Episode Details

Been thinking a lot this week about MADAME WEB, which (spoiler alert!) isn't a good movie, but seems to double-suffer from the background radiation of institutional misogyny. MADAME WEB isn't your enemy, fellow nerds - it's the (male-dominated) studio that serves it to us, undercooked and leaking on the plate.

You know what I didn't understand in 1999? Tracy Flick is not a villain. Tracy's meme-ification - used to mock women of ambition, most notably in 2016 - echoes my profound misunderstanding of the film. She's a victim and a warrior, and yes, very often those two things, when combined, can produce a personality that might grate on you. But our entire culture routinely victimizes women and demands that they become warriors to achieve anything. There is no such thing as a lady Paul Metzler (Chris Klein) - something writer/director Alexander Payne (with co-writers Tom Perrotta and Jim Taylor) understands. Meanwhile, the real damage is being done by the seemingly-content men of the world - your Messrs. McCallister (Matthew Broderick) and Novotny (Mark Harelik).  Reese Witherspoon's Tracy Flick is perhaps the finest performance of the storied actor's career: fully-physicalized, deeply specific, and universally resonant. At least, it was for me, 25 years after I first watched it. Tracy Flick isn't your enemy, friends - if anything, she's the one who is gonna pull us out of this mess.

Anyway, here's 1999's Election.