Madam Secretary season 4 stars on relationship between show, politics

Just as there are more challenges for Elizabeth McCord on Madam Secretary season 4, there are more for the CBS show itself. We are no longer in a world where people are apathetic about politics, and there are certainly fewer moderates than ever. The writers have to find a way to craft stories here that appeal to people on either side of the political spectrum, and that is very difficult to do when each side has very specific views attributed to it.

Ultimately, one of the major goals that the show can have while holding true to all of this is to have people believe in something greater — that the government can work, and that there can be officials who are concerned more for helping the country than falling into a specific party affiliation. This is something that series star Tea Leoni speaks to in an interview with TVLine in setting up more of what’s coming up next:

“Certainly, the handcuffs are off. [Now,] no one’s going to look at this show and say, ‘That would never happen.’ That world left the building … So this is certainly a different endeavor than it was last season… I think our first season, the focus was more maybe on the aspirational side of the show in terms of the family, and the marriage. And now, that shift has gone to the politics. This is aspirational politics.”

Basically, the intention of Madam Secretary now is to show viewers that politicians can act for the sake of doing things right, even if they are imperfect and make mistakes along the way. Leoni’s co-star Tim Daly echoes this, while also reminding us of the reason why there are no political parties explicitly named on the show much of the time:

“We have a lot of Republicans that love this show and a lot of Democrats that love this show, and because the ideas aren’t labeled with a ‘D’ or an ‘R,’ they’re open to it. They’re forced to just listen to the idea and not dismiss it because of where it’s coming from.”

This is one of those ideas that really should transcend the fiction of this show and spread outward into other avenues of political thinking. Imagine how much better the world could be if we actually started to think of things more in terms of the idea rather than the person saying the idea. There are certainly many reasons to dislike certain politicians that are out there, but there are also many people who become predisposed to hate someone because of their party, not even paying attention to some of what they say.

Madam Secretary premieres on CBS Sunday night, and you can view some more scoop on the premiere here at CarterMatt by heading over to the link here.

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