Impeachment: American Crime Story

Though it’s not up to the level of “The People v. O.J. Simpson,” “Impeachment: American Crime Story” does gain momentum as it goes along. The cast is certainly eye-catching. ... Ultimately, though, “Impeachment: American Crime Story” raises more issues than it addresses.

Even as it centers Beanie Feldstein’s generous, humane portrayal of Lewinsky and builds to her abhorrent treatment—and a few good episodes—it keeps heading for more ambiguous waters. ... With repeated exposure to Tripp, the major beneficiary of the show’s overly long episodes, her sourness starts to seem a little hilarious, like she’s a supporting character in The Office, by way of a horror movie. Her mercilessness, her bluntness, the chip on her shoulder coalesce so that you begin to see what Monica might have seen in her.

It’s a deftly handled study of a difficult character that’s more careful and complete than the series itself which is consistently, boldly entertaining but at times a little repetitive and at other times a little structurally messy.

There are so many details. So many moving parts. So many household names in wigs and pointless prosthetics. And yet the inner lives of the key players remain elusive, as the show moves from the carpeted hallways and creamy walls of the White House to the drab, echoey offices of the Pentagon to various personal residences. The show is tawdry but absorbing.

Despite several striking performances, its perspective and ideas break out only occasionally from underneath the pancaked strata of details.

Switching back and forth in time, “Impeachment” doesn’t light often enough to give us anything really substantial. ... Paulson and Feldstein are spectacular when they’re together. But when this splits them apart, it loses its intention.

Scenes are dilated beyond their means, characters deliver exposition, and every shot and sequence announces its purpose. It’s not bad per se, but it is fairly boring, with only a handful of jokes here and there to lighten the mood. It never really sustains the tension of the kind of political drama it may aspire to be.

For a star-studded drama about an explosive historical moment, Impeachment feels oddly static. ... Impeachment goes about conveying this information by jumping back and forth across the 1990s and scattering its attention across dozens of thinly written individuals, which keeps those early episodes from building any real sense of momentum. The characters are additionally saddled with dialogue that prioritizes blunt efficiency over personality or insight.

Better appreciating America’s past abuses of power — by the president, by the media, by anyone who can benefit from punching down — is a compelling ambition, but “Impeachment” is far more beguiled by the trappings of history (the hug, the dress, the tapes) than excavating telling angles for today.

It’s a scattered, frivolous confrontation with history that neglects the more crucial parts of the Clinton impeachment. ... Even when the series does allude to larger elements within American politics, it does so with such an emphatic tone that the point itself is hard to take.

Though it goes some way towards correcting the perception that the saga was all about Lewinsky rather than Clinton it occasionally falls into the old trap of reducing the women at the heart of the drama to black and white caricatures.

At times you may question whether the other actors realize they're in the same show as Feldstein or whether that show is a drama or a dark comedy. ... "Impeachment" presents a case where the screen stars are so overwhelmed by production's devotion to excess and maximal interpretation of recent history that its key lessons are largely negated. Lewinsky, through Feldstein, may be the only one to emerge more fully acquitted in the public's perception.

Unfortunately, the wink at the original American Crime Story season only underscores all the things People v. O.J. got right that Impeachment gets wrong, by offering a shallow, Wikipedia-style synopsis of history with precious little insight into what happened, and why.

In the first few episodes, Linda’s Iago-like interventions and our knowledge of everything to come lend the production a thriller quality, a mix of drab office-cafeteria lighting and the hushed tragedy of intimacies betrayed. But Burgess keeps underscoring, to diminishing effect, the same ironies and hypocrisies. ... [Beanie Feldstein's] limitations as an actor — along with Paulson’s — are exposed by the scripts’ repetitive scenes and underdeveloped characterizations.

What is there to say about it that hasn’t been said before? That is the question with which Impeachment struggles as it reassembles all the familiar elements: the blue dress, the Drudge Report. ... A handful of interesting performances and effective episodes in the second half of the season aside, the effect is to reduce the President and his inquisitor, Ken Starr, to minor roles. If there’s a point to this exercise, it gets lost amid so many histrionic reenactments of scenes we’ve seen replayed on the news and parodied in late-night comedy for more than two decades.