What Premise?

Sometimes I am truly amazed at how much I love television shows that are so deeply flawed they have actually developed plot formulas that go against the entire premise of the show.

If Dr. House is such a brilliant medical practitioner, how come he has never gotten a diagnosis correct the first time around? If MacGyver was really a great secret agent, how come he never realized he’d be much more effective if he carried around actual tools and weapons instead of duct tape and paper clips? If the castaways had really wanted to escape the island, why didn’t they just smash Gilligan over the head with a coconut to prevent him from bungling their many escape plans?

Despite the glaring incongruities, these are some of my favorite television shows. Not only do I want to see it, but I’ll watch with a mindless, giddy devotion equal to that of a preteen to a Jonas Brother or a MSNBC reporter to Barack Obama.

Perhaps this explains why I enjoyed the announcement of Senator Joe Biden as the Democratic VP nominee so much.

The Obama campaign is built on the premise that he is a different kind of politician—one who is all about change and ending political bickering in Washington. So the plot goes against the premise when Barack chooses a man who has been in the Senate since the Nixon Era and who is hailed as a “bare knuckle brawler” who will be ready to viciously attack the Republicans. Hillary even fits the campaign’s premise better, since a woman in the #2 spot would surely be change and there would be no better sign of an intention to end squabbling in Washington than by doing it in one’s own party. Biden may be one of the greatest public servants of all time, but he’s obviously been picked to plug holes (which is appropriate, since he appears as though he’s had much experience, but not much success, with plugs) and not as part of the greater vision of change that Obama's foundation of success was built on.

The Obama campaign is betting they can get away with what television has been doing for years, and that’s blind the viewer to the obvious paradoxes of the moment by making that moment spectacular. The speech he gave on Saturday was pitch perfect and the rollout was handled so flawlessly they had professional news anchors compulsively checking their empty inboxes like children endlessly amused by a game of peek-a-boo. Just like when my favorite television shows do it, the contradiction in provisos was muted by the power and entertainment of the moment and most seemed to lap up every moment of the plot turn.

Don't get me wrong: I absolutely love Joe Biden to the point of having a bit of a purely heterosexual man-crush on him. However, Biden is not a natural part of the Obama Show. By picking Biden, Obama is MacGyver showing up to the fight with paper clips instead of a handgun. It goes against the premise that he is all about change in the same way MacGyver goes against the premise of being the world's greatest secret agent. However, just like MacGyver, Obama may very well be good enough to be able to get the job done his own unique way, even though it doesn’t perfectly line up with the original idea that began it all.

(For the best of Biden from the debates, click here, here, here and here.)