What I’m Watching: American Crime Story: Impeachment

American Crime Story: Impeachment: Season 3, Episode 8 “Stand By Your Man” (C+)

I’ll say again that the part of this show that feels the most disingenuous is the scripted scenes between Bill and Hillary. The writing just isn’t particularly good, and it’s hard to believe that they talked like that at all, especially since the real Monica is a producer on this show and she wasn’t privy to any of the interactions between the two of them. That was the primary focus of this episode, so I didn’t find too much to hang onto in the same was as previous installments that showcased the relationship between Linda and Monica. Hillary is obviously a formidable presence, but the way she’s being portrayed here makes her come off as exactly what the analysis showed about her, cold and unfeeling. I said in one of my previous reviews that Edie Falco is a tremendously skilled actress, but I’m not sure she’s who I would have chosen to play Hillary given the many options out there. Clive Owen’s Bill is also oddly hypnotizing, so committed to his accent and to mimicking the way that the real Bill spoke and what he said, much of which is well-documented. How he tried to spin events to make it seem like everything he had said up until that point had been totally honest based on his understanding of certain terminology was fascinating, and the angry commentary from Mike was a nice touch to make it clear just how cleverly he was trying to make it out of a very messy and incriminating situation, underscored by Monica’s horrified reaction to his denials.