Breaking Bad, The Sopranos and Congress

Last night Plottie watched the first episode of Season 4 of Breaking Bad. Damn! That Gus is one mean chicken salesman! Plotnik really loves this show. It does not glorify meth, but it deals with the interior lives of the people wrapped up on the production line. And we care about those people.

But he only could watch one episode last night, because The Duck wanted to watch the Frontline about Obama's first year, when Gingrich and the Republicans decided to fight him on everything, just to see what might shake loose. The country is reeling and the Republicans say screw the country, let's sabotage the Democrats and get this man out of office. To Plotnik, this documentary was a thousand times more scary than Breaking Bad, and after ten minutes he had to leave the room. It was unwatchable.

Then he went upstairs and saw an old episode of the Sopranos, where Tony's sister murders her boy friend, that scumsucker Richie Aprile, and Tony and the boys have to get his carcass out of her apartment. Now, THAT'S entertainment! Plottie is thinking about starting completely over at Episode One and watching them all again. After many years, this is still his favorite TV show ever.

Breaking Bad and the Sopranos are violent, and don't even TALK about The Wire. They all glorify creeps. But they feel real, honest, and in their way redemptive.

Watching the Republicans and Democrats battle back and forth about the most inconsequential nothings, while avoiding all the hard decisions that only a united leadership could begin to deal with, is not redemptive. It is putrid.

OK, it's good to remove high capacity magazines from new assault weapons, but it would be better to get the old assault weapons off the streets, and better yet to make it a law that everyone who has one must turn it in immediately, and better yet that if you don't turn yours in and you get caught you go to prison for a long time.

It would be helpful to put an age limit on miserably graphic video games -- say 18. If a 12 year old kid is spending his day playing Grand Death Anthrax the parent pays a huge fine. Period.

It would be fantastic to actually talk about economic inequality in America, not just cajole Walmart to put up a short-lived big box store out on Third Street. Nobody has any answers to the problem yet, but a national dialogue about it would certainly be better than pretending the problem does not exist.

And this dialogue has to turn into a discussion about education and the sad fact that American schools cannot turn out the workers our own industries need. We need immigrants because they are better educated. And in this way we are able to continue on to a dialogue about immigration.

Or, we can fight about the mythical debt ceiling or whether or not Joe Blockhead deserves to be the next Secretary of the Silliest.

Fawgeddaboudit. Carm asks Tony: "What really happened to Pussy Bompansero?" and Tony itches a little bit and then says "Witness Protection." Yeah, right, Tony. Heeheehee. I love this show. At least it's just TV.