Bitches Are Back in Political Animals
Like a tall rum and tonic served poolside, USA’s frothy new Political Animals offers cool relief from a blistering summer. More, please. Having lost patience with Aaron Sorkin’s self-indulgent Newsroom, I’m happily adopting Political Animals as my new video pet.
Here’s why: Greg Berlanti’s characters converse instead of filibuster. They speak in sentences, not paragraphs. Best of all, the lead females are complex, fully evolved characters whose competence and self-worth operate independently from men. What a concept.
A six-hour “limited series” that debuted Sunday, Political Animals stars Sigourney Weaver as failed presidential candidate-turned-Secretary of State Elaine Barrish Hammond. (Think Hillary Clinton, but with better pantsuits.)
After conceding the primary, she dumps her philandering, good ole’ boy husband, Bud (Ciaran Hinds), the two-term former commander-in-chief.
This is the first TV series for movie star Weaver, who at 62 exudes more raw sex appeal than an ingénue. Poised and understated, she makes a quick meal of every scene, outclassing everyone in the room, save one (see below).
Equally impressive is Carla Gugino as the Hammonds’ journalistic nemesis, Susan Berg, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter. Her scenes with Weaver are the pilot’s best—played with intensity and intelligence as their characters try to suss out each other’s weak spots.
They don’t know it, at first, but Secretary Hammond and reporter Berg operate in a parallel universe. Both reside close to power, but don’t yet have it for themselves. Both love men who cheat. Both must be savvy “political animals” in order to survive.
Together, but in separate scenes, both women reclaim “bitch” as a badge of honor with the tasty phrase: “Never call a bitch a bitch. Us bitches hate that.” (Spoken like a true gay man, which Berlanti proudly is.)
Speaking of gay men, Sebastian Stan plays the Hammonds’ openly gay son, T.J., a cocaine addict and sex hound. His twin, Douglas (James Wolk), is his mother’s hot-tempered chief of staff. Unbeknownst to him, his fiancée is a raging bulimic. (We get to see her hurl during a dinner party. Good times.) Oh, the family secrets. It’s better than Dallas.
As with Newsroom, some of Political Animals‘ journalistic subplots are laugh-out-loud ludicrous. At one point, Berg’s editor (Dan Futterman), also her live-in boyfriend, says: “Fifty years from now, people will talk about newspapers like they talk about rotary phones and disco.”
Fifty years? Fifty years? Dream on, Pinocchio.
In another scene, the editor is in bed reading—wait for it—the biography of Maxwell Perkins. If you know who Maxwell Perkins is, pick up your rotary phone. It’s ringing.
The dialogue in Political Animals, while less speechified than that of Newsroom, is equally silly, at times. Given that USA is basic cable, not “anything goes” premium cable, like HBO, it’s almost as if Berlanti were trying to shock the audience by using “naughty” sex words.
A few examples: Bud tells his ex-wife that she is “still the foxiest piece of ass I know.” Her sassy mother, played by Ellen Burstyn, says of Bud’s busty young girlfriend: “If I had a rack like hers, I might actually get laid.” Later, she snipes to Berg: “You must give a hell of a hummer, honey.” Political animals, indeed.
Taking the title literally, the final scene is set at the zoo, near Madame Secretary’s beloved elephants. After a rapprochement with Berg, she describes the pachyderms’ matriarchal society: “When males reach mating age, the females kick them the hell out of the herd.”
Word to the wise for both characters? I can’t wait until Sunday.
