TV Review - Impeachment: American Crime Story

Earlier this year, President Donald Trump was impeached for the second time. He was the first President to be impeached twice, and the third President to be impeached overall. Obviously, it's rare for this kind of impeachment to occur. During which, a lot of people referenced the previous time that a presidential impeachment happened, that of President Bill Clinton back in 1998. When Trump was impeached in 2019, over 20 years since the last, this project was kicked into gear. Based on the 1999 book by Jeffrey Toobin and adapted by Sarah Burgess, this series was produced and directed by Ryan Murphy who saw a lot of success with the previous anthology stories The People v. O. J. Simpson (2016) and The Assassination of Gianni Versace (2018). Both saw numerous accolades, including Emmy Awards, particularly for their acting performances.

Sarah Paulson (Ratched and Mrs. America) stars as Linda Tripp, a woman who worked for the government in the 90's. She started working in the White House under President George H.W. Bush. She continued working in the White House during the administration of President Bill Clinton. She seemed to be a secretary of sorts at the Office of White House Counsel. She's aware of certain things, but, because she rubs people the wrong way, probably due to her prickly attitude, she gets transferred from the White House to the Pentagon, getting a drab and tedious desk job. Things change for her when she befriends a young woman who also starts to work at the Pentagon.

Beanie Feldstein (Booksmart and Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising) co-stars as Monica Lewinsky, an intern who started working at the White House in 1995 after Linda had left. Monica was transferred from the White House to the Pentagon in 1996. It's then that Monica befriends Linda. They bond over the fact that both of them were transferred from the White House to the Pentagon when neither wanted to be. Linda wonders why Monica was transferred because Monica is young, beautiful and lovely, not prickly at all. Monica is sweet in fact. It's after some prodding that Monica reveals that the reason she was transferred might have to do with the fact that Monica was having an affair with President Clinton.

Annaleigh Ashford (B Positive and Masters of Sex) also co-stars as Paula Jones, a secretary who worked for Bill Clinton in 1991 when he was still the governor of Arkansas. She claims that in 1991, Governor Clinton sexually harassed her, exposing his penis to her, despite her being a married woman. She didn't come forward until 1994 until after he became President, and she only did so because a magazine article basically reported it. She was an example of what's now known as Me Too before that movement became nationally known in 2017.

As such, this film is even more relevant. In fact, this series is less about the politics and the machinations about the impeachment process, at least not at first. In the first, few episodes, this series is more in line with recent projects tackling the Me Too Movement. It helps that all the lead characters are women and the whole thing is told strictly from the point-of-view of these three various women. It's about how these women are under the pall of a powerful man who uses them up and throws them away when he's done with them.

The exception might be with Linda Tripp. She's practically the protagonist here, but she's the protagonist in the same way that O. J. Simpson was the protagonist in the 2016 series and how Andrew Cunanan was the protagonist in the 2018 series. No, Linda Tripp isn't a murderer or an alleged murderer as Simpson and Cunanan were. Yet, she is the subject of what is the "crime story" here. It's strange to look at her as the criminal in question when it's the President who is sexually harassing women, possibly even sexually assaulting them. However, the first episode here establishes that despite that, Linda is actually the bad guy here.

Clive Owen plays President Bill Clinton, but he's more of a man in the background than in the foreground. In fact, people who were seemingly on the periphery of this scandal become more in the direct line of sight here than one might assume. One of which is Cobie Smulders who plays Ann Coulter, a lawyer who worked with Paula Jones' attorneys at the time. She eventually went on to become an author and Jones' case against President Clinton was her first book. Another periphery person who becomes more centered here is Susan Carpenter-McMillan, played by Judith Light. Susan is a consultant who also arrives to assist in the Paula Jones case. Ann and Susan represent those in the Republican Party or on the conservative side that don't care about the female victims, as they just want to use this case in a partisan fashion to take down the President of the opposing party.

Of course, when President Trump was being impeached, critics accused those pushing the case as being partisan and making a mountain out of a mole hill. What this series does is force those critics to reckon with that if the Democrats were being partisan with Trump, then they were being partisan against Clinton. However, what the reality is that it's not an either-or situation. It's actually both.

Rated TV-MA-L.
Running Time: 1 hr.
Tuesdays at 10 PM on FX.