Playing Politics: Living Life in the Shadow of the Budget Showdown - A Critique
- Episode aired Jun 20, 2016
- TV-14
- 43m
Laurel continues her investigation of Dr. Daudier's death, while more citizens are infected by the bugs; Dr. Daudier's daughter and Gustav Triplette begin to question what is happening.Laurel continues her investigation of Dr. Daudier's death, while more citizens are infected by the bugs; Dr. Daudier's daughter and Gustav Triplette begin to question what is happening.Laurel continues her investigation of Dr. Daudier's death, while more citizens are infected by the bugs; Dr. Daudier's daughter and Gustav Triplette begin to question what is happening.
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Storyline
Did you know
- GoofsWhen the guy is in the MRI and is freaking out, the guy he was playing chess with was in the room with the nurse. The nurse then asks him to calm the guy down, and he goes in the room with the MRI. There are two goofs here! First, he would not have been allowed to be in the room with the nurse. Not being family, he would have been stuck in the waiting room. Second, if he were allowed in the room with the nurse, he would not be allowed in the room with the MRI machine while it was being used! No one but the patient is allowed in the room while the machine is running.
- Quotes
[musical recap]
Choral Singers: Previously on BrainDead...
Jonathan Coulton: Some kind of meteor came down / No one knows where it's from / They shipped it off / So they could study it in Washington / Guess what? It's filled with space bugs / Now they're loose and eating people's brains / Poor Laurel only wants / To make her documentaries / She's out of money / So she works for Luke, her brother / He's a Democratic senator / She listens to constituents complain / Gareth is working for / Red Wheatus who is a senator / A Southerner, Republican / A drunk / Government is shutting down / Until they find a work-around / Deal they make looks like a slam-dunk / But space bugs crawl into Red's brain / And start controlling him / He steals a Democrat / And flips him to Republican / The shutdown happens / And now everybody's mad again / Laurel discovers Scarlett sleeping with her brother / And it looks like Scarlett / Probably has a space bug problem, too / You know your day was lousy / When somebody's head / Explodes on you.
- SoundtracksI Love Em All
(uncredited)
Written and Composed by Dave Tough and Rowland W. Folensbee
Performed by Dave Tough (as Dave Tough Band)
Courtesy of Tough Daddy Publishing (BMI)
Our heroine learns how deep the back-biting and political gamesmanship of D.C. goes, and her object lessons were sarcastically amusing, though betraying the overall mean-spirited attitude of the show's creators. As a proud liberal (who had my dalliance reading the works of Ayn Rand and even subscribing to her Objectivist Newsletter back in the '60s but learned to resist succumbing to her simplistic ("The virtue of selfishness") propaganda the way so many D.C. biggies like Ryan and Greenspan did not) I reject the series' fake even-handed approach, pretending to blame Republicans and Democrats equally for what's wrong.
I concede the Dems love to exploit the Republican weaknesses, but there is no excuse for the reactionary anti-science, Bible-thumping right wingers' nonsensical and dangerous actions, and I wish the "Good Wife" folks would have the guts to call a spade a spade and simply make this (Norman Lear like) a Leftist show.
At any rate, the triviality of the "high-concept" here: explaining the idiocy of these clowns in our nation's capital as due to mind control, is painful to watch because in our real world there are real folk, venal and wrong-headed, who are leading us toward destruction. Just one example alone, the recent foot-dragging on funding mosquito-annihilation program funding by the Republicans, is enough to demonstrate that this gridlock and knee-jerk obstructionism from the Right is nothing to laugh about. And don't get me started about gun control: if I were President (or my old Ohio colleague Kucinich had made it) then confiscation of the 300 million-plus guns in our nation would be Job One. Let the gun aficionados choose a new hobby: I grew up as a stamp collector, and no one was ever injured by that fabulous and rewarding pastime.
Details
- Runtime43 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 16:9 HD