Season 2 of ‘The Politician’ Tries to Out-Satire Our Political Reality

Let’s see how that turned out.

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Editor’s note: This article includes spoilers.

For those who think our current political reality isn’t satirical enough on its own, Netflix released the second season of The Politician last month. Briefly: It’s not good. I mean, really not good. Creator Ryan Murphy takes us through what is essentially a retelling of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s rise to power that follows a young political upstart in New York who challenges the overly comfortable incumbent New York State Senate majority leader by focusing on issues that appeal to young voters, most especially the environment.

The show is at its best unintentionally campy, and at its worst gives the impression that nobody involved in its writing had ever heard the word “subtlety” before. And  the second season fails to follow through on even the messages and moral lessons of the first season. 

Season 1 of The Politician worked, maybe not well but on some level, because it satirized the worst excesses of politics by showing them occurring in a high school student body president election. The show drew attention to how cynical so much of electioneering is by following an election that was so low stakes it was impossible to justify the absurd lengths the participants went to in order to win. There was excessive glad-handing, running mates chosen based on what minority boxes they checked, candidates changing with the political winds just to remain popular—but Season 1 finally ended with the main characters seemingly learning that desiring power for its own sake is unhealthy, that people and issues are more than just political props, and that the ends do not justify the means. The characters promptly forgot those lessons as soon as Season 2 began, with blackmail, election fraud, and blatantly insincere soapboxing all re-entering their political toolkits.

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  1. Avatar photo
    Tyler

    The desire to sermonize is fundamentally incompatible with comedy. That’s not to say comedy can’t be political, of course, but comedy can’t support the political desires of Very Online People to lecture or to “message” their Very Serious and Enlightened views. So it was probably doomed from go.

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  2. J. Swain

    I disagree that this "could have been a good show". Political dramas require an element of believability in order to be engaging, and political comedies require a baseline of "normal" expectations about politics to depart from in order to be funny. In the Trump era, that baseline has been shot to all heck and we are presented on a daily basis with real events that would have provided the season-finale shockers of yesteryear's political dramas and the plot-driving hijinx of its political comedies. As such, I think that any political show made today, even if well-written and well-produced, would fail to satisfy audiences.

    If there are any post-2016 shows out there that would prove me wrong, please help a fella out. I'd love to watch something political that's actually good.

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  3. Robert Orban

    I think Alex missed the point. "The Politician" is a black farce, very much in the Armando Iannucci tradition. (EVERYONE should see his movies "In the Loop" and "Death of Stalin.") Season 2 of "The Politician" is the most devastating skewering of wokeness and cancel culture that I have seen. There are no moral messages to be found here, only entertainment derived from seeing people with limited self-awareness behaving very badly while comforting themselves with rationalizations and groupthink.

    This season was probably in the can before the cancel culture ODed on steroids and stupidity and starting pulling down statues of Fredrick Douglass. Ryan Murphy better watch his back; some junior Jacobin is likely to see this and decide that Murphy himself must be cancelled despite his near-flawless progressive credentials and impressive body of work.

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    BrettH

    I’m glad you watched it for me and I will happily remain in the camp of knowIng nothing about it.

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  5. Alan

    I watched both seasons. The first season was entertaining, and I would still recommend watching it. As for the second season - if progressive political porn is your thing, or if you enjoy riffing on it MST3K-style like I do, then by all means watch it. I thought it was more Aaron Sorkin political fantasy than Katie Hill fanfic.

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  6. Andrew Wilhoit

    This is spot on, especially the recognition of the fifth episode. Season 2 is basically a recycled version of Season 1: A ridiculous, and narrow, resolution of the election. I think the mockumantary of Mister America is a more accurate representation than the glorification in The Politician, much like VEEP is to House of Cards.

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    Kaitlin Johnson

    I only knew about this show because my friends and I always joke that my very politically-ambitious friend is like the main character in the first season. That joke doesn’t make a whole lot of sense though since my friend is actually a very nice and honest person that would rather debate ideas then win an election. Still it’s funny to tease him 😂

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    rlritt

    I never even heard of it.

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    Mudskipper

    I enjoyed Netflix's Alpha House quite a lot. It was political satire created by Gary Trudeau. I was sorry when it was canceled after only two seasons.

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  10. Avatar photo
    Victor Clairmont

    I know nothing of this show and am scared to read the article as I hate spoilers. But I like Alec Dent's Fact checks. So I am liking this article.

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