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Positive:
20
Mixed:
18
Negative:
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Critic Reviews
The TelegraphJun 19, 2020
Season 2 Review:
Midler plays Hadassah Gold, loyal chief of staff to Senator Dede Standish, who is played by Judith Light. The pair don’t so much steal the show as turn it into their own personal heist movie. Unfortunately, they’re not on screen all the time, and we’re stuck with the rest of Murphy’s characters.
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Sep 30, 2019
Season 1 Review:
Someday “The Politician” could someday evolve into a meaningful, potent statement about the hazards and rewards about ambition and leadership, particular as those ideas are viewed by would-be officials and the electorate. Right now, however, it says a lot more about Murphy’s ambition than anyone else’s, real or fictional.
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Sep 26, 2019
Season 1 Review:
“The Politician” seems to grow quickly bored with itself, shifting tones and adding so many twists it starts to feel like improv. It asks you to take its characters seriously while pitching them into caricature. The plot moves constantly, but it doesn’t really advance. ... The series has enough wit and visual style, though, that it’s a pleasure to watch in the moment — just as long as you don’t think beyond the moment.
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Sep 25, 2019
Season 1 Review:
Somehow, it’s all in here, a mash-up of deadpan vibes and manic melodrama made brighter and prettier: all the best parts, underlined to death. The result is both irritating and fun, a feeling that has become something of a Murphy hallmark. Which also means that “The Politician” is exceedingly watchable. ... As the story plods on, “The Politician’s” atmospherics do wear thin.
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Sep 23, 2019
Season 1 Review:
With a wandering focus and an erratic sense of tone, The Politician simply doesn't come together as a clean vision. It remains generally watchable throughout thanks to a great cast and fleeting moments of inspiration and it actually teases a promising second season.
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Sep 26, 2019
Season 1 Review:
Marking Ryan Murphy's first series for Netflix, The Politician feels like a mashup of the producer's high-school-set dramas -- a dollop of "Scream Queens," a dash of "Glee," and a whole lot of the Alexander Payne-directed movie "Election." Throw in some high-profile casting, and it's a shiny but not especially bright bauble that falls short of a winning ticket.
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Sep 25, 2019
Season 1 Review:
It’s so aggressively kitschy and cutesy that, on the rare occasions when it calms down and tries to be earnest and affecting, the sincerity comes across as calculated, like a politician tearing up while delivering the same campaign speech for the fourth time in a week. Considering the show’s many irritating and exhausting qualities, it’s a small miracle that The Politician hangs together, much less that it manages to produce some touching and insightful moments.
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Jun 25, 2020
Season 2 Review:
The gloss of "The Politician" may not compensate for its overall shallowness or the messy pointlessness of its plot, but it does remind us of celebrity's power to persuade us to make foolish decisions, including with our time. Except, that is, for these two hours [two episodes about voters].
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Jun 23, 2020
Season 2 Review:
The Politician’s second season is snappier than season one, avoiding the midseason doldrums that really plagued that first run of episodes. It turns out, though, that a show can be snappier while still being remarkably dull, and for The Politician, that’s largely because it has zero conviction in the full wackiness of its own premise.
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Jun 19, 2020
Season 2 Review:
There’s no understating the immediate way Light’s presence (along with Bette Midler as Hadassah Gold, Dede’s conniving chief of staff) lifts “The Politician” into a more crackling realm. ... Everything that first seemed smart, snarky and on-point about “The Politician” begins to wear thin; the jokes that it makes — as well as the contemporary real-life debacles it lampoons — are too easily made.
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Sep 23, 2019
Season 1 Review:
On occasion, Platt or one of his co-stars gets to sing, and for those few precious minutes, Payton will seem tantalizingly real, in a manner suggesting The Politician would have been better off as a full-on musical, where the format forgave some of the artificiality. But those bursts of genuineness are few and far between in this version. ... A show that indulges their [Murphy, Falchuk, and Brennan's] worst impulses.
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ColliderSep 23, 2019
Season 1 Review:
I see a lot of half-baked ideas about politics as a means of change, about the harmful dividing lines of class and privilege that separate potential allies, about the importance of the caring and keeping of your mental health, and so much more. But at every turn, The Politician chooses an artificial, inauthentic way of expressing these ideas, of prioritizing the drama for the truth, and opting in for skating by with little else to offer but something superficially indulgent to lose yourself in for a while.
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