3 out of 5

Created by: Robert King, Michelle King

covers season 1

I don’t care about politics.  I don’t go out of my way not to, my brain just isn’t concerned, floating by in the same peaceful ‘if it truly affects me then I’ll get involved’ mentality that allows us to alarmingly shrug off NSA life-tappings as the norm.  My parents rattled on about taxes and wars when I was younger, as parents do, and people around me did the same as I made it past that sweet age of voteness and continued to not care.  And continued to not really feel all that affected.  But, y’know, if it it truly affects me…

Things are, admittedly, weird right now.  It’s 2016, and a man named Donald Trump is a presidential candidate who hasn’t gotten laughed out of the race.  I still don’t care, but it’s weird reading / hearing things that he’s supporting or saying and having them register as idiotic and then having that feeling backed up by, seemingly, most of the world.  And yet he’s still in the running.  That I’m not clear how this works – how this We All Agree But Maybe CNN Has To Remain ‘Impartial’ And So Can’t Outright Say That? setup maybe just adds to my general should-shrug feelings towards politics, and again goes into the pile of things you can say you told me so when I’m arrested by the hashtag thought police down the road.  (My cynicism will just snark its way out of anything, eh?)

Anyhow, my main point here is that, even though I’m not yet rallied into action, the fact that our current situation has even elicited acknowledgement of a response from me must mean that things are especially nuts.  Nuts enough to allow a major network to call the current shenanigans insane – behind the thinnest veil of metaphor – via a show called BrainDead.  Not that political ribbing is new (as any Late Night show or Saturday Night Live episode can attest), but there’s something about that that’s a bit different, happening at 10pm after your parents have gotten their sensationalism fix from the ‘news’ and existing under the clear auspice of humor and / or parody.  But BrainDead is primetime TV, and doesn’t really get the benefit of hiding behind audience laughter or a giddy ‘it’s okay to laugh’ chuckle from the host; it pretty much takes the stance that shit’s crazy, and that we’re crazy for letting it happen.

No, stow your eyerolls; I’m not claiming that the show has any real stakes or point to make.  My mom likes it.  That says how accessible it is.  What I am trying to say – or admit to myself, since I looked forward to watching each of its 13 episodes – is that the show is so blatant with its opinion that it can successfully pivot around too much obnoxious lecturing and, well, just be stupid.  The premise is so high-school-metaphor – alien bugs have taken over DC politics! – that you can’t help but watch in puzzled amusement as the writers go for broke – …and cause people’s heads to explode when trying to understand politics! – and then eventually forget most of the premise when they stumble onto amusing characters.

Mary Elizabeth-Winstead plays Laurel, the creative type in a family of politicians, who comes to the Capitol to help her brother, Luke (Danny Pino), as her funding for her creative dreams has currently dwindled.  Happenstance and exploding heads has her run across Gustav (Johnny Ray Gill) and Rochelle (Nikki M. James), each discovering elements of this bug conspiracy and then teaming up to solve the matter, and this easy team-up is one of the show’s strengths and charms: so obvious is the predicament that it doesn’t take much evidence to convince people of its existence, it’s more that the bugs are so pervasive in powerful positions that determining how to rid the world of them ends up being the motivating concern for 13 episodes.  13… distracting episodes.  You can tick off the plot points brought up and forgotten along the way and quickly run out of tickable digits, which certainly prevents the show from ever establishing any real sense of danger, but the trade off is that it remembers to keep its hammy tongue in cheek and all of the actors seem game for playing into the antics.

Toss in opening summary songs by the irrepressibly likable Jonathan Coulton and you’ve got the kind of dumb comedy that you initially nose-up avoid, but then eagerly plop down on the couch to watch every week.

I won’t be discussing the show with my mom, and there’s no debate that any cleverness the show offers isn’t in its parody but in its hiding a goofy comedy behind that facade.  And I’m still not a voter, and these are still insane times.  Thanks for the distracting TV?