President's Daily Schedule, Vol VI

Obama Schedule || Wednesday, January 9, 2013

10:00 am || Receives the Presidential Daily Briefing
12:30 pm || Lunch with Biden
4:45 pm || Hosts cast and crew members of the television show 1600 Penn for a screening at the White House

Live stream of Carney briefing at 1:45 pm
All times Eastern

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10 am start instead of 10:30. Improvement huh? Maybe he got reprimanded for showing up late every day. Oh wait...

So he's assigned Biden to come up with new gun control laws. I know I have total faith in Joe... what could he possibly screw up?

[video=youtube;C2mzbuRgnI4]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=C2mzbuRgnI4[/video]

 

Yep, that's our president alright. Keep it classy, Barack. What an embarrassment you are.

Seitz on 1600 Penn: So You’re Telling Me This Is a ‘Comedy’?

The new White House comedy 1600 Penn already has critical admirers, and NBC seems bullish on it; the network is running a special “preview” of the pilot tonight in advance of the show’s official January premiere. “It’s a dubious idea to give a ‘sneak preview’ of any series nearly a month in advance, but NBC might be doing the right thing with its new comedy 1600 Penn,” raved The Hollywood Reporter’s Tim Goodman, a tough critic who doesn’t usually go in for this kind of show. “That’s because no matter when it airs, the pilot will be funny. And the second episode funnier still. And the third as well.”

“Hmmm,” sez I. Humor is subjective, your mileage may vary, yada yada, but the first three episodes that NBC sent to critics did nothing for me. Zip. Nada. Ladies and gentlemen, I didn’t laugh once. And as anybody who’s ever read me knows, when it comes to dumb humor, I’m a cheap date.



1600 Penn is a sitcom from the minds of Jason Winer (Modern Family), ex–White House speechwriter Jon Lovett, and The Book of Mormon’s Josh Gad, who also stars as the president’s screwup son, Skip. He is the sort of character that the late Chris Farley used to play: an overgrown boy; bearish, manic, socially and physically inept, but good at heart. The pilot kicks off with Skip, now in his seventh year of college, pranking a frat house by shooting off fireworks on its lawn. One of the shells goes through a window and sets the place on fire, and Secret Service agents swoop in and stuff Josh in a limo to protect him.

The scene is amusing in the abstract, but it didn’t play for me because — as is the case elsewhere in 1600 Penn — it gives a potentially rich comic scenario the bum’s rush. Presumably the Secret Service has been following this doofus around for years cleaning up his messes. I immediately started imagining a series from their point of view, which appears (from where we sit, anyway) to be entirely neutral: observe and protect, don’t pass judgment no matter how badly you want to. There were probably other equally fascinating ways the writers could have spun it, but they went the obvious route: mild reversal of expectations as pre-credits sting. The fireworks bit would have fit right into a C+ Hollywood comedy starring a second-tier Saturday Night Live cast member released in 1995.

That describes nearly all of 1600 Penn, alas. Gad’s character moves back into the White House so that his family can keep an eye on him, and he immediately proceeds to make trouble for his dad, President Dale Gilchrest (Bill Pullman, here playing a veteran of the first Gulf War, as he also did in Independence Day), a standard-issue sputtering, beleaguered authority figure. We also meet the president’s second wife and first lady, Emily Nash Gilchrest (Jenna Elfman), who doesn’t like being called a “trophy wife” but doesn’t make a terribly persuasive case otherwise. Gilchrest also has a teenage daughter Becca (Martha MacIsaac), whose entire character is defined by the fact that she’s pregnant. An offhand scene explains that it happened at a party; I’d have loved to have actually seen the party and the Secret Service loitering at the margins, practicing a nonintervention policy but gnashing their teeth over the girl’s poor judgment. Whatever happened to the credo expressed in the Clint Eastwood movie In the Line of Fire: that the Secret Service agent’s job is to protect the target’s reputation as well as his or her safety?

I keep getting hung up on this Secret Service thing, and I guess that’s unfair to the show and a little weird, maybe; but what’s onscreen is so tepid and unimaginative that it practically compelled my mind to wander. The supposedly madcap shenanigans — Skip good-naturedly and improbably helping to negotiate a trade agreement; Becca hallucinating that every other word out of her stepmother’s mouth has something to do with pregnancy and lady parts — aren’t funny enough to compensate for not being daring enough, if you know what I mean. If you don’t, check out Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s short-lived but agreeably cuckoo That’s My Bush!, which pushed the same concept (an utterly unremarkable domestic sitcom that just happens to be set in the White House) so far that it sometimes resembled the Natural Born Killers sitcom parody starring Rodney Dangerfield. HBO’s current Veep works in the same vein; as I wrote in a Vulture review, when you watch it, “you may feel as if you’ve stumbled into a deleted dream sequence from I Love Lucy.” On the other end of the White House–themed pop-culture spectrum, you have earnest, quasi-realistic stuff like The West Wing and The American President, and such D.C.-based potboilers as Scandal and Homeland, which at times suggest melodramas plotted like slapstick sitcoms. The tension between substance and style makes all of these works worth seeing and having an opinion on, even if you ultimately decide you don’t like them.

In comparison, 1600 Penn is just a half-hour of your life you’ll never get back; Gad’s Chris Farley–Jonah Hill scratchy-voiced whine and man-boy cavorting dominate the series to the point where nearly every other character seems to be reacting to his presence even if they’re not in the same room, or the same state. This is lowest-common-denominator stuff; I’d say it seemed to be kissing the ass of its star if Gad were actually a star, which he isn’t yet. Pullman is reduced to making a series of constipated faces, Elfman’s bubbly weirdness has been neutered with a dose of network sitcom middle-aged female neuroses, and the rest of the characters are barely interesting enough to rate a mention, although Andre Holland’s press secretary, Marshall Malloy, sneaks in a couple of decent jaw-on-floor reactions to Gad’s clowning. The show is “clever” in a way that makes me mourn how far standards of cleverness have fallen. If it’s the best new comedy that NBC has in the pipeline, the network is in more trouble than anyone knew.

Then again, I thought The Neighbors was pretty funny, so go ahead, tune in, knock yourself out.

Source: http://www.vulture.com/2012/12/tv-review-1600-penn.html

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Anything for a photo op, eh Mr. President? Even if means hosting the crew of a sit-com that makes the office of the president look like a bunch of boobs.

Very fitting.

 

I would think that you people would love anything that inspires ridicule of the government.
Right-wingers have been trying to burn the US down for years now, bringing shame and ridicule to our country with their hostility, paranoia, intolerance, intransigence and ignorant hysterics.

 

Deflect much?

ROFLMAO

Obama is a sit-com... no doubt the inspiration for this zany comedy. The American Boob in the WH.

 

I disagree SMW. You see, the actor, Bill Pullman portraying the POTUS on the "1600 Penn" Sit-Com is a white man.

 

Then he's half a sit-com. Better?

 

Speaking of photo ops....look how the following President's made the office look like a bunch of boobs, to quote the OP.

 

LOL.... nah, it's not all about skin color with liberals!

You people are absolutely HYSTERICAL!!!!

ROFLMAO!!!

 

Did you ever find the dirty stinkin liberal that stole your sticker Ace? LMAO

 

What on earth does that have to do with Obama cozying up to the makers of a sitcom that pokes fun at the Office of the President?

All president's have hosted celebrities... but of course, none have been as narcissistic as this one... so he's probably flattered to have a TV show about himself. Except, since he doesn't really have many relatives, all the nutty relations in the sitcom must be based on his cabinet appointees.

 

The Rock Stars....Obamas. Pathetic.

 

More like the Erkel's...



Just can't fake class.

 

Romney didn't win, so you're wrong again.

 

I stand corrected. Barack is more of a falsie than an actual boob.

Thanks for the clarification.

 

More like a wuss...your avatar pretty much tells the story.

 

Yep trying. Only thing is the left has already beat us to it. The funny thing about that is...they don't even know it yet.

 

Well you know anything is possible now days. We may find out Ubama has more realatives than we know of. You do realize there are many illegals living here and for some reason the left nutheads want to protect them just like they do their nitwit leader. So he could have a long line of relatives here and even some still waiting at the boarder.

 

Did Obama cozy with the makers of a sitcom? Cause your original link didn't say that. It only says they sent the White House an advanced copy of the pilot episode. Now SMW, how many times do you let your fantasies cloud what is real and what is not real? And are you seeking help for this? I am only concerned for you.

 

Must be one long board.

 

Well dude...Obozo is in the WH and he still isn't winning yet. Don't get your hopes up.

 

Obama may suck ass. But he is more likeable then Romney. LMAO

 

Not from where I stand

 

Obama Schedule || Thursday, January 10, 2013

10:30 am || Receives the Presidential Daily Briefing

All times Eastern

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Slow down there, Mr. President. You could strain something working this hard.

 

The Obama cheerleaders are kind of funny......if he's so great, why does he need so much defending? It's like dating the wrong person and knowing it, but defending them to everybody, anyway because you were stupid enough to stay with that person. Entertaining, to say the least.

 

So, on a Political Forum, a place where people can come and have a discussion or debate. You would prefer people to not have a discussion or a debate? LOL