The debate itself was lively, engaging and quite stirring political TV and even more impressive by the great production put forth by NBC Bay Area and its stable of camera angles, close-ups, and split-screens of both candidates.
The production had a pristine, network quality look both enhanced by the technical aspects, the superb back-and-forth screen of both Whitman's noticeable facial reactions and Brown's obvious irritants and glances, actually, more twitches.
After the hour-long debate, a thirty-minute analysis show anchored by solid pro, Tom Sinkovitz, and the very capable Jessica Aguirre provided excellent coverage of both after-performance spin from both campaign heads, (fairly predictable) and first-rate analysis by political analyst, Larry Gerston.
Gersten himself gave astute and spot-on commentary that was devoid of the usual amateurish local renditions that have tried to undertake a big project like this--my only gripe about Gersten was when Sinkovitz directly asked him whom he thought had won the debate.
Gersten oddly answered that "well, really, the people of California will have to answer that question." Uh, Larry, well, you being a political analyst, it would have been nice to hear your thoughts, that's why NBC pays you to be a political analyst, but given the overall quality of both the debate itself and after-program, we'll give a pass to him.
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Tom Brokaw, as usual, was top-notch and asked some great questions. I liked the split screen aspect of the production. However, the director seemed to be sleeping on the job a number of times with late camera cuts and/or cutting to a camera that he shouldn't have been going to. Moreover, the conclusion of the debate seemed way too rushed in order to get the production completed within the scheduled time frame; as a viewer it was quite distracting to watch.
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