S04.E07: The Politics Episode

[atomic]

Airs on June 16, 2020

Quote

Penelope's conservative family comes to visit; Penelope dreads that with the election coming up, they won't be able to avoid fighting over politics, leaving the Alvarezes to strategize how to get through it with the family intact.

Preview clip for the animated episode:

 

[Bastet]

PREACH, Penelope, explaining why this is so different than the being on different political sides of the past.

I actually went out for the first time in three months (to my parents' house for my dad's birthday dinner), and it didn't even occur to me I'd need to record something.  I got home a few minutes into the rerun of this.

I'm not much of an animation fan, but it was nice to have something new.  And definitely nice to have something true.

Some of my favorite moments:

"Facts don't matter anymore."

ICE coming in to nab ALF.

"But her emails" as the cousin is being strangled.

Most of all: showing the futility of responding to crazy by trying to find common ground and the ridiculousness of "agree to disagree" meaning letting pure bullshit slide.

[Empress1]

8 hours ago, Bastet said:

PREACH, Penelope, explaining why this is so different than the being on different political sides of the past.

I also liked that she pointed out that nobody with an agenda to “shoot all the Mexicans” is going to know or care that they’re Cuban. There are lots and lots of people who would and do see their family as ... problematic immigrants, to put it mildly, and would not care or even believe that they came here legally.

Also, posting up in someone’s small apartment for a week, unannounced (Penelope didn’t know they were coming early), is rude as hell, regardless of political affiliation.

Edited June 17, 2020 by Empress1

[joanne3482]

Did anyone else catch at the very end the voiceover guy said "new episodes on PopTV"?  I wonder (hope) those are the Netflix episodes maybe. 

I loved this episode. As someone who struggles with this issue so much with my parents, I could really relate (even though my family is not Hispanic). Visiting them is incredibly difficult for the reasons Penelope indicated, you can't mention anything without it somehow becoming political. 

[Bastet]

12 hours ago, Empress1 said:

Also, posting up in someone’s small apartment for a week, unannounced (Penelope didn’t know they were coming early),

Oy, yes - that must have been in the opening minutes I missed.

I'll have to check and see if this episode is available on the PopTV website, because there were some seriously great lines I'd like to revisit.

11 hours ago, joanne3482 said:

Visiting them is incredibly difficult for the reasons Penelope indicated, you can't mention anything without it somehow becoming political. 

Yes, exactly; I have family I can literally only talk about pets with because everything else somehow turns into the type of crazy non-sequiturs of demonstrably false information fervently believed to be true the Alvarez family envisioned happening when they tried to walk through implementing the suggested techniques.  That those scenarios are not really exaggerated is what made this rather cathartic to watch - it's not just me and my friends, this happens to enough people they made an entire episode of television about it.

On a far less important note, it bothered me that the animated Elena was wearing lipstick.  But the animated Alex's dyed hair growing out amused me.

Edited June 18, 2020 by Bastet

[LisaM]

I thought this was very well done. 

[ruby24]

I loved this! I feel like the animated format makes it easier to make a whole episode explicit about politics. 

Though, I gotta say, I think Elena (via the show's writers) was being really, really, REALLY generous when she was imagining what their side was actually going to say and trying to think how they could possibly explain it rationally. 

[Gothish520]

This was very well-done! They could really go over-the-top with their reactions due to the animation - but I would still love to see this exact episode live-action some day, lol.