Watergate as Drama

As the Watergate hearings continue, I hear more and more jokes comparing them to “soap operas.” I think this is eminently unfair. Actually, I would rank them with some of the good middle-brow evening dramas —perhaps with Hawaii Five-O, Mod Squad, and Mission Impossible. (I don’t think they are quite up to Owen Marshall or Marcus Welby M.D.).

Of course, like most television programs, they suffer from overexposure. One gets tired of watching them. Admittedly, it’s difficult to fill up four or five hours a day with crisp and original material. This may explain the great number of stereotyped scenes (the bane of all television drama) that we are beginning to get on the hearings. By way of constructive criticism, I offer the following list of “Stereotyped Scenes” that the Committee members might want to consider avoiding in the future.

As the Watergate hearings continue, I hear more and more jokes comparing them to “soap operas.” I think this is eminently unfair. Actually, I would rank them with some of the good middle-brow evening dramas —perhaps with Hawaii Five-O, Mod Squad, and Mission Impossible. (I don’t think they are quite up to Owen Marshall or Marcus Welby M.D.).

Of course, like most television programs, they suffer from overexposure. One gets tired of watching them. Admittedly, it’s difficult to fill up four or five hours a day with crisp and original material. This may explain the great number of stereotyped scenes (the bane of all television drama) that we are beginning to get on the hearings. By way of constructive criticism, I offer the following list of “Stereotyped Scenes” that the Committee members might want to consider avoiding in the future.