the live debate episode of the west wing aired last night, and i thought it was really disappointing. the episode didn’t have any sort of arc to it, both smits and alda came off as poorly rehearsed, and the writing just wasn’t up to the crispness of the better episodes of the show. whether you agree with the politics or not, one of the great things that happens in regular episodes is that someone will just lay out an idea in such a coherent way that it makes you wonder why that doesn’t happen in real-life politics, and there was very little of that in the debate episode.

i was a little surprised that forrest sawyer appeared as the moderator, but i was really surprised that they put an “nbc news” bug in the lower-right.