Lost in space

I got home early enough last night to catch the opening episode of the seventh season of The West Wing. I tried to follow it but was hopelessly lost.

At first I thought it was because I hadn't followed the series chronologically. I started watching it when it was maybe the third or fourth season -- you miss a lot of prime-time TV when you work nights -- and then found it so good, I caught the missed earlier seasons on late night repeats. Which meant that every time I caught it on TV, I had to first take a few minutes to mentally place what season I'm at, caught between a rerun/prime-time sort of warp.

So I thought that was the source of my confusion yesterday. Then, some full 15 minutes into the show, I realised that I was confused because I was mentally placing the characters in a different White House. All this time, I was trying to relate the goings-on to Commander-in-Chief. Different series (which I also enjoyed), different president, different staff, different characters.

Just one same old muddled brain.