It’s a daunting amount of information to absorb, made more complicated by the inevitable timeline jumps.
Barely 10 minutes into the premiere, a mortified Lewinsky turns her glare on Tripp.
“I want that treacherous bitch to know what she did to me.”
Sarah Paulson as Linda Tripp and Beanie Feldstein as Monica Lewinsky in ‘Impeachment: American Crime Story’.Tina Thorpe/FX
(This line, and many others inImpeachment, are pulled directly from real-life accounts of the events.)
Of course, Tripp is just one of many bad actors in this saga.
Impeachmentdeftly avoids “both sides” equivocations or overtly partisan shading.
Clive Owen in ‘Impeachment: American Crime Story’.Kurt Iswarienko/FX
Nor is it a post-#MeToo hagiography of two notoriously wronged women.
Her Monica is whiny and self-absorbed, loyal and oversensitive, endlessly devoted and shamelessly exploited.
Though she’s burdened with a distracting prosthetic nose, Ashford is stunning as Paula Jones.
“I was the last person to see Vince Foster alive!”
But no one hires Sarah Paulson to play a one-dimensional villain.
She is desperate to believe it, and Paulson almost makes us believe it, too.
Elizabeth Reaser as Kathleen Wiley!
Rae Dawn Chong as Betty Curie!
and at times,Impeachmentbegins to feel a little like a prestigeLove Boat.
(FX made seven ofImpeachment’s 10 episodes available for review.)
“They’re trying to use the legal system to overturn an election,” fumes Clinton.
“Being the president used to mean something,” she rages.
