'The Politician' proves Ryan Murphy's final form is an acid trip

Ryan Murphy has a very particular set of skills.

He’s a writer, producer, and a director, but plenty of other people are as well. Murphy’s special skill lies in creating worlds that look and sound like candy-colored versions of our own that feature elements that are more or less real — glee clubs exist, people do murder occasionally, and as seen in Netflix’s The Politician, high school elections are a thing — but that tilt in bizarre directions that feel “off.” The space between his shows’ intent to discuss real issues or events and the high-flying weirdness of them is where most of their humor is derived, as well as most of the enjoyment if you’re a fan of his work.

That said, The Politician is the most Ryan Murphy–ass show to which he’s ever applied his skills. Nearly everything about it invokes the uncanny. The characters’ costumes are obsessively styled and amped up to invoke archetypes that barely existed until Murphy came up with them. The dialogue erupts like the rapid firing of a machine gun, blowing past jokes that kill nonetheless; its message is similarly murdered in the show’s last act, but by the end of Season 1 that does seem to be the point.

Saying The Politician is a TV show about Payton Hobart’s (Ben Platt, wonderful in the role) ambition to become President of the United States by first winning his high school’s presidential election is like saying Pose is a series about people who really like trophies. It’s a raging oversimplification that also diminishes nearly everything else that happens onscreen.

The Politician is an exercise in being and feeling bamboozled by existence. No one on this show knows what they want, or why they’re here, or why they do the things they do, and watching their dramas (and hoo boy, there are dramas) play out elicits a similar feeling in the audience. The off-kilterness of it all is both hilarious and uncomfortable — what even is this show? Why is any of this happening at all?

Some of that “this,” by the way, not to spoil too many plot points, involves a cheery pastiche on the character of Gypsy Rose Blanchard from Hulu’s The Act (and the real-life true crime story that inspired it), Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins, a mysterious lesbian horse trainer at a period costume ball, Dracunculiasis, one really long dining room table, and Gwyneth Paltrow playing the platonic form of Gwyneth Paltrow.

In the hands of anyone else, balancing just these would be a train wreck, but in Murphy’s they’re barely a fraction of what’s stuffed into the wild world of The Politician. It’s a WWE royal rumble of things that happen because reasons.

The Politician is fun in the way drugs are fun. It distorts reality towards impossibilities of color and confusion, even if any epiphanies experienced during the trip won’t hold up in a sober, saner light. Come for the wacky hijinks, musical numbers, and great performances; stay for Ryan Murphy’s best experiment in audience disorientation yet.