In 2023, when Netflix dropped the first season of its trans-Atlantic political drama \u201cThe Diplomat,\u201d critics immediately spotted the likeness to an earlier, fabled series: \u201cThe West Wing.\u201d …<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In our household, we watched Season 1 when it launched. It was clever. The similarities with \u201cThe West Wing\u201d were obvious, but the substance in plot (engaging but not energizing) and argument (the gender gap is important but not compelling) wasn\u2019t quite up to the heights I recall from viewing all seven seasons of Aaron Sorkin\u2019s creations between 1999 and 2006. For \u201cThe Diplomat,\u201d created and largely written by Debora Cahn, we let our Netflix subscription lapse with few regrets about not seeing the second season.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Season 3 emerged, we were ready to renew our Netflix subscription and watched all three seasons with barely a pause. We soon found that the plot \u2013 and substance \u2013 thickens. Without wanting to spoil your thrills, let\u2019s consider two aspects of the writing, one of style (ellipses), the other of matters of import (geopolitics).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
First, some technical background to this technique: This rhetorical and punctuation device serves two purposes in writing texts. The first, signified by three dots \u2013 like this: \u201c\u2026\u201d, often indicates that the speaker \u2013 e.g., a character in a work of fiction \u2013 has paused, waiting for the thought to form. The second might use the same symbol, but some style guides recommend putting the dots in square brackets: \u201c[\u2026]\u201d. Such ellipses signify that the writer has decided to drop sections of a quoted text to concentrate the logic of an argument. It often involves leaving out clarifying detail or less important premises of a syllogism to connect the grounds of an argument to its claim of truth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Like TWW, \u201cThe Diplomat\u201d uses both to great effect, except that the second takes place in dialogue. … <\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/open.substack.com\/pub\/donnordbergwriting\/p\/the-diplomat-telling-a-story-through<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In 2023, when Netflix dropped the first season of its trans-Atlantic political drama \u201cThe Diplomat,\u201d critics immediately spotted the likeness to an earlier, fabled series: \u201cThe West Wing.\u201d … In our household, we watched Season 1 when it launched. It was clever. The similarities with \u201cThe West Wing\u201d were obvious, but the substance in plot … Continue reading Analysis: \u2018The Diplomat\u2019 \u2013 telling a story through what\u2019s not told<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-don-nordberg-is-on-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stourbend.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stourbend.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stourbend.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stourbend.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stourbend.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=134"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.stourbend.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":135,"href":"https:\/\/www.stourbend.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134\/revisions\/135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stourbend.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stourbend.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stourbend.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}