We ARE Struggling Together!/Live-Action TV

Examples of We ARE Struggling Together! in Live-Action TV include:

• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine mentions that after the Cardassian occupation ended, Bajoran factions that had fought in unity against them began struggling for power.
• In an episode of The West Wing, Toby is assigned to show up at a town-hall meeting for anti-globalization protesters, who are depicted as people being more in love with the sound of their own loudly-expressed self-righteous outrage than the actual issues at hand. Within seconds of Toby introducing himself and being asked the first question, the audience start shouting over the top of each other, before the entire gathering degenerates into chaos and splinter groups in-fighting with each other. Toby, for his part, watches with amusement until he gets bored and leaves, everyone having forgotten he was there. Of course, this being The West Wing, he later goes back in and blows them out of the water with a speech we only get to hear about from Josh.
  • Season 6 of the show focuses on the build up to the party primary elections to decide who each party's next candidate for President will be. A key running theme is the fractured bickering between the various factions of the Democratic party, represented by three major candidates for President, versus the Republicans unifying relatively quickly behind their candidate. It culminates in a chaotic primary wherein no candidate can get a clear majority over the others and then one of the state governors tries to get themselves nominated from the floor, thus splintering things even further. Eventually provides a subversion in that the Democratic candidate who eventually manages to knock enough heads together to get themselves nominates ends up rallying and winning the election, albeit narrowly.
• Several episodes of 'Allo 'Allo! are based on the (historically based; see the WW II entry on the Real Life subpage for more information) rivalry between De Gaulle's Resistance and the Communist Resistance.
• A few episodes of Stargate SG-1 deal with the attempts at a Tok'ra/Jaffa alliance. Essentially, what it boiled down to was the Jaffa couldn't see the differences between Tok'ra and Goa'uld, and the Tok'ra couldn't see the differences between a Jaffa serving a Goa'uld and a Free Jaffa. This caused problems.
  • This was the basic history behind the Wraith civil war:
    1. Atlantis appears? Blast it.
    2. Not enough food? Blast each other so that there is enough for those left.
    3. Replicators killing our food? Blast them then resume blasting each other per point 2.
    4. We have some Atlantean buddies? Recruit them to help us with point 2.
• On Entourage, Ari Gold's marriage is about as turbulent as any given war and yet they've remained together. "When we got married we agreed to suffer this monogamy together baby!"
• In Yes Minister, Sir Humphrey argues that this trope is essentially how Britain managed the liberation of its former colonies through partition: in dividing the territories (such as Northern Ireland and Eire, or India and Pakistan), the idea was that they'd spend more time bickering with each other and less time taking shots at Britain.

---

Back to We ARE Struggling Together!