'The Politician' Is a Hot Garbage, Ryan Murphy Fever Dream. Yet, I Look Forward to Another Season.
Sometimes it’s nice to get into a car without knowing what your destination will be. But Ryan Murphy's The Politician is not that kind of joyride. Rather, the new Netflix show is more like taking that gasoline-run car, putting it at the top of a hill, filling it with diesel instead, setting it on fire, pushing it down the hill, hopping inside, doing some black tar heroin on the way down for funsies, and then just seeing what happens.
Oh, and you survive.
That's not to say that The Politician is bad, if you're into that kind of thing. But over the course of eight episodes, the series shuffles between storylines and tone and time jumps to the point where you're not entirely sure what's going on by the time you finish. It's Murphy's hottest fever dream to date.
The show, Murphy's first foray into the Netflix-verse, follows Payton Hobart (Ben Platt) through one election in his political career each season until he presumably ends up running for President of the United States. This first season is his attempt at becoming senior class president and honestly, by the end of its eight episode run, even Tracy Flick is reaching for a Xanax. What begins as a noir comedy about a child politician is overrun with competing narratives that chronicle everything from Payton's adoptive, closeted lesbian mother's (Gwyneth Paltrow) desire to leave his father to the strange Munchausen by proxy narrative between his pseudo-cancer stricken running mate Infinity Jackson (Zoey Deutch) and her grandmother, Dusty (Jessica Lange).
In a way, I like to believe that The Politician is a palette cleanser for Murphy, who seems to have taken all the things he liked most about his past shows (and some shows that aren't his) and mashed them together. The asinine storylines are only matched by the wildly varying tones the show waffles between. In one moment, you might be asked to mourn the suicide of Payton's sexually fluid, closeted love interest River as Platt memorializes him with a Glee-style rendition of, you guessed it, Joni Mitchell's "River." In the next, the series reverts to a politics-heavy campiness scene reminiscent of Murphy's work on Scream Queens. But unlike his past shows, there's absolutely no emotional nuance and nary a bit of musical foreplay. Emotions, be damned. The Politician will have it all. If the show attempts one consistent theme, it's the overlying idea of "loneliness in politics." And yet, even that is overshadowed by...honestly, choose any emotion.
While opulence and extravagance have worked for Murphy before, The Politician prioritizes hitting every Murphy-TV-trope while giving none of them the proper amount of time to bloom into something worthwhile. Infinity and Dusty's storyline gets no true resolve and is one dead mother shy of being ripped directly from The Act. For an eight episode season, the series uses seven episodes to play out Murphy's narrative fantasies, including tangential storylines that incorporate tennis legend Martina Navratilova as a lesbian equine trainer who exists only to fly off in a plane at the end of the season.
And yet, you're still compelled to take it all in, like violent performance art or a Five Dollar Footlong. It's hard to deny the entertainment that comes with watching talented actors like Platt and Paltrow chew their way through the mess. But it feels a bit voyeuristic, as if the series was never supposed to actually be released. The season concludes with a time jump that shifts approximately three years into the future. By this point, mind you, the following has happened:
A character has disappeared and been found
Two high schoolers have been shot
Two people have been poisoned
Three children have been cut out of family fortunes
Gwyneth Paltrow joined an ashram
The same character has been waitlisted, accepted, and then had said acceptance rescinded from Harvard.
In the time jump, Payton is pushed into the political spotlight again, running against a career-politician (Judith Light) in New York City. She is said to be "unbeatable" save anyone finding out the secret that she's in a throuple. It feels like a white-washed version of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez' campaign against Joe Crowley, peppered with signature Ryan Murphy flair. The finale sets up an inevitable Season Two, and because of Murphy's recent gigantic Netflix deal, that will almost certainly come to be.
In the context of The Politician, I hope that Season Two does come to fruition. Not because Murphy and producing partner (and Paltrow husband) Brad Falchuk have created strong bones that can be improved upon, but because no piece of television has ever managed to be so self-referential while also ripping so much directly from current events headlines. As I take the final bite of my Sweet Onion Chicken Teriyaki Five Six-ish Dollar Footlong, I'm masochistically hungry for more. I want to see if he can create a bigger, more elaborate disaster.
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