America on show in all its ugly glory
The Trump television circus just keeps giving and giving
The only show you should be watching right now is America. Gawddamn. I’m riveted and can not recommend it highly enough. I’ll admit it’s not particularly easy to get into — especially for new viewers coming in at this late stage. It features a large cast of core characters and an almost impossible number of background players.
Another barrier is that its plot is punishingly convoluted and drenched in the mind-boggling minutiae of the American political system.
The criss-crossing backstory spans countries, crime syndicates and governments and they all feed into its main narrative in myriad ways. But for those that put in the effort there’s nothing else quite like it.
America hasn’t always been easy viewing. Over its four years it’s filled me with dread, horror and existential angst. Fortunately, there’s also been moments of hope and joy and bizarre lols. Covfefe anyone?
But I keep watching because it’s delivered some of the most thrilling television I can remember.
Sure, an All Blacks try in a World Cup match is exciting but believe me, friends, it ain’t nothing compared to the fist pumping cheer of seeing an elderly man walk into the middle of the senate floor to flash a thumbs down sign. No season finale has been as edge-of-your-seat, gripping viewing as that conclusion to America 2017.
If you want something to really sink your teeth into, well, here you go.
So, what’s it about? Essentially, if you strip everything away, America’s a cautionary tale. An anti-hero tragedy about a man who had everything yet always wanted more. It’s a warning against greed, mad ego and the perils of possessing an insatiable power lust and a profound ignorance. It’s about a giant dickhead, is what I’m saying.
I’ve been hooked since it started back in 2015. What a way to start a show!
Our supremely unlikeable main character — an older, portly fellow stuffed into an oversized suit with bewildering hair and a perplexing orange glow — descended from the heavens on a gold plated elevator to announce he’d be running for President.
His platform for power was a blatant contradiction; a selfproclaimed billionaire living atop a fancy tower but claiming a kinship with the common man while also taking every opportunity to remind the common man that he was in every possible way an exceptional man.
He was, he would tell us in those early seasons of America, a very stable genius who spoke with the best words and was in possession of an IQ he declared to be “the highest”.
However, in the tradition of great tragedy he had to escalate. And he did. Simply being the smartest and best at all of the things wasn’t enough.
In a recent episode the character, now in the third year of his Presidency, stood on the White House lawn and pointed his stubby little finger towards heaven to pronounce, “I am the chosen one.”
Now, yes, I understand that this sounds like laughably bad writing.
No character would ever act like that or say such an absurdity.
But, after painstakingly building to this moment for four long years it was truly a pitch-perfect character moment that marked the highest possible point of delusion from which to fall from grace. Earlier this year America pulled off a triumphant baitand-switch on us viewers. The drama of its early years had been propelled by the mysterious Mueller report, an ever-lurking threat to the anti-hero and a ray of hope in the grim dark.
That storyline concluded in the most disheartening way possible.
It looked like the baddies were going to get away with it.
They were ripping families apart, putting children in camps, defending torch-carrying Nazis, destroying environmental laws, attempting to roll back human and civil rights and inciting violence and civil war.
And that’s where we’re at now. In storytelling, this is called the lowest
I’ve never wanted something I’ve watched so much to come to an end.
point and its when the heroes rally and rise.
Sure enough, just last week America took a dramatic turn. A seemingly innocuous phone call being the catalyst for a frenzy of bombshell revelations and tideturning action, of deceptions revealed and betrayals unmasked, of truth finally being held to power.
Right now the chosen one is not showing good grace.
He’s agitated and angry, shouting into the void of Twitter and into the faces of journalists, scrambling for an escape from the doomed walls of impeachment closing in around him.
Is this the end? I have no idea. America’s had more twists and turns than the Karangahake Gorge and I long ago stopped trying to predict what was gonna happen next.
But I do know that I’ve never wanted something I’ve watched so much to come to an end.