Last watched March 2017
Description:
Laurel Healy just wants to complete her documentary on Melanesian choirs, so when her dad suggests she comes home and works for her brother, Senator Luke Healy, she reluctantly agrees – she needs the money. After helping one of Luke’s constituents, she starts investigating the odd happenings at Capitol Hill.
Opinion:
I have a loose policy when it comes to picking T.V. shows. If the feature picture doesn’t show a woman or a person of colour in a prominent position, I don’t watch it without a strong recommendation from a friend. Most of the shows out there are about white, cis, able bodied, straight men and I don’t like to encourage that on principle. So, seeing as the cover art of Braindead is just an image of the white house coming out of a suit, I skipped it. Another american political drama, I thought.
Oh how I was wrong! Stan (correctly) had been suggesting it to me for some time and I feel bad for ignoring it’s excellent advise. Not only does Braindead have a (albeit white, straight, cis, able bodied, VERY privileged) woman lead, but it also has two people of colour – one woman and one man – as her friends and co-conspirators. Both characters of colour felt very whole and well rounded. Gustav, in particular, feels like the perfect balance of unhinged and hinged – which makes his plot twist really annoying, in my mind.
The whole show is really about bipartisanship and critiques the extremism in political ideals which I felt complicated about. A lot of Republicans especially have beef with people like me (trans folk), so ‘making nice’ with them always feels a little bit wrong. That being said, I did appreciate the critiques and I found the show well written and extremely funny. I am very sad CBS didn’t follow through and give it the four-part series.
Genre: political comedy, sci-fi, satire
Pros: woman written, woman directed, woman lead production, diverse cast
Cons: none?
Would approach with caution if: you have a phobia of bugs (ant like creatures crawl into their ears and it is SO gross), have difficulty with random attacks, one with a knife, several scenes of people getting shot
Can be found: Stan
Accessibility: subtitles and closed captions 
If you liked this, I would suggest: I… don’t really know of any other political-scifi mash-up comedies so this goes in a category all of it’s own.
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