5 Things I Disliked about the First Episode of The Politician
By Ellie Stephenson
You know when it’s stupol season and you prepare yourself to dodge the campaigners swarming the Redfern Run? You steel yourself to deliver a stony glare, look busy and and keep your headphones firmly in. That reaction to student politics is exactly how you should approach the weird Netflix TV Series The Politician. The show follows aspiring US President Payton on his first step to the Oval Office: a run for school president. Apparently, it’s attempting to satirise US politics, but this satire is confused in message and deeply out of context, rendering the show a series of wild fluctuations between melodramatic and outright strange. I watched the first episode so you don’t have to, and here are the 5 things I was most confused about:
Is this… queer content?
It’s fashionable on Twitter to have complaintative hot takes about Queer Eye: it’s consumerist; it doesn’t address the root causes of its participants’ problems; it makes queer people do domestic labour in exchange for respect. After watching The Politician, you’ll be yearning for the days when the biggest problem with Netflix queer representation is that it’s not doing the revolution. The Politician’s gay subplot is essentially this: Payton is running against River, a generically hot guy who is dating a generically hot woman, but ― plot twist ― they are/were in love. This storyline gives neither boy any complexity and is played solely for drama. This is most gratuitous when we see the two meet; there is no process of falling in love, or even any obvious reasons why they’d like each other. Instead, River kisses Payton mid-way through tutoring him in Mandarin, having talked briefly and inexplicably about how they’re both not really happy.
Netflix attempts to tackle mental illness.
The Politician follows the hallowed 13 Reasons Why tradition of Netflix doing an awful job of engaging with mental health. Themes of suicidality are treated cavalierly and sometimes even played for humour. River, during the presidential debates, talks about his own suicide attempt (which is also shown on screen) as a political gimmick. Before we have a chance to actually understand him as a character, he kills himself. This is only very briefly treated as a tragedy before Payton and his creepy team of advisers view it as an opportunity. Payton’s girlfriend even goes as far as to ask whether he killed River. Overall it’s an unnecessary and insensitive portrayal of mental illness done simply to push the plot forward.
Why is everyone identical and 30 years old?
The casting for this show makes it hard to watch. There is a huge suspension of disbelief required to believe these actors, who are approaching middle age, are children. But worse than that, they look the same. I didn’t even realise River and Payton were different until I saw them in a scene together. And then there’s a scene with Payton’s evil twin (I think?) brothers, who look like exact copies of River. Their respective girlfriends, Astrid and Alice, also look vaguely similar. Maybe this is actually social commentary about the American ruling class all being generic white people, but it made things confusing af.
The critique of ‘woke’ culture is weird.
The Politician’s satirical method is ‘punch up via down’. The sad thing is, it’s obviously trying to avoid a full blown boomer rant about political correctness. It almost does so, rightly making fun of the ambitions of wealthy white boys and the absurdity of their perceived entitlement to political power. But somehow it feels the need to buy into much less funny tropes about disabled people, queer people and women. Payton’s political strategist friends decide he needs the sympathy vote and push him to find a disabled running mate. The absurd tokenism is clear, but the show decides to perpetuate stereotypes about disabled people faking being sick, with Payton’s cancer patient running mate Infinity depicted scamming her way into restaurants, media attention, and theme parks. It turns out she is a victim of Munchausen by Proxy Syndrome ― but it remains unclear why they needed this plot twist. Seeing Infinity exploited by her grandma is sad, but she’s not really allowed to be an interesting character in her own right. Similarly, River’s running mate Skye is a black, gender non-conforming person whose presence in the election is treated as a bit of a joke. The candidates’ girlfriends, Alice and Astrid act as bizarre puppet masters to their boyfriends. Alice seems willing to do almost anything for Payton’s success, falsely admitting to cheating on him to help him garner the sympathy vote. This is performed melodramatically over fish course in her mansion’s gothic dining room in the manner of a ritual sacrifice. It’s strange. The only characters who receive any semblance of exposition are the ones who receive deserved mocking. Everyone else is an over-acted caricature.
Gwyneth Paltrow as Payton’s adoptive mum.
Payton’s relationship with his adoptive mother is just odd, largely because he looks 30. But also because she tells him she loves him more than his nasty brothers because of his Jewish hair and Disney eyes. Huh? And because she wafts around their mansion painting Syrian bombing victims. No doubt she additionally enjoys vaginal steaming, conscious uncoupling, and being polite to water to avoid negative energy, but all these things occur off camera. The fact that Payton is adopted is meant to give him emotional complexity, and Gwyneth acts as a vehicle for that. The problem is, it’s done so inconsistently that we literally see her tell Payton he has never been a crier two scenes after he starts to cry in the first 5 minutes of his Mandarin lesson. She also decides to console her son after the death of River by complaining about how social media impedes communication. It’s unclear if she’s acting or not.
The Politician fits the action and subplots of a TV series into one episode. But it fails to make its characters compelling, or to have a clear purpose to its satire. It’s melodramatic but strangely emotionless. It’s sometimes funny but mostly confusing. Everyone’s rich, and old, and identical. For a show about politics, it’s devoid of any clear political claim. You’d get a more coherent message from a campaigner on Eastern Ave.