Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Politician’ On Netflix, The Ryan Murphy Dramedy Where Ben Platt Navigates Treacherous High School Politics

We were excited to hear about Ryan Murphy’s Netflix development deal, because he’s been able to do so much on FX with shows like AHS, Pose, Feud and American Crime Story. And while The Politician wasn’t part of the deal (they signed him 2 months after winning the bidding war for this show), it still would show the potential of what Murphy could do with Netflix’s budgets and no content restrictions. But sometimes, like the first pancake off the griddle, things don’t always turn out great, even when you have Ben Platt and Gwyneth Paltrow. Read on for more…

THE POLITICIAN: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A young man talks about a waking dream he had as a kid, where he wakes up and says, “I’m going to be president of the United States.”

The Gist: That young man is Payton Hobart (Ben Platt), and he’s interviewing with a Harvard dean. Payton tells the recruiter about the dream — which he had when he was seven — because he feels he’s on his way to doing just that. He’s studied the statistics, and he knows that many past presidents have come from Ivy schools, especially Harvard, and that many were class presidents in high school. He’s running for class president at Saint Sebastian High School in Santa Barbara, and likes his chances. The dean, while impressed, wants to know what Payton is like as a human, and he’s flummoxed to find a response to that.

We then see popular Saint Sebastian senior River (David Corenswet) have perfunctory sex with his girlfriend Astrid Sloan (Lucy Boynton), who fakes orgasm because she knows he likes it. She says she’ll try to play authentic next time, but River wants her to be authentic. He takes a gun out of a drawer after she leaves when Payton comes storming in, upset that River is running against him for president. He thinks Astrid put him up to it. He’s hurt because he thinks River is more popular and better looking, but he’s also hurt because he and River were a thing — at least in private.

In a debate, Payton is polished and gets a lot of applause. But RIver smokes him by talking from the heart, revealing a suicide attempt he had over the summer. His “staff”, including his girlfriend Alice (Julia Schlaepfer) thinks he should ask one of his class’ disabled and/or sick population to be his running mate to humanize his campaign. He eventually turns to recovering cancer patient Infinity Jackson (Zoey Deutch), who keeps telling him no because she just doesn’t trust him, even after her scheming grandmother Dusty (Jessica Lange) orders her to say yes.

Oh, and do we mention that River did an unthinkable act in front of Payton, right after telling him that he truly did love Payton. It’s then that we flash back 18 months, where Payton is hanging out with his douchebag brothers and doting mother Georgina (Gwyneth Paltrow), who feels closer to the adopted Payton (whose biological mother was a stripper) than her two d-bag biological sons. She hired River as Payton’s Mandarin tutor, and when the two have their first lesson in Payton’s ornate bedroom, sparks fly immediately.

Back to the present: After River’s unthinkable act, Payton thinks he’s in the clear with regards to the presidency. But Astrid makes that entirely more difficult. Payton then gets waitlisted for Harvard, which angers him to no end. He decides to double down on getting this presidency; he goes to Infinity’s house and appeals directly to her and Dusty, breaking down over what happened to River. She finally agrees to be his running mate, but he finds something out about Infinity that makes him doubt his choice.

Our Take: Ryan Murphy is one of TV’s most prolific writers and producers, but he’s also one of the most maddening. He takes big swings, and many times they’re extremely effective (AHS, People Vs. O.J. Simpson, Pose). But when he misses (remember those last couple of years of Nip/Tuck and Glee?) his shows can be infuriatingly obnoxious. This is how we feel about The Politician, which he co-created with his usual collaborators Brad Falchuk and Ian Brennan.

The show is supposed to make fun of white privilege, the fact that being wealthy doesn’t equal happiness, and the cutthroat nature of politics on any level. But all it does for us is present characters we don’t like, in situations that make us cringe due to their tone-deafness. And, worse of all, none of it is funny.

We understand that Payton is supposed to be a cynical character; even when he is seemingly genuine when he breaks down about River in front of Infinity and Dusty, he’s just doing his best acting job. The show’s opening credit sequence represents him as a wooden figure full of the things that have built him into being this person who will stop at nothing to be POTUS. But it feels like every character on the show is cynical, to the point of cartoonishness.

Platt’s a multi-talented dynamo, which anyone who saw him on Broadway can tell you, and he gets to show off that ability in the pilot (though the song he sings in tribute to River lasts far too long). And Paltrow reminds us that she’s actually a fine actress in the role of Payton’s conflicted but wise mother. But that’s not enough to make us keep watching.

While watching the pilot, all we could think of is “Who the hell cares about any of this?” and that feeling didn’t abate with any of the plot twists, mainly because the cynicism was never balanced with any kind of humanity. And life’s too short and there’s too much to watch to spend time with characters like this.

Sex and Skin: River has sex with Astrid and in the flashback kisses Payton. Payton also kisses his girlfriend Alice.

Parting Shot: Payton is proudly watching Infinity give her speech as his new running mate, when he gets some distressing news about her.

Sleeper Star: Deutch pretty much holds her own in her scenes with Lange, no small feat given the Oscar winner’s penchant for scene-chewing in Ryan Murphy shows.

Most Pilot-y Line: When Payton expresses to his mother that he can’t feel genuine loss for River, she goes, “Your generation got the terrible idea that it was best to vomit every thought and feeling all over each other. It’s a pandemic of overcommunication that’s led to an absence of intimacy.” What a convoluted Murphy-esque line that sounds nothing like real-life conversation.

Our Call: SKIP IT. Stream Feud or either American Crime Story or any of the other Murphy shows that work. The Politician isn’t worth your time.

Your Call:

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company.com, RollingStone.com, Billboard and elsewhere

Stream The Politician On Netflix