TV’s picture of Trump is not in the Cards
WHY THE PRESIDENCY’S BEST REPRESENTATION IS FOUND IN THE BLUTHS, NOT THE UNDERWOODS
Is the Trump administration a drama or a sitcom? Eventually, this will be for history to judge. But first, let’s give television its shot. Every politics- adjacent series released since November has been scoured for parallels and resonances with the new era. ( Game of Thrones, the world’s favourite political analogy, returns in July, so get ready for debates over whether Steve Bannon is Varys or Qyburn.)
House of Cards, Netflix’s presidential soap, is theoretically well positioned to break the fourth wall of today’s political conversation. But the series — at best, a thick slice of ham onto which Kevin Spacey ladles villainous oratory like red-eye gravy — has never really stood up to deep reading. And with Season 5, the series is a lamer duck than ever.
Superficially, the season is loaded with plot points that echo current headlines: an immigration ban proposed by President Frank Underwood ( Spacey); congressional hearings and leaks; a Russian attempt to take advantage of American divisions; a Syrian chemical- weapons attack that draws a presidential response, driven by a dramatic photo of a dead child.
But the show’s big picture feels like something from an alternative universe, and not just because the power partnership of Frank and his wife, Claire ( Robin Wright), is like a conspiracy- fever version of the Clintons’.
House of Cards, based on a British series, is at heart a fantasy of competence and omnipotence. Frank pulls the levers of power as easily as he pushed poor Zoe Barnes in front of a subway train. He plays four- dimensional chess while his current analog often seems to play Whack-a-Mole. He’s cold and deliberative, not hotheaded and impetuous. He confides his plans in Shakespearean asides, while President Donald Trump spills to 31 million Twitter followers.
Its greater disconnect — shared with legacy political shows like Scandal, Designated Survivor and Madam Secretary — is that it assumes there are still norms gov- erning politics, which it generates drama by pushing against. Characters behave badly in secret, the quaint notion being that discovery would bring shame and consequences.
Frank works hard to hide his acts of violence. In our world, a Montana politician body-slammed a reporter and was elected to Congress the next day. When a congressman from Frank’s own party ( Democratic, in this case) plans to go against him and place “country over party,” it may be the season’s biggest laugh line.
Beyond this, the idea that adults are still in charge, that the presidency is still beholden to a pretence of decorum, has been disrupted by the election of a TV star whose following depends partly on his going off script. House of Cards isn’t less crazy than reality. But it assumes a greater baseline of normalcy in its larger world.
Even HBO’s comedy Veep has this problem — it’s poetically foulmouthed, but has the charming conceit that the characters need to keep their obscenities from the public. Other, non- political current shows get at bits and pieces of today’s climate. Mr. Robot and Legion have themes of conspiracy and gaslighting; The Good Fight captures the world-turned-upsidedown disorientation of liberals.
But for now, you need to go back to earlier TV eras — and away from Washington storylines — to find the shows that most recall today’s White House.
The Sopranos, for instance, rings truer to this presidency than any show today, despite running from the Clinton through the Bush administrations. Consider the show’s volatile anti-hero, the mobster Tony Soprano, who is driven by appetite; who has baroque taste in home decor; who demands loyalty from others without reciprocating; who rewards yes men; who lashes out impulsively (RIP, Ralphie Cifaretto); who longs for the “strong and silent” model of manhood while loudly nursing grievances; who prides himself on acting boldly and even rashly. (“A wrong decision,” Tony says, “is better than indecision.”)
This is not to say that the Trump White House is like the mob, so much as that The Sopranos feels timely for how it portrays leadership in a dysfunctional, privately held family business.
It has that in common with Arrested Development, whose Trump parallels have made for one of the richest social- media memes of 2017. In The Daily Beast, Erin Gloria Ryan likened the Trumps to the Bluths, the grifting real estate development family whose patriarch, George Sr. ( Jeffrey Tambor), ran into legal trouble over his taxes and some “light treason.” After the failure to pass the American Health Care Act in March, Politico writer Dan Diamond compared it to the Bluths’ attempt to pass off the empty shell of a house as a real one.
Plot details aside ( the Bluths also once schemed to build a border wall with Mexico), the show has a familiar personal dynamic. Trump has always believed in pitting people against one another — in personal life, in business, on The Apprentice and in the White House.
This is the management style of George Bluth Sr., who encourages jealousies and insecurities among his adult children, the better to manipulate them into a who-doesDaddy-love- best contest. ( Sean, Kellyanne: This show gets you.)
Arrested Development began in 2003 as TV’s best satire of an earlier presidency — it was, in part, a sly commentary on the Iraq War. In the fake- house episode, Gob Bluth ( Will Arnett) unveils a “Mission Accomplished” banner, à la George W. Bush, on the facade, just before it falls apart.
All of which suggests that the definitive television show of the Trump years, whenever it arrives, might not be about politics. And it might be a comedy, even if we experience the real- life version very much as a drama.
It might, in fact, be Arrested Development. Netflix recently announced a fifth season. Creator, Mitch Hurwitz said he was looking forward to reviving his characters: “George Sr., Lucille and the kids, Michael, Ivanka, Don Jr., Eric, GeorgeMichael and, who am I forgetting, oh, Tiffany. Did I say Tiffany?”
History repeats, they say. In this case, both times as farce.