[7.8/10] Most stories about politics inevitably become stories about power, in some way shape or form. But “Jill” is also a story about what’s sacrificed to get it, and how hollow or pyrrhic attaining that victory can be.
As the show has done so often, it cuts a contrast between Phyllis Schlafly and one of the members of the women’s liberation movement. But this time, it’s about divisions within the Republican party rather than across the aisle, which is what makes it so interesting. Jill and Phyllis are, nominally at least, on the same side. But they represent two different branches of the conservative movement: an old guard led by Gerald Ford, and the Reagan Revolution from the right that Phyllis wants to attach herself to. The juxtaposition of these two women and their smiling but sharp-elbowed skirmishes and proxy wars represent that large conflict between two ideas of what their party should be.
Both are after power, after a sort, and willing to make sacrifices and compromises to get it. For Phyllis, that means getting into bed with the pro-life movement, particularly the Southern evangelical strain of it, in a way that clashes with her Catholic sensibilities. Abortion has never been Phyllis’s issue, but she wants a seat at the table, and decides the only way to get it is to have an organization, and a mailing list, to rival the 40,000 of the National Organization for Women. For that, she’ll partner with just about anybody.
Including people who would hate her son. As much as the power game fascinates me, I’m almost always more interested in the personal stories at play in these types of historical dramas. While it’s a maximalist scene, Phyllis’s confessional moment over her son is a strong one, trying to balance her love for her boy with her rejection of his lifestyle and, if you can read between the lines, what it could cost her politically if it came out. The most striking thing about these sacrifices is not who Phyllis is willing to ally herself with, but the fact that she’s willing to push her own beloved son away to get what she wants.
What she wants is influence and authority. Each of these episodes so far has centered on a major event that helps anchor the broader exploration, and here that’s the 1976 Repbulican Convention. Specifically, there’s a fight over whether support for the ERA, a cause promoted by a figure no less than First Lady Betty Ford, will continue to be a part of the party platform.
Phyllis throws in with the anti-abortion activists, swallows her pride after a contentious meeting with their plagarizing leader, and makes some noise at the convention. She loses that vote, but she wins her place in the pecking order, getting a chance to talk strategy with Reagan’s top advisors and help “plant a flag” with her group and her movement.
Jill wins that vote, but loses even more. I love how this episode explores the contradictions and difficult terrain she has to navigate as pro-choice, feminist Republican. She believes in conservative principles and has the support of the White House, but she also finds herself laying down her arms in the hopes of supporting her husband’s career. She is willing to take a step back, not speak at the convention in support of her issues, in the hopes that it will help her husband be Ford’s VP pick, without the political liability of his “outspoken” wife. It’s a small sacrifice, she thinks, in order to have the real power and seat at the table to advance her agenda she would have as the matriarch of the “second family.”
And yet while the ERA stays in the platform, by not being there or able to be active in the politicking, she loses more. In order to keep the pro-ERA stance, “concessions had to be made,” including on pro-life issues. It’s implied that part of that horse-trading meant accepting pro-life Bob Dole as Ford’s runningmate rather than Jill’s husbnad. There’s yet another irony in this show: Jill stepped away from the convention in order to help her husband become Vice President, and yet it’s her absence that’s implied to have prevented it from happening.
It’s part of this show’s purity politics, where making the seemingly expedient choice in favor of greater success and leeway later only ends in disappointment. We see Jill fighting for women’s rights at the same time her husband is oblivious to their kids needing to be taken to tennis practice. She has to balance fighting for her cause against how it could harm her husband’s political chances. And she has to smile and play nice when she’s given a commission from the President himself while swallowing her frustration that she gets no pay or funding for it.
Then there’s harassment. That’s the other undercurrent here, made manifest by the harassment suffered by secretaries to Democratic politicians and meaningful looks from secretaries to Republican ones. Shirley Chisolm, the current poster child for justice delayed being justice denied and false promises, wants to go public and stand on principle, even if it hurts her side tactically. Whereas Bella, ever the pragmatist, doesn’t want to demand the resignation of reliable liberal votes in an election year. Shirley makes a stand; Bella regrets not sticking with her, and nothing happens. The injustice goes on.
But it’s also at issue with Phyllis and Jill. The most interesting scene in the episode is the drink the two of them share. Jill calls Phyllis out for being more interested in national defense than women’s issues, and argues that Jill’s fighting for an end to that kind of treatment and debasement. She speaks about the touches and demands for smiles and flattery she has to peddle just to get her organization funded, in the hopes that her daughters won’t have to endure it. And Phyllis not only brushes her off, but implicitly insults her by suggesting that women who received that sort of treatment were inviting it.
Except when Phyllis makes into the halls of Reagan’s strategists, she too is casually touched on the shoulder by a strange man, endures off-color gags about oral sex amid champions of the religious right, and is told to drop her “women’s issues” if she wants to maintain her limited but privileged position, much as Jill herself was. Both of these women were after power, and in a way, both get what they want, but each loses and endures much of the same blows and debasements in the process.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2020-05-17T20:30:45Z
[7.8/10] Most stories about politics inevitably become stories about power, in some way shape or form. But “Jill” is also a story about what’s sacrificed to get it, and how hollow or pyrrhic attaining that victory can be.
As the show has done so often, it cuts a contrast between Phyllis Schlafly and one of the members of the women’s liberation movement. But this time, it’s about divisions within the Republican party rather than across the aisle, which is what makes it so interesting. Jill and Phyllis are, nominally at least, on the same side. But they represent two different branches of the conservative movement: an old guard led by Gerald Ford, and the Reagan Revolution from the right that Phyllis wants to attach herself to. The juxtaposition of these two women and their smiling but sharp-elbowed skirmishes and proxy wars represent that large conflict between two ideas of what their party should be.
Both are after power, after a sort, and willing to make sacrifices and compromises to get it. For Phyllis, that means getting into bed with the pro-life movement, particularly the Southern evangelical strain of it, in a way that clashes with her Catholic sensibilities. Abortion has never been Phyllis’s issue, but she wants a seat at the table, and decides the only way to get it is to have an organization, and a mailing list, to rival the 40,000 of the National Organization for Women. For that, she’ll partner with just about anybody.
Including people who would hate her son. As much as the power game fascinates me, I’m almost always more interested in the personal stories at play in these types of historical dramas. While it’s a maximalist scene, Phyllis’s confessional moment over her son is a strong one, trying to balance her love for her boy with her rejection of his lifestyle and, if you can read between the lines, what it could cost her politically if it came out. The most striking thing about these sacrifices is not who Phyllis is willing to ally herself with, but the fact that she’s willing to push her own beloved son away to get what she wants.
What she wants is influence and authority. Each of these episodes so far has centered on a major event that helps anchor the broader exploration, and here that’s the 1976 Repbulican Convention. Specifically, there’s a fight over whether support for the ERA, a cause promoted by a figure no less than First Lady Betty Ford, will continue to be a part of the party platform.
Phyllis throws in with the anti-abortion activists, swallows her pride after a contentious meeting with their plagarizing leader, and makes some noise at the convention. She loses that vote, but she wins her place in the pecking order, getting a chance to talk strategy with Reagan’s top advisors and help “plant a flag” with her group and her movement.
Jill wins that vote, but loses even more. I love how this episode explores the contradictions and difficult terrain she has to navigate as pro-choice, feminist Republican. She believes in conservative principles and has the support of the White House, but she also finds herself laying down her arms in the hopes of supporting her husband’s career. She is willing to take a step back, not speak at the convention in support of her issues, in the hopes that it will help her husband be Ford’s VP pick, without the political liability of his “outspoken” wife. It’s a small sacrifice, she thinks, in order to have the real power and seat at the table to advance her agenda she would have as the matriarch of the “second family.”
And yet while the ERA stays in the platform, by not being there or able to be active in the politicking, she loses more. In order to keep the pro-ERA stance, “concessions had to be made,” including on pro-life issues. It’s implied that part of that horse-trading meant accepting pro-life Bob Dole as Ford’s runningmate rather than Jill’s husbnad. There’s yet another irony in this show: Jill stepped away from the convention in order to help her husband become Vice President, and yet it’s her absence that’s implied to have prevented it from happening.
It’s part of this show’s purity politics, where making the seemingly expedient choice in favor of greater success and leeway later only ends in disappointment. We see Jill fighting for women’s rights at the same time her husband is oblivious to their kids needing to be taken to tennis practice. She has to balance fighting for her cause against how it could harm her husband’s political chances. And she has to smile and play nice when she’s given a commission from the President himself while swallowing her frustration that she gets no pay or funding for it.
Then there’s harassment. That’s the other undercurrent here, made manifest by the harassment suffered by secretaries to Democratic politicians and meaningful looks from secretaries to Republican ones. Shirley Chisolm, the current poster child for justice delayed being justice denied and false promises, wants to go public and stand on principle, even if it hurts her side tactically. Whereas Bella, ever the pragmatist, doesn’t want to demand the resignation of reliable liberal votes in an election year. Shirley makes a stand; Bella regrets not sticking with her, and nothing happens. The injustice goes on.
But it’s also at issue with Phyllis and Jill. The most interesting scene in the episode is the drink the two of them share. Jill calls Phyllis out for being more interested in national defense than women’s issues, and argues that Jill’s fighting for an end to that kind of treatment and debasement. She speaks about the touches and demands for smiles and flattery she has to peddle just to get her organization funded, in the hopes that her daughters won’t have to endure it. And Phyllis not only brushes her off, but implicitly insults her by suggesting that women who received that sort of treatment were inviting it.
Except when Phyllis makes into the halls of Reagan’s strategists, she too is casually touched on the shoulder by a strange man, endures off-color gags about oral sex amid champions of the religious right, and is told to drop her “women’s issues” if she wants to maintain her limited but privileged position, much as Jill herself was. Both of these women were after power, and in a way, both get what they want, but each loses and endures much of the same blows and debasements in the process.