Battleground

By Megan Geilman

Do you miss it? Do you miss the Election? The excitement, the constant poll watching, the barrage of negative ads, the endless Facebook debates (not to mention the REAL debacles, I mean debates). Yeah me neither.

Well, whether or not you got your kicks from all the election fervor, here is a little gem of a show that will keep you entertained without all the real-life drama. It’s centered around the fictional campaign of a third place candidate for a Wisconsin Senate Race. I absolutely loved this show and I’m hoping this review might in some small way help to get a 2nd season on the air--which is still a possibility, from what the interwebs tell me.

The writing is strong and the characters are fantastic: if you do not absolutely love Ben you have no soul. And if you do not absolutely love-hate Tak you have no brain. All the characters are memorable and sincerely remind you of people you know, wish you knew, or wish you didn’t know. Done in the mockumentary style, the characters are interviewed at some point in the future which gives you clues to where they end up, but not how they got there--which in my opinion, is a brilliant plot move and this show does it juuuust right.

It’s a Hulu original series, but it does not disappoint for quality: one of the show’s head honchos is Marc Webb, whom you may know by a little show called “500 Days of Summer” which he directed. Oh yeah, and “The Amazing Spider-man” which he directed as well. J.D. Walsh heads up the project and adds great local flavor since he himself grew up in Madison, WI and the entire show is set and filmed on location. Sure it doesn’t have the “Hollywood” of DC, but that’s part of the appeal. It brings the show into a sphere of accessibility for us lovers of all things local...idealists who have ever worked on something just a little bit bigger than ourselves. It’s a show with an artisanal craft feel--no additives, no preservatives--just good quality TV that cuts the corporate crap (even though Hulu is a conglomerate of ABC, NBC, and Fox).

I realize the timing of the show may not be ideal--we are all feeling a little bit jaded from the last year of pundits and partisanship. I originally watched the show when it aired back during the Republican Primaries, it was all still new and exciting back then, and the show let me keep the excitement going without the stress of who would come out on top. Personally, I’m really hoping the writers were just waiting for the election to be over so that they would have new writing material, especially since the season finale ended with an offer for the staff to work on the Presidential campaign. Fingers are crossed. Until then, I can do my part by campaigning for more viewers to watch its first season.

Megan Geilman has had an on-again-off-again relationship with television since she was young and her parents occasionally let her stay up to watch Star Trek and X-Files. She recently relocated to beautiful San Clemente, CA with her husband, unborn child, and design business. She lives a half mile from the beach and plans on eating a lot of avocados. She occasionally blogs at http://ratedgforgeilman.blogspot.com andhttp://megangeilmandesign.blogspot.com