The NPR Politics Podcast - Our Favorite Political TV Of 2021

Episode Date: December 30, 2021

Miles Parks, Kelsey Snell, and Barbara Sprunt are joined by Aisha Harris of NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast to discuss the year in political television.Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Find and support your local public radio station.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting and misinformation. I'm Kelsey Snell. I cover Congress. And I'm Barbara Sprint. I cover politics. And spoiler alert, 2021 is almost over. And like most of you, we probably are not that sad to see it go. But there were still some highlights, most of which we did experience through our screens or our headphones. So with that in mind, we're going to close out 2021 by going through our best or most relevant politically adjacent art this year. Today, we're going to be talking about TV. Tomorrow, we're going to talk about music.

And to do all that, we're partnering up with our dear friends at NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour. So, everyone, please give a warm welcome to NPR TV expert and critic Aisha Harris. Hi, Aisha. Hi. Thank you for having me. Aisha, we're so glad you're here. Yeah. I'm excited to talk about political TV. I'm excited to be talking about something other than Congress. So I will say, before we start, a warning for listeners.

At the outset, I cannot promise that we will not spoil any of these television shows for you. But hopefully, if we do, it will be worth it and you will enjoy yourself. So, Ayesha, why don't you start? What was your favorite or best political television show for 2021? For me, there were clearly a lot of contenders because there's a lot of political TV this year. Shows like The White Lotus were just hammering home the politics in the most obvious of ways to various degrees of effectiveness. But for me, the one that stood out the most was season three, the final season of Pose. Now, what I love about the show Pose, and if you're not familiar with it, just a brief recap or summary of the show is that it's about this collective

of queer people from the ballroom scene in the 80s and 90s. They're all black and brown for the most part, and it's about their family, their chosen family, living with HIV, and also just what it meant and what it felt like to be black, brown, and queer in New York City during this very, you know, political moment in history. Well, certainly she could have enrolled you in a French class. Why wouldn't she want you to be trilingual?

Well, when you're just trying to survive, you're not trying to learn a language to read from some fancy menu. Blanca isn't on the witness stand. I can tell you there are other benefits. And I'm sure that you've benefited from them all, in ways I clearly haven't. Is that why you don't think I'm good enough for your son? Or is it because I was raised in the projects?

Or no way, is it because I'm transsexual? I knew it. Mom. And I knew you were a bougie bigot. I'm so glad that you picked this because this was actually one of my picks and I was turned down with the explanation that somebody else had already picked it. I just felt like this season was just really special. It really was.

So I think it's operating, the show throughout its entire run has been operating from a political, you know, standpoint from the get-go. You can argue that just having actual queer and trans actors and performers playing these characters is revolutionary in a way. And part of the reason you watch the show

is for the sort of messy drama. It's really good at, you know, creating these moments that are easily memeable. There's a lot of great performances because the ballroom scene is all about performing and giving your all. But season three and even the previous season, season two, the show has become more overtly and directly political in terms of the characters. They are actually trying to learn how to, you know, live with themselves and live in themselves while being politically active. And so this season, you saw Blanca, who's played by MJ Rodriguez, volunteering at an AIDS clinic and pursuing a nursing degree because she wants to be able to help other people like her who have HIV and AIDS. And this is now season three is set in 1994. And so there are drugs

that are being made that are not being accessible to the people who need them, especially lower class working poor people who need them. And so that was kind of at the forefront of the season. And I really loved the way they handled it, because it was this like evolution of them, not just being political because of who they are, but being political and being conscious about and growing into that evolution of wanting to become politically active. I felt like it was a really natural and human way to watch somebody come into their own politics. You know, sometimes I think you can, there are shows that have decided to be political and then it kind of feels shoehorned into the rest of the narrative.

And I didn't feel that way in this show. It felt like it was a natural part of what Blanca's story was going to be. And as much as I think a lot of the attention of this show is rightfully on Billy Porter, who was really wonderful throughout the entire show, I really, really liked watching Blanca become a whole person over the course of the season. Absolutely. Really, all the characters had their moment. And I also want to shout out, you know, Elektra as well, who's played by Dominique Jackson,

who easily started off as like, she's one of the mothers. She's the main mother of one of the houses. And she is a force to reckon with. And she is sassy. She can also be quite mean sometimes. But she also has a soft side, and she also gets active, like politically active. And so to see all of these characters evolve in that way

has just been really rewarding, and it's a show I'm definitely going to miss. This ain't going to be the first time you lose, and it sure won't be the last. Ain't no secret, so secrets or shortcuts to success. You just keep trying. Miles, what about you? What's your favorite political show this year?

So mine is maybe one of the more obvious choices. HBO's Succession, which decided to go full into the political storyline, I feel like, in the third season. And, you know, this is a show that for three seasons has been all about power, whether that's interpersonal power relationships, how power shifts from these siblings to their parents and all the different things that affect that. And I think the way they got into this season, basically exploring this idea of who has the power.

Is it the government or is it like the media, you know, the media empire complex in America and how, you know, in the span of a week that can shift, you know, you have this massive corporation getting raided by the DOJ and they're basically feeling completely vulnerable. It's kind of the bottom of the bottom for Logan Roy at this point. And then like an episode or two later, I think he's sitting there interviewing potential presidents of the United States as like a king maker. He's nice. He's not nice. It's not. Dad, I know we came to market to buy you a nice milk cow, but we found ourselves a f***ing T-Rex, okay?

He's box office. The guy is f***ing diesel. He's good on camera, he's fun, he'll fight. Viewers will eat from his hand. No downside. Oh, yeah, let's just invade Poland, Dad. No downside. No, his chief of staff broke a kid's jaw at a rally. What? If we don't come to an accommodation, we get outflanked, we lose the ATN dollar machine and the sake of making decisions for, you know, the greater good of the country, but is just about the raw exchange of power like a game. And we see that on display, probably in ways that people like to hide often in our politics. It's not always, it's one of those situations where the show is kind of saying the quiet part out loud. And I appreciate that. But it's also something that like that if you choose not to look at it directly, you can still kind of walk around it. And I have complicated feelings about that. I love this show.

And it's something that that dynamic is something that I keep coming back to over and over again. Yeah. All right. We're going to take a quick break. And when we get back, Kelsey and Barbara will share their picks for best political shows in 2021. And we're back. And Kelsey, you are up next. I wonder, you spent so much time in 2021 covering all of the drama on Capitol Hill this year.

Did that make you more or less likely to want to consume drama on the television in 2021? I don't know about drama, but it makes me less likely to consume like actual direct politics at home. I want something that is going to take me somewhere else. But oddly, the thing that I'm choosing here took me right back to where I was earlier in the year, which was not something I thought I would want to do. And that is Bo Burnham's Inside. So I was really, it took me a while to come around to watching this. I have to say this, like right up front is that I didn't want to watch it at first because I didn't think I could, like emotionally experience this time at the very beginning of the pandemic again. But my husband suggested that we watch it and we turned it on and I got completely absorbed.

It is one of those shows that is both political overtly and also kind of political in the way that he kind of experiences the moment, if that makes sense. This is something that Bo Burnham did in a studio in his home at the very beginning of the pandemic. And he goes through all of those things that we all went through, the isolation and the questioning of who he is and what his work means, why he's doing these things, how he relates to other people, what's the value of his relationships. And it was really difficult to watch, but it was also somehow really satisfying to be able to laugh about it, but also feel really seriously big emotions about it. I think about the song FaceTime with my mom tonight, which is both very funny but deeply lonely. And that's some significant talent to be able to make that, those two feelings happen at the same time.

And Kelsey, you, you talked about like how it makes you feel big feelings and what i noticed in watching it is there are times when obviously he's done you know quite a lot of scripting for his music and and scoring and things like that but then there are other times where it's just shots of him trying to like get a camera right and do the lighting correctly and he just has this look of despair, which I assume is actual B-roll of his experience. And it kind of made me think of just how lonely it is to create when you are not, you know, with your, in your office, with your coworkers, I'm sure, you know, with him, he would normally have a camera crew and people who do the lighting and the sound.

And I felt like in some way, we could all sort of relate to that feeling from the last year. I have not been able to bring myself to feel all those feelings. I've only watched and listened to a few of the clips from the special because, I don't know, unlike you, Kelsey, I was not able to be swayed into immersing myself completely. I feel like at some point I will be ready for it. But for now, I'm enjoying, you know, these clips. White woman's Instagram is another. Oh, it's very great.

I'm glad you brought that up because it is it's that's one of the ones that I think sticks with me sometimes when I'm scrolling. I'm like, it's pretty great. Barbara, why don't you close us out? What was your favorite TV show of 2021? So the show that stuck to me was the third season in FX's American Crime Story, which previous seasons had looked at the trial of OJ Simpson and the murder of Gianni Versace. And this season looked at the time leading up to and during former President Bill Clinton's impeachment trial and specifically kind of told the story through the voices of women who were involved in that time.

So Paula Jones, Linda Tripp, of course, Monica Lewinsky, who was also a producer on this. Didn't mean to catch you off guard. Mr. President, sorry, I was just... You don't have to apologize for doing your job. I'm Bill. I job. I'm Bill. I know. I'm Monica. I like your sweater, Monica.

Even though I felt like I knew about the treatment of Monica Lewinsky, it was jarring to see just how ugly a lot of the coverage was of her. And not just her, but Paula Jonesones hillary clinton linda tripp and the cruelty of people in the media on you know personal attacks for their looks for their sexuality for their ambition and from people who are like comedians that have careers today who i'm a fan of and to see them you know to see clips of them, like Jon Stewart, for example, really just going after these women in really ugly ways felt like a gut punch. This is one of those shows that I have to admit was hard for me to engage with for a couple of reasons, just one of which being going through two more modern impeachments as the thing that absorbed my life, it was hard for me to have the mental space and energy to go to that place. But the performances in this were really great.

And I don't know that I would have watched it if it hadn't been for preparing for this conversation. And I appreciate the opportunity to kind of go see the way these great actors are taking on this subject matter. All right. That is a wrap for the best political television of 2021. Again, sorry if we spoiled anything for you listeners, but in our defense, the year is over. You've had 12 months to watch these things, so it is what it is. Aisha Harris of NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. And we will be back tomorrow with our best political songs of 2021. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting and misinformation.

I'm Kelsey Snell. I cover Congress. And I'm Barbara Sprint. I cover politics. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.