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Oct. 24th, 2014 03:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretI wrote briefly about Alpha House when the pilot premiered on Amazon. It is a political comedy written by Garry Trudeau of Doonesbury and Tanner '88 fame, starring John Goodman as a Republican Senator who shares a house in Washington with three other senators, because they are single or because their wives are back home in their home states.
All four Senators are played by gifted comic actors, but John Goodman's performance as Senator Gil John Biggs is seriously on another level. He is corrupt in shallow, benign ways: He is a creature of vast appetites who appreciates small comforts, who gets cheap thrills from being allowed to pretend to pilot military planes because of his status. His corruption is something he is unapologetically plainspoken about: "I am a perks person," he says, even to reporters. And yet he is also a diligent public servant with real if cynical principles, who finds inspiration for fighting a political challenger by talking to the tea party-affiliated idiots in his home town and realizing that his form of mealy-mouthed, middle of the road, half-assed Republicanism is a vital bulwark. It is one of the more clever parodies of The Candidate I've ever seen- and an energetic Goodman plays the transformation with foul-mouthed beatific charm. [As a moderate Republican, in a weird way Senator Biggs is my President Bartlet]
The thing that has been delightful about the show has been that what seemed like throwaway jokes keep getting stronger the more legs they are given. At first I was dismayed by the jokes suggesting that Senator Louis Laffer was a hypocritical closeted homosexual, but as we've seen more of Louis, met his wife and his daughter and seen the funny and dysfunctional ways they work as a family, seen how religion functions in his life, seen how he has pieced together a life full of meaning... the moments where Louis hides in a locked room and dons a Vegas showgirl's headdress seem less at his expense. That is his triumph, his reward for standing up to the asshole casino owners whose campaign donations had given them undue power over his political life: He gets to express his queerness, which is as much an essential facet of who he is as his Mormonism.
And Senator Robert Bettencourt's fight over ethical violations at first seemed destined to end in disaster, his quip "I couldn't have been given a mohair suit, I'm allergic to mohair," seemingly intended to poke simple fun at his inability to grasp the real locus of the accusations against him. Until the accusations come to a head when he self-induces an allergic reaction to prove that he wasn't lying, and he emerges triumphant on a ridiculous technicality that somehow helps us cross the idea of ethical violations over from the fantasy of TV land into the real world. [One of the things that has always boggled me about the bigger corruption scandals is the specificity of the luxury goods involved. What the hell was Dennis Koslowski doing with all the weird things bought with stolen money? This mohair suit gag developed the question perfectly: Of course Robert is beholden to special interests, but he would NEVER accept mohair.]
Meanwhile, the least interesting of the Senators is Mark Consuelos's Senator Andy Guzman, an assimilated Latino who tries to play off of his minority status while having virtually no sense of minority identity... and of course, as the least substantial and interesting character, he emerges as the most Presidential among them with a successful Rebuttal to the State of the Union. (Having been repeatedly exhorted not to pull a Jindal)
Season 2 is being released this weekend on Amazon Prime. I am really looking forward to it.
All four Senators are played by gifted comic actors, but John Goodman's performance as Senator Gil John Biggs is seriously on another level. He is corrupt in shallow, benign ways: He is a creature of vast appetites who appreciates small comforts, who gets cheap thrills from being allowed to pretend to pilot military planes because of his status. His corruption is something he is unapologetically plainspoken about: "I am a perks person," he says, even to reporters. And yet he is also a diligent public servant with real if cynical principles, who finds inspiration for fighting a political challenger by talking to the tea party-affiliated idiots in his home town and realizing that his form of mealy-mouthed, middle of the road, half-assed Republicanism is a vital bulwark. It is one of the more clever parodies of The Candidate I've ever seen- and an energetic Goodman plays the transformation with foul-mouthed beatific charm. [As a moderate Republican, in a weird way Senator Biggs is my President Bartlet]
The thing that has been delightful about the show has been that what seemed like throwaway jokes keep getting stronger the more legs they are given. At first I was dismayed by the jokes suggesting that Senator Louis Laffer was a hypocritical closeted homosexual, but as we've seen more of Louis, met his wife and his daughter and seen the funny and dysfunctional ways they work as a family, seen how religion functions in his life, seen how he has pieced together a life full of meaning... the moments where Louis hides in a locked room and dons a Vegas showgirl's headdress seem less at his expense. That is his triumph, his reward for standing up to the asshole casino owners whose campaign donations had given them undue power over his political life: He gets to express his queerness, which is as much an essential facet of who he is as his Mormonism.
And Senator Robert Bettencourt's fight over ethical violations at first seemed destined to end in disaster, his quip "I couldn't have been given a mohair suit, I'm allergic to mohair," seemingly intended to poke simple fun at his inability to grasp the real locus of the accusations against him. Until the accusations come to a head when he self-induces an allergic reaction to prove that he wasn't lying, and he emerges triumphant on a ridiculous technicality that somehow helps us cross the idea of ethical violations over from the fantasy of TV land into the real world. [One of the things that has always boggled me about the bigger corruption scandals is the specificity of the luxury goods involved. What the hell was Dennis Koslowski doing with all the weird things bought with stolen money? This mohair suit gag developed the question perfectly: Of course Robert is beholden to special interests, but he would NEVER accept mohair.]
Meanwhile, the least interesting of the Senators is Mark Consuelos's Senator Andy Guzman, an assimilated Latino who tries to play off of his minority status while having virtually no sense of minority identity... and of course, as the least substantial and interesting character, he emerges as the most Presidential among them with a successful Rebuttal to the State of the Union. (Having been repeatedly exhorted not to pull a Jindal)
Season 2 is being released this weekend on Amazon Prime. I am really looking forward to it.