With Trump’s rally in Tulsa having recently been bamboozled by so-called “TikTokers and K-pop fans”–just roundabout descriptors for saying Gen Z–the generational war has never been more pronounced than in 2020. Following the 2019 virality of the “OK Boomer” brushoff (so viral, in fact, that even boomers heard about it), the apex of the war on outmoded ways of thinking has further manifested this year in the rekindling of the Black Lives Matter movement. And while Ryan Murphy may not be the most shining beacon for advocacy (offering us a “token” black character in most of his work, save for Pose), the second season of The Politician is a loud battle cry in favor of Gen Z taking over the old guard (after all, the millennials have repeatedly said they can’t “adult”). For it’s pretty evident they’re more impassioned about an ever-uninhabitable earth (here’s looking at you, Greta Thunberg).
Alas, that major change toward a more youthful demographic in power still seems to lean on the trope that a rich white male will be the one to herald the shift. Having left Payton Hobart (Ben Platt) in New York at the end of season one, the finale concluded with his announcement of running for state senate against longtime incumbent Dede Standish (Judith Light). This after the blow to his ego in high school of losing the election against fellow cold fish Astrid Sloan (Lucy Boynton). The results send him on an alcoholic odyssey while attending NYU and playing out his demons on the piano at Marie’s Crisis. In the end, of course, he’s reinvigorated by his devoted campaign team, McAfee Westbrook (Laura Dreyfuss), James Sullivan (Theo Germaine) and Skye Leighton (Rahne Jones), as well as his loyal girlfriend, Alice Charles (Julia Schlaepfer), who is cajoled by Payton’s megalomaniac charm enough to walk out on her own wedding for him when he comes crawling back, insisting he can’t campaign without her at his side.
And campaign he does–that is the entire crux of the show, and season two. His politics fever has also evidently spread to his own mother, Georgina Hobart (Gwyneth Paltrow, in one of the best roles she’s had in ages), returned to California after a stint in Bhutan and off the coast of Tasmania on Oceania 2, a dolphin-catching enterprise that operates on said mammals to remove plastic from their digestive tracts. Of course, Georgina, known for getting bored easily, wants to channel her newfound environmentalist fervor into something even bigger: like, say, a run for governor of California. While this means good things for the People’s Republic of CA, Payton is less than thrilled as the Hobart name has been totally monopolized by her in any media coverage. For Georgina is in full campaign mode after her latest girlfriend, Alison Mendelsohn (Kelly Fulton), a sendup of Oracle heiress and Annapurna Pictures founder Megan Ellison, tells her she should use her passion about complaining for something more productive to implement change–high office. So it is that, as Alice puts it to Payton, “Between her natural ability and Alison’s bottomless pockets, your mom is sucking up all of the Hobart political oxygen.”
One supposes the same could be said of boomers continuing to cling to power at a time when Gen Z is ready to start effecting change based on the future they want to see. One that, obviously, for mortality reasons, boomers will not be a part of, therefore should not have so much say in. While Georgina herself might be bordering boomerdom, her hippie-dippy mama charm is too irresistible for any Californian, making her the immediate favorite in the polls, while Payton continues to remain ten points behind Dede back in New York. But the one thing in politics that transcends all divides is the inherent instinct to play dirty–to muckrake that dirt and smear it upon the other candidate in the headlines that have become increasingly detrimental to a public figure’s reputation. So it can be no surprise that the third episode is called “Cancel Culture” (following the Gwyneth-shading title of episode two, “Conscious Unthroupling”). Here we see just how far the lengths of the lynch mob can extend when a photo of a six-year-old Payton dressed as Native American chief Geronimo for Halloween is leaked to the media, causing a frenzy over his fitness for office in a state like New York (which still, to most, just means New York City), where liberal extremism thrives (unless you make your way far enough upstate, or to certain parts of Long Island). Publicly apologizing and claiming responsibility for the offensive photo, citing that it didn’t matter how young he was, he still should have known better, Payton smooths things over briefly before yet another more recent photo of him dressed in a headdress and red Speedo is sent to the Standish camp. Discovering that the leak is coming from within, he makes a display of firing McAfee, only to meet up with her later to confirm that, with two weeks to go, she’s now infiltrated Dede’s office, convincing their own campaign team, for the sake of authenticity, that Payton’s bid for senate is a “dumpster fire.”
Praying to find a “Hail Mary” (the appropriate title of episode four), McAfee does some digging to unearth yet another scandal more bizarre than Dede’s throuple–the fact that she’s no longer in one thanks to William (Teddy Sears) falling for Dede’s campaign manager, Hadassah (Bette Midler), after the two only agreed to be in a fake relationship initially before Dede decided to blow the lid off her three-way relationship status to the public. After all of McAfee’s hard work in finding this blessed Hail Mary that could save Payton’s campaign by dismantling Dede’s credibility, he decides using the information against her is too sleazy, and he doesn’t want to win that way, having spent most of his campaign on the platform of genuine concern for climate change, which he feels has been resonating enough with young voters. And he’s not wrong–as the fifth episode, “The Voters” (mirroring season one’s episode, “The Voter”–except in the former’s case, it’s about two impassioned voters supporting opposing candidates instead of a staunchly apathetic voter), elucidates.
Opening with a young voter named Jayne Mueller’s (Susannah Perkins) alarm going off with the type of sound fit for a major emergency, she turns the siren off to reveal a screen with Earth as her background. The symbolism is dead-on but effective: young voters have no more important cause to worry about than the fate of the planet. So it is that Jayne traipses angrily into the living room where her mother, Andi (Robin Weigert), is watching a news report on the breaking scandal being called “throuplegate” (for, in the end, James decided to inform to the press what Payton had decided he didn’t want to). Chastising her for putting cardboard and plastic packaging from a toothbrush in the trash can, Andi apologizes irritatedly, feeling as though no matter what she does, it’s never enough for Jayne, or rather, the preservation of the environment. Payton, too, has come up against this problem in his attempt to walk the walk along with talking to the talk after Infinity (Zoey Deutch), his former vice presidential candidate from high school and current environmental activist sensation, tells him she will renounce her endorsement of him if he can’t adhere to doing fifteen “simple” things on the checklist she provides for him (itself somewhat ironic as it’s printed out on paper, an overt waste). One of those items includes reusing one’s own bathing water for cooking–or what Skye refers to as “booty water.”
Because the show was filmed mostly B.C. (Before Corona), the sense of “hustle and bustle”–the P.T. Barnum-level showmanship–surrounding the campaigning process is still present, with Payton only loosely alluding to pandemic times with the line, “I’ve done so much glad-handing that we’ve spent half of our campaign budget on hand sanitizer.” So it is that Payton can at least eventually make a spectacle out of taking a cold shower and reusing the water at a rally in Madison Square Park, where Jayne has set up the tent for Payton to “perform” in. Because no matter how genuine a politician tries to be, there can be no denying the constant presence of performance in the job description. And Payton is candid enough to explain this much to Jayne, who questions if he’s as earnest about the environment as he claims to be. And this is where the inherent narcissism of Payton comes into play with regard to being part of the millennial generation.
While millennials and Gen Z are technically closer in age and should theoretically band together to change the system, the latter isn’t exactly a major proponent of millennials any more than they are boomers, already writing “echo boomers” off as too old and too lazy to be relevant to a revolution. Effectively telling anyone outside of their demographic to step aside and let them handle it. Except that no one will. So it is that Murphy seems to be putting words into the mouth of Dede that people–particularly Gen Z–wish they would hear from the likes of Trump and other aging old white men in positions of political power (this includes Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders–still, ultimately, privileged dinosaurs gasping for one final hurrah in the arena). As though throwing it out into the universe will make it so in the final episode, in which she surrenders to Payton with, “Shhh, you hear that? See when you’re a politician, you develop a kind of bionic listening. You have to hear what no one else does. You have to hear what your constituents want above all the noise of the media and the special interests. The sound of the strongest political wind can be heard long before it blows down old politicians and ideas. The best of us can hear them when they’re nothing but a summer’s breeze… One of the things I’ve been hearing over the past few weeks of this campaign is that young people are angry. They are angry about income inequality, wage stagnation, the cost of housing and, more than anything, climate change that will alter the way they relate to the planet we leave them because they know that none of those other things are going to matter if they don’t have a planet to live on. And most importantly, they’re willing to do something about it.”
Ah yes, if only more old white men could say things like this, could willingly pass the baton to a younger generation with more gusto for the purer aspect of politics as opposed to its ego-feeding side. Which even Georgina, for as well-intentioned as she is, has to admit is a boon to the already arrogant. As for her plans to get California to secede from the Union, she informs a newly unemployed Dede over a FaceTime call, “Why does California have to leave the country, when the country could be more like California?” Ergo, announcing to her she intends to run for president to make that happen, and she wants Dede as her VP.
Here again, Murphy appears to be speaking to an as of yet invisible politician who needs to emerge sooner rather than later with Georgina telling her running mate, “Politics, yes it’s mostly ego and marketing–but the governing… competency matters, integrity matters, expertise matters, experience matters. The country needs you, that’s why.” So it is that The Politician reaches out across the generations and extends its hand to Gen Z, squeezing theirs to assure them that the change it must come. Because punditry and posturing has to make way for legitimate progress before the time is up.
