OTTAWA—Perhaps the best that can be said about watching question period on site as MPs settle in for the fall session is that television does full justice to the House of Commons.

Despite the restrictions on camera angles, it ultimately provides those who do not enjoy a perch in the House gallery with a depressingly clear picture of the dynamics of the 41st Parliament.

For the record, it is just as disheartening to see otherwise smart men and women deliver dumbed-down distortions drafted by 20-something spin doctors in person as it is to do so via a television set.

On that score, the return of Parliament this week brought neither an improvement in the tone, nor a rise in the level of debate that sucks much of the energy out of the Hill for 45 minutes every day.

But there were other revealing changes.

The most obvious is that the NDP is now comfortable in the lead opposition role.

Its caucus no longer looks like an amateur troupe auditioning for an unlikely spell on Broadway.

The NDP front bench boasts solid performers. The B.C.-Ontario tandem of Peter Julian and Charlie Angus consistently stands out.

For better or for worse, Montreal’s Alexandre Boulerice is rising out of the Quebec ranks to become the French version of Manitoba attack dog Pat Martin.

The first question periods of the fall session featured leader Thomas Mulcair asking more questions than usual (up two from the normal three) and focusing exclusively on the economy.

But unless Mulcair raises the party’s game on issues upon which the NDP has been chronically weak, he will not have a real shot at beating the Conservatives in 2015.

As an aside: If Justin Trudeau is to vault from the Liberal back rows to become party leader, the NDP has a better than fighting chance of beating the Liberals at the economic game.

It seems Conservative strategists have come to the same conclusion.

Since Parliament reopened on Monday, the Conservatives have thrown everything but an imaginary kitchen sink at the NDP.

So far, the main casualty in the war of words between the government and the New Democrats has been the truth.

When one looks back on Harper’s first years in power, no one will argue that he did not lead by example in the Commons.

He is hardly the first prime minister to inject a dose of partisanship into his question period demeanour.

Jean Chrétien used to crow about putting his sharpest verbal jabs in his last answer — so that his counterpart would have no chance to reply.

But even on the Chrétien scale, Harper’s ardour as he led the charge against the NDP this week bordered on religious zeal.

Watching the prime minister go on the attack, a stranger to the ways of parliamentary democracy could have been be forgiven from thinking that he and not Mulcair was the leader of the opposition.

One measure of opposition performance is its success in exposing weak links in the government’s chain of command.

Finance’s Jim Flaherty and Treasury Board president Tony Clement are political pros and International Trade Minister Ed Fast is turning out to be an effective addition to Harper’s economic line-up.

But Parliament Hill veterans would be hard-pressed to remember a less enlightening industry minister than Christian Paradis. He is apparently lost without talking points.

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That’s a feature that probably keeps Paradis in the good books of his Conservative handlers. But if the NDP had asked central casting for a minister to star in a narrative designed to showcase the Conservatives as hapless keepers of central Canada’s manufacturing base, Paradis would have won the role.

The absence this week of Liberal interim leader Bob Rae provided an opportunity to peek into what the not-so-distant future might hold for the third-place party.

If the picture seemed familiar to some older parliamentary hands, it was because the Liberal wheel-spinning in question period was eerily reminiscent of the days when a rump Progressive Conservative caucus was failing to convince Canadians that it had not become the fifth wheel of the federal carriage.