Political Animals
Jun. 10th, 2015 10:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
asterrocJust finished marthoning Political Animals. Jesus fuck is that good. Seriously, a drama about politics and a dysfunctional family that I not only enjoyed, but which brought tears to my eyes in the finale?! OMFG. Ungh. And it’s remarkably feminist too, spoilers on why and on other stuff below.
The feminism isn’t blind though, it’s feminist within a world that is marred by and dominated by sexism. While it doesn’t always knowledge that the challenges the women characters face are the result of sexism, it doesn’t pull any punches.
The main character is a politically ambitious woman, who by the end sees the harm that her and her ex-husband’s ambition have caused her family. Elaine struggles with the choices she’s made, the priorities she’s had, and with trying to figure out how to be a woman, a mother, and a politician all together.
The cast is an ensemble, but to me the second character whom the story pivots around (and the second billed) is Susan, am ambitious journalist, who we learn is sleeping with her boss at the newspaper, Alex. And he in turn, is sleeping with a young blogger, Georgia, at the newspaper who doesn't yet know much about journalism and prioritizes a quick post over an in-depth investigation. The story could have set them up as cliche rivals for a man's affection, it could have set them up as allies taking down the cheating scumbag, but in the end it gives them a more realistic relationship that incorporates both, with Susan resenting Georgia more for her trying to steal her stories than successfully stealing her man, but also trying to take Georgia under her wing to mentor her and get a better story in the end than either could have produced alone. And in a cathartic ending, Alex ends up sacrificing his own job to save both Susan's job and her story.
Actor Sebastian Stan (better known as Bucky Barnes) is how this series caught my eye in the first place: a bunch of other fangirls I follow on Tumblr loved the show, I thought just because of him, but I figured I'd give it a shot. He plays the son of Elaine, TJ, who came out of the closet while is father (and Elaine's ex, Bud) was president. This show has the best LGBT representation I've seen yet - not only is TJ (mostly) gay, but so is one of the Supreme Court Justices, and she's struggling with making a decision of retirement as her partner is terminally ill.
But TJ is a fascinating character, through the course of the show we learn that he's not only a drug addict, but that he made a suicide attempt a year ago, and we learn the reason why. There's a really moving scene where his grandmother confronts him about this, saying (in response to his wanting to go out and buy drugs) "do you think it's easy to let you leave, knowing you might not ever come back?", and he criticizes her drinking in return, and she says "I don't need a druggie to tell me I'm a boozehound."
The relationships are really real, they're messed up and complicated, and everyone resents each other even as they love each other, everyone stabs each other in the back even as they defend each other from outsiders stabbing them in the back. The family drama wasn't at all tough for me to watch, despite my usually hating those sorts of things. Sometimes family drama just gets me irritated as everything could be solved if people only talked to each other, but here it's more complicated than that. And there's really only one or two places where someone raises their voice to someone else, the other thing that bothers me and is usually triggery. Perhaps the reason why this is usually triggery for me is that I sympathize too much with the person being yelled at, while here I could see both sides.
Final verdict: This is a must-watch for everyone. And at 6 episodes around 50 minutes each, it's not prohibitively long. I watched around two episodes earlier this week, and the remaining four today. As I summarized it on Tumblr,
Originally posted on Dreamwidth.
comments there. Comment here or there.
The feminism isn’t blind though, it’s feminist within a world that is marred by and dominated by sexism. While it doesn’t always knowledge that the challenges the women characters face are the result of sexism, it doesn’t pull any punches.
The main character is a politically ambitious woman, who by the end sees the harm that her and her ex-husband’s ambition have caused her family. Elaine struggles with the choices she’s made, the priorities she’s had, and with trying to figure out how to be a woman, a mother, and a politician all together.
The cast is an ensemble, but to me the second character whom the story pivots around (and the second billed) is Susan, am ambitious journalist, who we learn is sleeping with her boss at the newspaper, Alex. And he in turn, is sleeping with a young blogger, Georgia, at the newspaper who doesn't yet know much about journalism and prioritizes a quick post over an in-depth investigation. The story could have set them up as cliche rivals for a man's affection, it could have set them up as allies taking down the cheating scumbag, but in the end it gives them a more realistic relationship that incorporates both, with Susan resenting Georgia more for her trying to steal her stories than successfully stealing her man, but also trying to take Georgia under her wing to mentor her and get a better story in the end than either could have produced alone. And in a cathartic ending, Alex ends up sacrificing his own job to save both Susan's job and her story.
Actor Sebastian Stan (better known as Bucky Barnes) is how this series caught my eye in the first place: a bunch of other fangirls I follow on Tumblr loved the show, I thought just because of him, but I figured I'd give it a shot. He plays the son of Elaine, TJ, who came out of the closet while is father (and Elaine's ex, Bud) was president. This show has the best LGBT representation I've seen yet - not only is TJ (mostly) gay, but so is one of the Supreme Court Justices, and she's struggling with making a decision of retirement as her partner is terminally ill.
But TJ is a fascinating character, through the course of the show we learn that he's not only a drug addict, but that he made a suicide attempt a year ago, and we learn the reason why. There's a really moving scene where his grandmother confronts him about this, saying (in response to his wanting to go out and buy drugs) "do you think it's easy to let you leave, knowing you might not ever come back?", and he criticizes her drinking in return, and she says "I don't need a druggie to tell me I'm a boozehound."
The relationships are really real, they're messed up and complicated, and everyone resents each other even as they love each other, everyone stabs each other in the back even as they defend each other from outsiders stabbing them in the back. The family drama wasn't at all tough for me to watch, despite my usually hating those sorts of things. Sometimes family drama just gets me irritated as everything could be solved if people only talked to each other, but here it's more complicated than that. And there's really only one or two places where someone raises their voice to someone else, the other thing that bothers me and is usually triggery. Perhaps the reason why this is usually triggery for me is that I sympathize too much with the person being yelled at, while here I could see both sides.
Final verdict: This is a must-watch for everyone. And at 6 episodes around 50 minutes each, it's not prohibitively long. I watched around two episodes earlier this week, and the remaining four today. As I summarized it on Tumblr,
Come for the gay crying strung-out drug addict Sebastian Stan, stay for the powerful feminist women in an unfair world.
Originally posted on Dreamwidth.
