"My personal sense of the show was that the first half dozen episodes were too freighted with Presidential heroism."

"It seemed that every episode was an exercise in saving the world, with virtually no attention paid to the reality that even the most powerful person on earth – the President of the United States – is faced daily with the frustrating limits of that awesome power. Their were other issues as well, including overly melodramatic 'B' stories involving the President’s children – an eight year old daughter and twin teenage siblings (brother and sister), as well as a whole bunch of satellite characters who were truly under characterized and under served. Nevertheless, as fantasized as the show ['Commander in Chief'] was, and as much as there were elements in it I didn’t much care for, there was something fundamentally appealing about the show. It had a good heart. It wanted to be a hit, in spite of itself. It had real stars in Geena Davis, and the remarkable Donald Sutherland, as her antagonist....

"Donald Sutherland... had had strong opinions and feelings about every single word of every single script we wrote... And yet... [h]e was a delightful man, erudite and intelligent, and we often found ourselves engaged in deep conversations about world affairs, politics, and our personal lives. Geena was altogether another story. I would get long, detailed critiques of our scripts, and copious notes and questions about every scene she was in. Okay, I get it. She’s the star of the show. She’s being protective of her character. Fair enough. But I would almost always get these tomes about particular scenes on the morning of the day we were to shoot them. It was virtually impossible to carry on a dialogue since a) she was on the stage already doing the work, and b) there simply wasn’t time to intelligently debate and/or alter the scenes without stopping production.... Geena was severely undermining our efforts on her behalf, and it was clear that while she wouldn’t outright say it, she was definitely not on board with the direction in which I was steering the show. It was inevitable then, that the network started hectoring me about the scripts, in eerie lockstep with Geena’s objections...."

From "Truth is a Total Defense: My Fifty Years in Television," by Steven Bochco, which I just put in my Kindle, for reasons discussed in the previous post.

Questions I invite you to discuss:

Was there any sexism in Bochco's comfort with Donald Sutherland and resistance to Geena Davis? Do you think a powerful man might accept critique from another man but experience the same kind of contribution from a woman as annoying and chaotic?

Do women — or did just Geena Davis — tend to have a more chaotic, irritating way of attempting to contribute to a joint project?

Do you think that playing the role of President of the United States affected the mind of Geena Davis, creating something of a delusion that she could, even at the last minute, imperiously expect that things would be done her way?

Do you think that being President of the United States creates a delusion that you can instantly and imperiously expect that things will be done your way?

Do you think the actual President of the United States feels something like an actor playing the part of President of the United States and that has created something of a delusion that he's doing a TV show and a TV show President of the United States would act like a major film-star diva given a TV show where she gets to play President of the United States and acts like a big drama queen annoyingly, chaotically, and imperiously expecting everyone to go along with whatever spontaneously rises to the surface of her big brain at any given moment? (By the way, both Geena Davis and Donald Trump are people who claim to have a very, very high IQ.)

Do you think that the Trump presidency suffers from the same problem Steven Bochco detected in the scripts for "Commander in Chief" — and makes every episode "an exercise in saving the world, with virtually no attention paid to the reality that even the most powerful person on earth – the President of the United States – is faced daily with the frustrating limits of that awesome power"?