Will 'Commander in Chief' succeed?

Will Commander in Chief succeed?

I have no idea.

Commander in Chief is an hour-long show about the president and her staffers. It sounds just like West Wing, except that POTUS is a woman.

Let me shoot down your arguments:

That's a stupid gimmick. Seting up a show in which the entire premise is that it's a preposterous fantasy that a woman would be president is stupid. In fact, that scenario is not preposterous!

Fine, it's not preposterous. But neither was West Wing. Why does a show have to be preposterous?

It doesn't, but the show is billing itself as being a program about the extraordinary scenario in which a woman is president.

Well, first of all such a scenario would be extraordinary and unprecedented. Secondly, who cares how the show is billed? The brilliant show "Arrested Development" looks stupid in the commercials, but why should we hold that against it?

It's a stupid gimmick. No show with a gimmick can last.

3rd Rock from the Sun was a show in which a group of aliens come to Earth but avoid detection by taking on human form. That's a stupid gimmick if I ever heard one. And that show was very successful from 1996 to 2001 on NBC.

But this gimmick will wear away, meaning the show needs to be able to survive beyond the gimmick.

Look, Will & Grace was once a gimmick show that had a gay man as a main character. That show is now entering its eighth season precisely because it has outgrown its gimmick.

Fine. But without the gimmick, what's the point? We already have a White House show. It's called West Wing.

But what if NBC rejected Scrubs by saying, "We already have an emergency room show. It's called E.R."? We'd have missed out on a great show.

So you're saying Commander is going to be good?

Meh, it probably sucks. I haven't seen it yet.