Show Type: Sitcom
First Telecast: March 7, 1992
Last Telecast: June 19, 1993
Theme Music: "The Powers That Be," written by Marvin Hamlisch and Alan & Marilyn Bergman; sung by Stephen Bishop
Executive Producer: Norman Lear
Cast
Senator William Powers..... John Forsythe
Margaret Powers..... Holland Taylor
Caitlyn Van Horne..... Valerie Mahaffey
Republican Theodore Van Horne..... David Hyde Pierce
Pierce Van Horne..... Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Sophie Lipkin..... Robin Bartlett
Jordan Miller..... Eve Gordon
Bradley Grist..... Peter MacNicol
Charlotte..... Elizabeth Berridge
SYNOPSIS
This TV series came about after the Democratic setbacks in the 1994 congressional elections and made a mockery of Washington insiders. It even featured an idiotic Democratic senator and his dysfunctional family.
Senator William Powers was a very charming, distinguished-looking ally of Bill Clinton and a 26-year veteran of Capitol Hill. He was harmless by himself since he didn't have a clue as to what was going on around him, but his manipulative family and staff were quite a different story.
His family and staff members included: Margaret, his status-obsessed wife; Caitlyn his vain, neurotic daughter; Theodore, his suicidal son-in-law **(in one episode, he was shown standing on a desk preparing to hang himself. He put the noose around his neck and, as he falls safely to the floor, the curtains behind the desk fly up and open!); Jordan, his scheming administrative assistant and mistress; Bradley, his counterscheming, incompetent press secretary and Charlotte, the skinny, bumbling maid, who was close to having an affair with Theodore.
The only "normal" people around the Powers' elegant townhouse were Sophie, the senators' illegitimate daughter from a wartime affair and a breath of fresh air with her straight-forward New York City opinions and Pierce, Caitlyn and Theodore's young son, whom they dressed like Little Lord Fauntleroy (just in case the papparazzi was around) but who just wanted to be a normal kid.
Stories revolved around the family and staff's efforts to boost the senator's declining image and outdo each other, usually with disastrous results. The series didn't last long enough for viewers to learn what happened to Powers and Van Horne in the 1994 elections.
After the show was abruptly cancelled in early January 1993, several episodes not aired by NBC were shown on the USA cable network on January 19, just before Bill Clinton's real inauguration. NBC aired a few more episodes of the show the following summer.
** This scene provided by Calvin Alcorn!