: it is possible to teach a preference for good characterization and well-paced storytelling in any medium. If you think your kids are watching too much television, their consumption is something you have power over. If you’re worried about them spending too much time on the internet or playing video games, make sure they don’t have a personal computer or a console in their room. Go on vacations to places without televisions or video games and give everyone’s brain a reset. Visit a minor league baseball park, where tickets are generally inexpensive, there are people in goofy costumes, and the crowds are friendly. We are not living in the Matrix. It is possible to unplug.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go chase a bunch of parents who say they love books but have no idea how to promote reading off my lawn.