[8.2/10] My favorite thing about this episode is how it touches on both issues of intersectionality and on the “idealism vs. pragmatism” tension for both sides of the ERA fight. It continues a thread from the last episode, of showing how these two groups of women have much in common and face similar issues, despite the fact that they are working toward very different goals and have very different ideas. But this one tackles that notion in a more compelling way and is especially buoyed by a stunning performance from Uzo Aduba as Shirley Chisolm.
Shirley has to face a tug of war and a struggle to maintain support given her multiple identities as a woman of color. One of her male allies relays the sentiment among black delegates that she’s a representative for women and not for them, at the same time she can’t muster the full-throated support of the National Women’s Political Caucus because they want to throw in for, as Gloria puts it, the “best white male candidate” for more mercenary reasons. Some of it isn’t exactly subtle, but then again, neither is that unfair tension for women in Shirley’s position, so it works.
What’s interesting is that type of factionalism and intersectionality plays out all over the episode, including in the “STOP ERA” organization. Phyllis tries to do damage control when a Louisiana potentate starts spouting racist crap at their meetings. But in the end, she is a pragmatist and an operator, willing to tolerate that racism in order to have such an effective organizer on their side, while at the same time, trading away some nominal power in exchange for agreement to a “code of conduct.” Just as with the party establishment in the other half of the episode, Schlafly still holds the real power, but she’s willing to trade horses and stomach an intersection between her gender views and her racial views because it brings her closer to what she wants.
She’s also willing to sell out her friends over it. Amid all the broader political commentary, what stands out on the Phyllis portion of the episode is the personal element here. Alice raises justifiable moral concerns about the Louisiana rep, and so Phyllis makes her the stalking horse for the issue, sending her into the fray to try to raise the issue only for Phyllis herself to swoop in, play peacemaker, and eventually kingmaker. She knights all the leaders of the local chapters, mollifying the Southern contingent, passing over Alice in favor of her ladder-climbing counterpart, and yet serving up the betrayal with a smile as she praises Alice for her sisterhood. There’s something so Machiavellian about it and, along with Eleanor, shows a trend of victory mattering more than friendship to Phyllis despite her warm eyes and willingness to loan her skirt.
And yet that’s nothing compared to the vicissitudes of party politics. Separate and apart from Shirley’s individual struggle, you also have Gloria’s crisis of conscience. She believes in Shirley, thinks her friend is the best candidate, but also wants to play the game (with Bella’s encouragement), and most importantly, get her abortion vote on the floor. So she sells out her friend for an empty promise, thinking she was making the practical decision only to get sold a bill of goods herself when push comes to shove and it looks like they may win.
Gloria gave up her true support, her unadulterated voice on her key issue, and betrayed her own friendship, just for the McGovern staffer to screw her over in the end anyway when it looked like she could make some real waves. It’s another parallel the show draws between Gloria and Phyllis, akin to Phyllis’s husband being willing to support her run for Congress until it looks like she could actually win.
There’s a clear message there, one that the episode underlines a little heavily for my tastes but which is still potent -- that compromising your principles, particularly when it comes to advancing the cause of oppressed peoples, in the name of pragmatism, gets you nothing but empty gestures and straight up betrayal when you actually threaten to make a difference. And real power bows to no one.
Given the production schedule, there’s no way that the show’s creators or producers could have known for sure about the current dynamics of the presidential race, but it feels like a particular commentary on both the 2020 and 2016 elections. To be frank, I don’t necessarily agree whole-heartedly with a certain oversimplification of the price of having to make tough but necessary compromises to get thing done, but this is an interesting way to dramatize the contrary idea. The episode uses this historical context as a clarion call for the present day that, again, isn’t exactly subtle, but which is potent as a way to convey the idea.
But the most compelling part of the episode for me is the personal struggle for Shirley Chisolm. Some of that is just Aduba’s lights out performance here. She’s aable to go both big and small here, turning up the volume when she yells about not getting the support she’s deserved, but also communicating the small scale devastation that comes from having to give up the fight, and the layered way in which she conveys both practiced beaming joy on stage with McGovern while internally lamenting what’s been lost on the inside.
Much of it, though, just comes from the circumstances, the way she has to balance competing demands from representatives of both of these aspects of her identity which are suspicious of the other. It comes in the way she has to deal with the FBI nominally being there to protect her, but also being on hand to surveil her, to approvingly watch Archie Bunker’s racism depicted as wrong but adorable on TV, to make her feel unsafe and unsecure in her own place.
She has a mission, to use her delegates and the accomplishments she’s made to be more than a symbolic candidate, but to gain a seat at the table for her and her issues -- not in ‘76 or ‘80 -- but right now. And various members of her own party, her own caucus, conspire to see that it doesn’t happen. The episode means it in part as an object lesson for Gloria, a warning that this go along to get along approach will only get her broken promises. But it also means it as a tragedy for Shirley, that this women who worked so hard and inspired so many people and tried to really effect change, not only lost the fight but lost at the hands of her own allies.
The house always wins, and the well-meaning efforts of individual agents of change can be set against one another to help ensure that. Phyllis knows it. Gloria now knows it. But Shirley knows it better than anyone, with a harsh reminder of where the voices of those who straddle lines and refuse to compromise, are often left despite their noble efforts.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2020-05-17T01:17:18Z
[8.2/10] My favorite thing about this episode is how it touches on both issues of intersectionality and on the “idealism vs. pragmatism” tension for both sides of the ERA fight. It continues a thread from the last episode, of showing how these two groups of women have much in common and face similar issues, despite the fact that they are working toward very different goals and have very different ideas. But this one tackles that notion in a more compelling way and is especially buoyed by a stunning performance from Uzo Aduba as Shirley Chisolm.
Shirley has to face a tug of war and a struggle to maintain support given her multiple identities as a woman of color. One of her male allies relays the sentiment among black delegates that she’s a representative for women and not for them, at the same time she can’t muster the full-throated support of the National Women’s Political Caucus because they want to throw in for, as Gloria puts it, the “best white male candidate” for more mercenary reasons. Some of it isn’t exactly subtle, but then again, neither is that unfair tension for women in Shirley’s position, so it works.
What’s interesting is that type of factionalism and intersectionality plays out all over the episode, including in the “STOP ERA” organization. Phyllis tries to do damage control when a Louisiana potentate starts spouting racist crap at their meetings. But in the end, she is a pragmatist and an operator, willing to tolerate that racism in order to have such an effective organizer on their side, while at the same time, trading away some nominal power in exchange for agreement to a “code of conduct.” Just as with the party establishment in the other half of the episode, Schlafly still holds the real power, but she’s willing to trade horses and stomach an intersection between her gender views and her racial views because it brings her closer to what she wants.
She’s also willing to sell out her friends over it. Amid all the broader political commentary, what stands out on the Phyllis portion of the episode is the personal element here. Alice raises justifiable moral concerns about the Louisiana rep, and so Phyllis makes her the stalking horse for the issue, sending her into the fray to try to raise the issue only for Phyllis herself to swoop in, play peacemaker, and eventually kingmaker. She knights all the leaders of the local chapters, mollifying the Southern contingent, passing over Alice in favor of her ladder-climbing counterpart, and yet serving up the betrayal with a smile as she praises Alice for her sisterhood. There’s something so Machiavellian about it and, along with Eleanor, shows a trend of victory mattering more than friendship to Phyllis despite her warm eyes and willingness to loan her skirt.
And yet that’s nothing compared to the vicissitudes of party politics. Separate and apart from Shirley’s individual struggle, you also have Gloria’s crisis of conscience. She believes in Shirley, thinks her friend is the best candidate, but also wants to play the game (with Bella’s encouragement), and most importantly, get her abortion vote on the floor. So she sells out her friend for an empty promise, thinking she was making the practical decision only to get sold a bill of goods herself when push comes to shove and it looks like they may win.
Gloria gave up her true support, her unadulterated voice on her key issue, and betrayed her own friendship, just for the McGovern staffer to screw her over in the end anyway when it looked like she could make some real waves. It’s another parallel the show draws between Gloria and Phyllis, akin to Phyllis’s husband being willing to support her run for Congress until it looks like she could actually win.
There’s a clear message there, one that the episode underlines a little heavily for my tastes but which is still potent -- that compromising your principles, particularly when it comes to advancing the cause of oppressed peoples, in the name of pragmatism, gets you nothing but empty gestures and straight up betrayal when you actually threaten to make a difference. And real power bows to no one.
Given the production schedule, there’s no way that the show’s creators or producers could have known for sure about the current dynamics of the presidential race, but it feels like a particular commentary on both the 2020 and 2016 elections. To be frank, I don’t necessarily agree whole-heartedly with a certain oversimplification of the price of having to make tough but necessary compromises to get thing done, but this is an interesting way to dramatize the contrary idea. The episode uses this historical context as a clarion call for the present day that, again, isn’t exactly subtle, but which is potent as a way to convey the idea.
But the most compelling part of the episode for me is the personal struggle for Shirley Chisolm. Some of that is just Aduba’s lights out performance here. She’s aable to go both big and small here, turning up the volume when she yells about not getting the support she’s deserved, but also communicating the small scale devastation that comes from having to give up the fight, and the layered way in which she conveys both practiced beaming joy on stage with McGovern while internally lamenting what’s been lost on the inside.
Much of it, though, just comes from the circumstances, the way she has to balance competing demands from representatives of both of these aspects of her identity which are suspicious of the other. It comes in the way she has to deal with the FBI nominally being there to protect her, but also being on hand to surveil her, to approvingly watch Archie Bunker’s racism depicted as wrong but adorable on TV, to make her feel unsafe and unsecure in her own place.
She has a mission, to use her delegates and the accomplishments she’s made to be more than a symbolic candidate, but to gain a seat at the table for her and her issues -- not in ‘76 or ‘80 -- but right now. And various members of her own party, her own caucus, conspire to see that it doesn’t happen. The episode means it in part as an object lesson for Gloria, a warning that this go along to get along approach will only get her broken promises. But it also means it as a tragedy for Shirley, that this women who worked so hard and inspired so many people and tried to really effect change, not only lost the fight but lost at the hands of her own allies.
The house always wins, and the well-meaning efforts of individual agents of change can be set against one another to help ensure that. Phyllis knows it. Gloria now knows it. But Shirley knows it better than anyone, with a harsh reminder of where the voices of those who straddle lines and refuse to compromise, are often left despite their noble efforts.