TV Review - The Politician (2019)

Director and co-writer Ryan Murphy has banded together again with Brad Falchuk and Ian Brennan. They were all the co-creators of Glee (2009) and Scream Queens (2015). This series will be the trio's third collaboration. The tone and pacing are very much akin to their previous works. This series doesn't lean into camp as much as Scream Queens, but it's one-step away. Yet, it puts Murphy and his team back in the same realm as Glee, being that this series is set in high school. Murphy even underscores it with giving his protagonist here a song to sing, harking back to the fact that the characters in Glee sang songs all the time. He even brings back an actress from Glee to fill out the cast here. The major difference though is that Glee was meant to be uplifting and inspiring. It was about watching underdogs, misfits and outcasts overcome their difficulties and struggles in society and personally. This series isn't meant to be uplifting and inspiring.

This series is basically a satire, spoofing today's political climate and the political process in general. The take that the series puts forth is that no one is sincere or genuine involved in the political process, certainly not any of the candidates. The thesis statement of this series is that everyone has something to hide, so everyone has to put on a false face to the public, if not be a total fake in more ways than one. Essentially, politicians have to be appealing in order to get votes, but it's all usually manipulations where the politician's true feelings are masked behind smiles and promises.

Ben Platt stars as Payton Hobart, the adopted son of a very wealthy family in Santa Barbara, California. He's a senior at St. Sebastian High School, a very upper crust school. He's very popular and very involved. He gets very good grades. He's on track to go to Harvard University, but he's not there yet. His plan is to get into Harvard because his ultimate goal is to become President of the United States and he believes that in order to do so, he needs to check certain boxes and one of those boxes is attending Harvard. He is dedicated and dead-set on accomplishing that goal. He wants to get into Harvard at all costs. He thinks in order to do that, he needs to win his school's election and become the student-body president first.

His behavior and singular focus are very much akin to that of Reese Witherspoon's Tracy Flick in Election (1999). Yet, Payton isn't as angry or as aggressive as Tracy. He's similarly annoying, but only in his whining nature. He has a team around him that buttresses him and supports him, coming up with cutthroat ideas and schemes to get him elected, as well as maintain his mask. His mask for the most part is that he's clean-cut and straight. He has a girlfriend, but he's also secretly having an affair with a boy in his class. Payton doesn't identify as gay, at least not at first. He seems to identify with a few of the students who say they're sexually fluid.

David Corenswet (Affairs of State) co-stars as River Barkley, the aforementioned boy whom Payton was having an affair. River started as Payton's tutor teaching him Chinese or Mandarin. They immediately were attracted and started secretly seeing each other. Unfortunately, River has emotional problems and possibly a mental illness. River also masks his same-sex attraction, or he's just as fluid as everyone else. He has a girlfriend whom pushes him to run for student-body president too. Yet, when Payton can't campaign anymore due to his mental problems, his girlfriend takes his place and runs against Payton herself.

Lucy Boynton (Bohemian Rhapsody and Murder on the Orient Express) also co-stars as Astrid Sloan, the aforementioned girlfriend of River. She's more slick and conniving. At least, she's better on putting on that mask, that mask where it's not even clear if she cares about River. She could merely be using him for physical pleasure and perhaps social advancement. It might be that she doesn't care about his death. It could just be an opportunity for her to get more power, popularity or status. She also seems like an equivalent to Emma Roberts' character in Scream Queens.

Gwyneth Paltrow (Iron Man and Shakespeare in Love) is the actress that Murphy pulled from Glee. She was a substitute teacher in that series. Here, she plays Georgina Hobart, the adopted mother of Payton. She is possibly playing a version of herself, riffing off her real-life persona. She's a wealthy socialite who also does art and charity. She's seemingly vapid, but she might just be the most genuine and sincere person in Payton's immediate circle. She has two teenage twins who are even more vapid and jerks for sure.

Zoey Deutch (Before I Fall and Why Him?) plays Infinity Jackson, a fellow classmate who has cancer. Payton recruits her to be his running mate. She has her own mask. She needs a wheelchair to get around occasionally. Her mom, Dusty Jackson, played by Jessica Lange who has been a frequent cast-member of Murphy's hit series American Horror Story, is very opportunistic. Dusty is also very doting and even domineering over Infinity. If one has seen the Emmy-winning, Hulu series The Act, then one knows what Dusty and Infinity's mask is.

This series in several ways fails as Scream Queens did. How it fails is that it doesn't provide any likeable characters. Presumably, Infinity is setup as a likeable character, but she's not as prominent a character as Payton and the people swirling around him or with whom he's engaging. Obviously, the arc of Payton is that he becomes likeable or he becomes a person of more integrity and not the fake that even Infinity herself points out. Unfortunately, we have to put up with Payton being insufferable for large chunks of this series. We also have rubbed in our face, the wealth and privilege that is just grossly put on display here. Murphy and his writers take opportunities to mock that wealth and privilege, but it's not enough.

The series isn't like a teenage version of House of Cards. Even that series understood how watching people in the political process being cutthroat or sheer political animals isn't enough. There's got to be a balance of people working against them or working for purer or more genuine reasons. There's not much of a foil. Payton has an antagonist but it doesn't feel like he has any foil that cuts through the fakeness and the ambition with any kind of moral integrity.

Rated TV-14.
Running Time: 1 hr. / 10 eps.

Available on Netflix.