Review of ‘The Girls on the Bus’: adaptation of ‘Chasing Hillary’ by Max

Melissa Benoist, Carla Gugino, Christina Elmore and Natasha Behnam in ‘The Girls on the Bus’.

Nicole Rivelli/Max

Inspired by, but definitely not adapted from, Amy Chozick’s 2018 book. Chasing Hillary, The girls on the bus It may be on Max, but it’s a throwback to a certain kind of broad, big-hearted, semitopical comedy-drama that TV fans used to associate with The WB.

As a female comedy about co-workers with soapy undertones, The girls on the bus (Chozick and The Vampire Diary Mastermind Julie Plec is credited as creator) is pretty good: the cast is solid and the character dynamics are engaging. As a program about journalism, The girls on the bus He is decent: intelligent in many things, stupid in others, but not disproportionately so. As a political thriller, The girls on the bus It’s mostly nonsense.

It’s presented as a whole that’s not really a guilty pleasure (for the millionth time, stop feeling guilty about the things you like), but it’s definitely one where you have to go through eye-rolling moments to get to the parts. things you enjoy. If the first makes you check and miss the second, you won’t get past the pilot. It amused me and irritated me at the same time. The girls on the bus.

Set in an alternate version of 2024 where people still stubbornly refer to “Twitter.” The girls on the bus begins with the arrival of our four protagonists in Iowa at the beginning of a controversial Democratic primary process.

The first among the non-equals is Sadie (Melissa Benoist), a reporter for the prestigious New York Sentinel. Sadie aspires to deeply personal semi-gonzo journalism: Hunter S. Thompson (PJ Sosko) regularly talks to her in a way that’s probably stranger than the show wants to pretend, but Sadie’s editor (Griffin Dunne) urges her to be more objective from a journalistic point of view. , especially after she went viral in 2020 for crying after her favorite candidate (Hettienne Park’s Felicity Walker) lost. Sadie has another problem: her favorite couple from her last election cycle (Brandon Scott’s “Loafers”) has become press secretary for a major candidate and therefore an ethical no-no.

Sadie’s best friend from the last election cycle was Grace (Carla Gugino), a veteran of the political circus who has prioritized breaking news over her husband (Scott Cohen) and college-aged daughter (Rose Jackson-Smith). Because they are “legacy” media, Sadie and Grace belittle Kimberlyn (Christina Elmore), a rising star with a loathsome fictional right-wing cable network that viewers might be inclined to compare to Fox News. And everyone looks down on Lola (Natasha Behnam), a social media star who uses her platform to cheer on a socialist candidate and be complicit with her sponsors.

Most of the candidates along the way are unnamed and presented as archetypes: the geriatric, the freshman, the hot white guy, etc. But viewers smart enough to identify the cable network as Fox will have an easy time recognizing it. them as fake AOC (Tala Ashe), fake Mayor Pete (Scott Foley), fake Arnold Schwarzenegger (Mark Consuelos), fake Joe Biden (Richard Bekins) and fake Hillary (Park).

Part of me tends to wonder if it would have been possible to do The girls on the bus as a simpler adaptation of Chozick’s book. Obviously, you’d fictionalize elements, but you’d hope that the drama inherent in the election cycle (run-of-the-mill scandals of various sizes, drama with editors, infighting between similar personalities crammed into a tour bus) would be enough. to put on a show. Would anyone do that show?

If the production team behind The girls on the bus, which also features Greg Berlanti, among others, isn’t powerful enough to make that version simple, probably no one is. Certainly, this version doesn’t have the confidence to let its basic story stand on its own, because by starting with a teaser seven months later, putting the “media” in “in medias res” – The girls on the bus attempts to introduce a 70s-style paranoid thriller into the series.

I could graft six corpse arms onto my friend Alan, but that wouldn’t turn him into an octopus, and tell me that at the end of the season Sadie and her friends will be running from people in a place prominently labeled “FBI.” jackets don’t do The girls on the bus a ’70s-style paranoid thriller. Every aspect of the thriller’s plot, which escalates so much that the tenth and final episode is all that remains, is derivative and unconvincing, and there are enough silly moments in the finale that I find it hard to believe the writers found it compelling. neither anymore.

Unfortunately, the finale sets up a possible second season that would be based entirely on a conspiracy thriller. Unfortunately, I’m curious enough to watch that second season just to find out how things progress. But that’s mostly due to my positive feelings about the rest of the show.

It’s all about Benoist, who cemented her everywoman bona fides on The CW. supergirl and he’s very good at playing the kind of character who clings to damp innocence long after suffering the slings and arrows of the real world. She is one of those heroines who is sure to make you scream, “Stop being stupid!” she looks at the screen, but spends a lot of time yelling, “Stop being stupid!” herself, so that she knows. Sadie is prone to enough hallucinations and erratic fantasy sequences that it would be tempting to call her “Ally McHowardBeale,” except that she is another character who becomes very self-conscious: all in The girls on the bus is very self-conscious: “I’m very angry!” moment.

As individuals, each of the “girls” are saddled with an embarrassing subplot. Grace’s daughter is out of control, which at least works out well. Kimberlyn is trying to plan a wedding with handsome Eric (Kyle Vincent Terry) while she’s away, which is never anything but irritating. Etc.

But when they are together and in different permutations, the characters and actresses are excellent. The Sadie/Grace friendship is the heart of the show, and Benoist’s open hope and Gugino’s harsher cynicism come together as a perfect relationship. Gugino and Elmore shine as Grace and Kimberlyn argue over journalistic topics, while Gugino and Behnam develop an unexpectedly sweet evolving bond.

Yes, what I’m saying here is that Benoist may be the show’s biggest star (and producer) (and she may be a very good one), but it’s Gugino who is the glue of the show, making everything better. He’d still give a lot of credit to Behnam and Elmore for taking on roles that are almost guaranteed to annoy you in the pilot and make them sympathetic midseason.

The supporting cast is also very good, especially Foley and Park as the more interesting background candidates. Dunne is stuck with a character who exists only to bark affectionate but gruff journalistic platitudes, but he’s completely committed, and once I decided that every time he talks to Sadie on the phone, he calls Peter Parker to ask for pictures of Spider-Man. Man, I grew to like him.

I compared The girls on the bus to a classic WB/CW show, and the roster of writers and directors is packed with veterans of those shows, including Plec, Berlanti, Rina Mimoun and Marcos Siega. All episodes are between 42 and 49 minutes long, and in terms of length and content, any of them can easily be trimmed for broadcast.

The program is intended for an audience that needs most of its journalistic terminology defined in dialogue. But at least it takes the effort to do that, just as it takes the effort to mention many specific real-world journalists and politicians in a way that might lead some viewers to do additional research.

The girls on the bus is capable of including topical debates on abortion, sexist inequalities in the media and the state of electoral politics in 2024. And if the references to classics such as Timothy Crouse The bus boysRichard Ben Cramer What is needed and Theodore White The formation of a president 1968 Getting a single viewer to head to their local library or independent bookstore, that makes up for a lot of cheesy romance, clunky drama, and predictable twists and turns.