With what is happening with our neighbours to the south it is amazing to me that no one has made a satire series about U.S. politics before now. The husband and wife team of Robert and Michelle King were the ones behind the megahit The Good Wife. For eight years it was must watch television for CBS. They called it a day in 2016 and came right back with BrainDead on the same station. There was a little politics and humour done on The Good Wife; this time they are jumping feet first into that pool. The husband-wife team have that kind of power that they did not shrink away from doing a political satire.
Satirizing Washington politics is like picking off fish in a barrel. Here in BrainDead there is a fictional world not too far from what Americans are living. It seems like that country is dealing with their own form of extremism either on the Left or Right. Mirrors the absurdity of what is happening now with a science fiction twist. This is politics meshed with Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
Laurel Healy (played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead) is a documentary filmmaker who is struggling. She wants to make a film about disappearing music in Malaysia. Not exactly an eye catcher, so she comes home with her tail between her legs. Her former senator father (played by Zach Grenier) offers her money if she works for her brother Luke (played by Danny Pino), who is a Democratic senator, for a year. She, who hates politics, begrudgingly agrees.
The tension between the Republicans and Democrats does not come as a surprise to Laurel, what does is the strange behaviour of some people on the Hill. As bizarre and implausible as it sounds, she figures out that there are bugs that are crawling into people’s ears and eating away half of their brains. The infection is spreading and only she, new friend/doctor Rochelle (played by Nikki M. James) and brilliant oddball Gustav (played by Johnny Ray Gill) are aware of what is going on.
The Kings have a four year plan with this series. They have done politics in Washington and in season two want to move to the financial world in New York City then on to technology in Silicon Valley and finally, of course, the entertainment industry in Hollywood. Sounds like a plan to me!
Special Features:
-Deleted Scenes
-Trickle-Down Invasion: The Story of BrainDead
-Strange Bedfellows: The Characters of BrainDead
-The Third Party: The Politics of BrainDead
-Gag Reel
