In pointing out my own hypocrisy I was trying to highlight that most of my reaction to this episode was influenced by it being almost over, so whatever comes from it won’t get to marinate the way the rest of this season has felt, like, of a piece with the show as a whole rather than specifically cynical about a real life event (what if Fox hadn’t called Arizona for Biden, essentially)

I do think they struggled to make clear that ATN calling an election doesn’t mean the election is decided, though I could also argue it’s an attempt to seat the audience in the Roys’ delusion suite, but I didn’t hate it at all. Yet it felt, mostly, like an aside or detour compared to the rest of the season. Largely because whenever politics served as the venue for past episodes, no matter how explicit the Bernie references sometimes were the show seemed pretty disinterested what the outcome would be. So I struggled with an episode entirely dedicated to it, especially since, as you say, none of the characters did anything interesting with the situation.

Like I said earlier I’ve grown tired as hell of audiences impulse to “solve” shows, or even for every episode to “mean something” or “move the plot”. I totally enjoyed seeing these characters navigate this thing, but I’ve got to admit I was disappointed Tom seemed to regress to piloting comic interactions with Greg and otherwise being a puppet. I was hoping for something more interesting with him, especially given he met and fell in love with Shiv while she was buying her Democrat lobbyist bullshit. I felt like they could have built on the patio argument without outright making Tom “the hero”.


Acknowledging that I’m hedging my criticism, because it’s ultimately just a post on a weird little niche Roots fansite anyway, I’m mostly disappointed that on the cusp of the finale of one of my favorite shows ever, barring a huge reckoning next week (again - I’m being a huge hypocrite here!) I felt like I was watching a show teeter on the edge of parodying itself to tie off a C-level plot thread and antagonize viewers imagining redemption arcs.


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"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
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