After all this time on air, it was to be expected that this season of America would be somewhat disappointing. But this is getting out of hand.
It’s not like the show runners hadn’t made some strange calls in the past—remember when some random rich guy was going on and on about president’s birth certificate? What was that!—but the overall arch was solid. The black president? Strong end to the 2008 season. The internet surveillance scandal? A bit obvious, but believable.
Now, this season had started out ok. Hillary Clinton, a lawyer and former secretary of state who used her private email server for official correspondence and gets caught in an investigation but still decides to run for president? That’s juicy stuff. Meanwhile, the birth certificate guy is back and also running for president and somehow manages to win the primaries, despite being the least believable presidential candidate TV has ever seen. The character of Donald Trump does all manner of things that presidential candidates don’t do in real life, like refusing to share his tax returns and bragging about grabbing women by their genitals.
Because this wasn’t preposterous enough, the Russians—no, really, the Russians!—hack Clinton. They get into her campaign’s servers and get a bunch of emails published, including some that reference paid speeches she has given to fancy banks.
All the while, a strange subplot is developing, in which Clinton’s closest aide divorces her husband because he’s been caught sexting with strangers, again. The script writers foreshadowed all of this several seasons ago, when the aide’s husband was forced to resign as a congressman after he tweeted a picture of his penis to all of Twitter, instead of just the woman he was sexting with at the time. Then, he lost the New York mayoral race for lying about his sexting habit.
Finally, he is caught sexting again this season. Oh, and the guy is called Weiner! Way to make it subtle.
Anyway, right as we’re approaching the season finale, the police investigating this guy’s sexting with a minor have found some more emails, presumably exchanged by Weiner and his wife, that link back to the original Clinton email scandal. It’s like the show’s writers have secretly decided this is the last season of America, and they are desperately trying to tie all of the story lines together.
Only, America is not supposed to be a late-night soap in which the love interests ruin everything, nor an after-school special about the consequences of inappropriate sexual behavior. Seriously, guys. Go for a walk, clear your head, then come back to the writing room with something believable for the last episode.
You’ll have all of next season to get crazy again.