Longtime MCC readers should know, putting it inadequately, that politics are not my thing. Tea Leoni is okay by me, but I knew ahead of time her new CBS political drama Madam Secretary might have a hard time holding my attention. I tried it nonetheless as part of the MCC 2014 Pilot Binge Project and found a fair number of upsides. For one, I enjoyed seeing the always-contrarian Zelkjo Ivanek rebound from the cancellation of NBC’s Revolution. Also: Keith Carradine is the President of the United States of America. It’s the sentence America wants and needs.

The pilot vacuum-packs the premise into an eight-minute prologue: when the presiding Secretary of State dies in a plane crash on his way to Venezuela, which of course isn’t a suspicious destination or accident at all, President Keith Carradine has only one replacement in mind for the job: Elizabeth McCord, a University of Virginia poli-sci professor who was once a deep-level CIA analyst. Sure, she’s retired from The Game with two teen kids and a huggable Religious Studies professor husband (Tim Daly, my favorite animated Superman voice), but who is she to tell President Keith Carradine no? So they loaded up the truck and moved to Wash-DC.

And that’s your whole origin story. The End. Fast-forward two months (!), and Secretary of State McCord is still getting over the move, still acclimatizing to the new work environment, and still rejecting the President’s insistence on assigning her an executive hairdresser. But then it’s crisis time: a pair of world-travel bloggers with a poorly thought-out bucket list have crossed the Syrian border and gotten themselves arrested on suspicion of being American terrorists, what with their spindly legs and their fancy DSLR cameras and probably their copious banner ads. The show stops tastefully short of a beheading ultimatum, but the ripped-from-the-headlines threat is unmistakeable. Does McCord have enough political clout to get those boys home and reconnected to social media without sending in a black-ops team? Because if that has to happen, this becomes a CBS action show called NCIS D.C. that requires five times the budget, and that can’t happen.

What follows is scene after scene after scene after scene after scene of negotiating and discussing and more negotiating and parlaying and struggling with doubt and still more negotiating. Talking and talking and talking and talking and talking and talking and talking and talking and talking and talking and talking. Some tension here and there, yes, but no one ever shouts or raises their voices much. Sure, the situation upsets the bloggers’ parents (one of whom is Kevin Kilner from Earth: Final Conflict), but no one gets really angry. There’s no outbreak of Glengarry Glen Ross verbal duels or any clever Aaron Sorkin sophistry. Everyone’s professional and calm and not once does anyone’s pulse reach the level of an outraged cable-news pundit. Maybe that’s your thing, but if I want calm and professional meetings, I can turn off the TV and go to work.

The protracted chatter has a few interesting participants. Besides the aforementioned Ivanek as the control-freak Chief of Staff, other faces around the discussion table include Patrick Breen, seen just the other day on The Mysteries of Laura; Bebe Neuwirth, the erstwhile Dr. Lilith Sternin-Crane; Geoffrey Arend, escaped from Body of Proof; and, best of all, Keith Carradine as the President of the United States of America. I should mention that before I forget. Behind the towers, special guest William Sadler (too many great credits to list here) is an ex-CIA field operative who’s a dear friend of McCord’s who harbors meaningful subplot secrets.

To liven up the discussion groups, there’s one scene not shot in a boardroom or on a DC walking tour; instead McCord meets a guy at night in the kind of 24-hour Catholic church that hosts so many clandestine meet-ups in TV or movies that you’d think they would sell drinks or at least install padding in the pews so the spies and mobsters and assassins could whisper to each other in comfort.

Much more interesting to me were the scenes falling in the cracks between the negotiations. McCord’s quick rise to power as a woman (gasp!) isn’t blithely accepted as ordinary status quo in a progressive near-future. Men’s faces shift and avert and squirm as she rightly asserts her authority and positions. The hosts of a very The View-esque show remark more on her hair and wardrobe than on her public statements. And it’s pretty clear that Ivanek’s character doesn’t see her as his equal, regardless of her resumé. When she tries to pull rank and he coldly puts her in place by telling her, “You’re in a system now,” his admonition strikes multiple sour levels. The workplace gender dynamics weren’t the pilot’s primary concern, but they’re definitely an element that I trust won’t be fading into the background anytime soon.

Favorite scene: McCord meeting with two speechwriters on her official response to the bloggers’ crisis, the three of them arguing over adjectives. McCord wants to put forth a meaningful message to the press, but one adviser tells her in all earnestness, “I just don’t think now is a good time for substance.” It’s candid and jarring, but from a foreign policy standpoint, she can’t fault that it’s the logical way to go. There’s also a fairly mature scene between Mr. and Mrs. McCord discussing the effects of the move and the radical career change on their love life, but it came off honest and real enough that I felt like I was intruding on their private conversation. That should probably count as a compliment. McCord also has a skillful epilogue with the King of Swaziland and his multiple wives that puts her male colleagues in place and sufficiently demonstrates why President Keith Carradine demanded her for the job.

If you were a fan of The West Wing or other political dramas from decades past, I imagine Madam Secretary might fall squarely in your TV jurisdiction if you’re not bothered by the idea of a woman in a position of authority. I’d be happy to stick around, but when I’m more interested in subplots than A-stories, that’s usually my sign to bow out. I cna see myself having a hard time sitting still for all the foreign-policy incidents and international trade relations and United Nations filibusters and whatever other headline-news homages are on the docket for A-stories in future episodes. But I could see myself maybe following along with other people’s recaps.

[MCC 2014 Pilot Binge stats: Minutes passed before I decided it’s not the show, it’s me: 45. For more information on the MCC 2014 Pilot Binge project, please visit the initial entry for the rationale, the official checklist of pilots, and links to completed entries as we go. Thanks for reading!]