The Plot Against America 1.2: The 33rd President

A powerful second episode of The Plot Against America, with its now patented mix of sharp historical details and disturbing alternate history.

The details again range from rarely heard Yiddish, like bahaimhe for cow, to those light green semi-translucent dishes on the table.  And the delicatessen looked so good I could taste it.

The alternate reality was equally, if verging on tragically, convincing.  Lindbergh, running on a me vs. war platform, beats Roosevelt in his quest for a third term in 1940.  We learn this by witnessing the Levins learning of this via the radio in their living room.  Though I knew this was going to happen in this story, it was a blow, anyway, offered at almost the same time as Herman Levin ducks into his Newark moviehouse to see the Nazis taking over Europe.  The mix of movies and radio indeed typified this time - nothing alternate about their role in history - and The Plot Against America's employment of newsreels and radio to convey its narrative makes its alternate history all the more real.

The other smack-in-your-face element is Rabbi Lionel Bengelsdorf's support of Lindbergh in his campaign for President.  The character is all the more horrifying because he's played the charismatic John Tuturro.  Bengelsdorf is so charismatic, so sure of his beliefs and so well spoken, that he even attracts Evelyn Finkel played by Winona Ryder.   Is he based on a real person?  Not that I know of, and I suppose that's one optimistic aspect of this frightening story.

Lindbergh's election as the 33rd American President means the pace of this short series will be quickening.  Alvin Levin has gone to Canada to enlist in their armed forces because he want to "kill Nazis".  Will America with Lindbergh in the White House offer Britain and Churchill no help in their heroic attempt to stave off Hitler?

I'll be back here with my report next week.

See also The Plot Against America 1.1: Yet Another Alternate Nazi History, with Forshpeis

 

The Plot Against America 1.1: Yet Another Alternate Nazi History, with Forshpeis

I find myself in the less than jubilant position of reviewing the third television science fiction series about Nazis - science fiction, loosely defined - in the past three days.  The first would be Hunters (my review here), the second Westworld (more, precisely it's season three coda; my review here), and now The Plot to Against America on HBO.  I'll leave it to you to explain why Nazis are so popular on American television these days.

The Plot hinges on Charles Lindbergh, who in real history was a non-interventionist and likely Nazi sympathizer in the 1930s, bur did fight against the Nazis and Japanese in the Second World War. In the television series, he beats FDR in the Presidential election of 1940, and (though I haven't read the 2004 novel by Philip Roth or seen more than the first episode of the series) presides over an America in which anti-semitism is rampant.

Philip Roth and Philip K. Dick are two very different kinds of brilliant writers, so don't expect any Man in the High Castle (in my view, probably the best science fiction series ever on television) in The Plot Against America alternate history.  Instead, think about Roth's other notable works, like Goodbye Columbus, which focus on the pleasures and problems of Jewish life in mid-20th-century New Jersey.  You'll find lots of that in the first episode of The Plot Against America, which introduces the extended Levin family, its struggle to move up in the middle class and fend off the rising Nazi tide. 

The details in 1940 Newark are spot on, ranging from the Esso gas station to the clothing to the Yiddish sprinkled in the conversations.  This has to be the first time I've heard the word forshpeis in an American TV drama.  It brings back wonderful memories of both my grandmother's voice and her forshpeis.   

The acting in The Plot Against America is top-drawer, too, with Winona Ryder, John Turturro, and David Krumholtz in important roles, eating rolls that made me hungry, and I'll be back here next week with a review of the second episode.