The Wire's arch drug lord, Avon Barksdale, was admirably philosophical about a long custodial sentence: "You only serve two days, the day you go in, and the day you get out".
It's a mentality that might readily be grasped by vanquished opposition parties facing another fruitless term in the wilderness. But no. These days, it's the winners who seem to feel most hemmed in, constrained at every turn by the crushing pressures of a febrile polity, internal divisions, anaemic growth, and the prospect of more-or-less inevitable failure.
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For Malcolm Turnbull, and indeed many governments recently, Barksdale's gallows optimism strangely resonates. Mike Baird's early departure is probably a case in point. For him, the Rubik's Cube of policy and politics became more diabolical with time.
In Turnbull's case, even the day he won in 2016 was lousy, judging by his demeanour.
Nonetheless, these are the early days of 2017, and despite another rough start (already one cabinet minister overboard), it is too early to say the middle year is cactus. More things could yet go right for the government than its critics concede.
Not least, is the prospect of trouble across the chamber. Bill Shorten's impressive party trick (pun intended) of lasting a full term between the loss in 2013 and the loss in 2016 should not be assumed to be the new normal for Labor. He could well hit turbulence. But right now, as the government flails, it doesn't feel like it.
Baird's exit, like that of Tony Abbott in 2015, offers the Liberals the rare luxury of a major mid-term reset. Yet these opportunities can be squandered, as the federal party well knows.
If there is a lesson for the incoming Gladys Berejiklian, it is to govern outwardly, rather than for cackling mob of insatiable media reactionaries and internal malcontents. Do that, and the opposition will be hemmed in - not the other way around.
For Turnbull, who took the alternative, futile, path of appeasement, there has been compound failure: vastly lower standing with voters but with even more dissent from within - witness the outpourings of Abbott, George Christensen, and now the emergent threat of a breakaway party led by Cory Bernardi.
A February 1 appearance at the National Press Club will be crucial for the PM and offers the chance to forget such fringe-dwellers and reassert his brand, his authority.
He must use it to unveil a bold plan, which reaffirms his commitment to climate policy, free markets, social cohesion and which speaks to the same fears that both elevated Donald Trump, and yet threaten to worsen as a direct consequence of his election.
If Turnbull has not done that a month from now, the tone of 2017 will have been written by his opponents - on both flanks.