by Christopher James
Boy you know exactly what you did in that White House.Ryan Murphy’s American Crime Story is back with more facial prosthetics and famous impersonations than ever. On its face, Impeachment was billed as the story of the Monica Lewinsky scandal. However, there is definitely a lot more on the show’s plate. In fact, it feels more squarely in Linda Tripp’s perspective. This could be an interesting lens to view the Clinton scandals and it’s nice that the show has some curveballs.
Unfortunately, it appears Impeachment is more about celebrity mimicry than properly dramatizing the Clinton scandals. There are plenty of great performances, particularly from Beanie Feldstein as Monica Lewinksy and Annaleigh Ashford as fellow Clinton accuser Paula Jones. It’s enough to keep people tuning in, but we’re a far cry away from the quality of the other American Crime Story seasons...
As the season opens on Monica Lewinksy is fleeing Washington following Clinton’s re-election, Feldstein paints a different portrait of Lewinsky than what we saw in the news. There’s a brightness to her, even as she is marred by incredible stress. It’s almost as if she is able to compartmentalize her professional life and her romantic escapes with the President. Thus, when the timeline jumps to 1998 and Lewinksy is in the throes of the media onslaught, it’s shocking to see her light essentially squashed. Throughout, Feldstein strays away from both the “naive intern” and the “sexpot” images that were painted of Lewinsky. Instead, she’s a sweet, competent worker who had a bright career in front of her.
Who's overdoing it more? Sarah Paulson or the makeup artists?Sarah Paulson meanwhile goes over-the-top as Linda Tripp. She’s introduced first making fun of Monica for working out, with exaggerated hand gesticulations and facial movements. The performance feels physical for the sake of being physical. Moments later, when making her morning smoothie, the camera lingers on a can of SlimFast. I think this is why people are criticizing Paulson for the decision to don a fat suit for the role. The character of Linda Tripp (in this series) is defined by her weight, rather than by her actions.
Still, Paulson nails the voice and other aspects of the character. Linda’s hypercompetence almost always seems to get in her own way. After Vincent Foster’s suicide, Linda wants to maintain her job in the west wing. She drags her friend, Kathleen Willey (Elizabeth Reaser), the wife of a Clinton donor, to a meeting with Foster’s replacement to help secure her job. However, all she does is stick her foot in her mouth consistently by talking over everyone else at the table and overasserting her institutional knowledge. This gets her placed in the Pentagon with a raise, a move she interprets as “sending her off to Siberia.” Linda is far from happy, fearing that her story is over. It doesn’t help that literary agent Lucianne Goldberg (Margo Martindale) has informed her that no one is paying for more tell-alls of old Clinton scandals. Luckily, it’s at the Pentagon that she comes into contact with a bright, smiley young Monica Lewinksy.
Annaleigh Ashford emerges as the standout of "American Crime Story: Impeachment" as Paula Jones.It’s possible to go broad, but not overdo it. Sporting a prosthetic nose that would make even Nicole Kidman grimace, Annaleigh Ashford overcomes some of the weaker bits of dialogue to craft a fully realized character in Paula Jones. She feels like a woman who would love nothing more than to recede into the background. Unfortunately, asserting her dignity only increases her visibility to the media. Watching Paula Jones call a press conference, yet try to be guarded with her accusations, was masterful. Ashford understands that Paula doesn’t want to share her story because she doesn’t want to be the center of the story. All she wants is an apology (and a guest role for her dumb husband on Designing Women). For what it’s worth, Taran Killam falls into every broad pitfall that is written for him as Paula’s shallow husband, Steve.
“It takes a dramatic turn,” says Paula Jones, describing Clinton’s penis. This could also describe Murphy’s approach to storytelling. Written by Sarah Burgess, each scene feels like it has compelling emotional beats. However, when everything is cobbled together, the narrative gives you whiplash. We move quickly between Linda Tripp berating everyone in sight to Cobie Smulders in wild Ann Coulter drag. For a story about the Clintons, the actual Clintons (Clive Owen as Bill, Edie Falco as Monica) feel more like spectres than characters. The structure of the episodes is unwieldy, which is a problem when they have taken on quite a bit of plot in laying out the facts of the scandal.
As good as Beanie Feldstein is as Monica Lewinski, her character hasn't taken center stage enough.The first season of American Crime Story: The People vs. O.J. Simpson was able to walk the line between sensationalism and storytelling. Each character popped off the screen and had a unique relationship to the central crime. With Versace, the season eventually congealed into an interesting portrait of how a murderer is born, thanks to an engaging central performance from Darren Criss. Impeachment is full of committed performances. Yet, none of the styles of performance mesh well together. Paulson’s vaudeville version of Linda Tripp feels out of place against Beanie Feldstein’s more muted Monica Lewinski. Once more, the story doesn’t feel appropriately focused around one particular “Crime.” It wants to stick its nose in so many scandals of the Clinton era that it feels more disjointed than insightful.
In short, past seasons have been a foot wide in scope and a mile deep in detail. Impeachment is the opposite. Its wide scope sacrifices any ability for the show to be subtle. The entertainment value is still fairly high, but it unfortunately falls short of the anthology series’ past highs. B-
The first episode of American Crime Story: Impeachment is available to watch on FX on Hulu. New episodes will air weekly on Tuesdays on FX and will be available the following day on FX on Hulu.