Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Plot Against America’ On HBO, David Simon’s Adaptation Of Philip Roth’s Alternate WWII-Era History Novel

David Simon and his frequent collaborator on The Wire, Ed Burns, adapted Philip Roth’s 2004 novel The Plot Against America for a 6-part HBO miniseries, and it seems to come at a perfect time. While we’re all holed up trying to keep the coronavirus at bay, we wonder how things could have been different if the current political and ideological climate wasn’t so divided. And, though this alternate-history series takes place 80 years ago, the parallels to now are eerie. Read on for more…

THE PLOT AGAINST AMERICA: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: “Newark, NJ. June 1940.” A closeup of a kid drawing a chalk outline on the sidewalk. The kids are playing a game where they say “I declare war on…” and throw a beanbag on the country they want to go to war with.

The Gist: In 1940, there was a large Jewish population in Newark, just going about their daily lives, having Shabbat dinner, talking about the Yankees, and going to work and school. That was true even with Hitler marching through Europe at a rapid pace. Herman Levin (Morgan Spector) is contemplating a promotion that will force his family to move from their relatively safe enclave to the town of Union, where the population is largely not Jewish. When he and his wife Bess (Zoe Kazan) look at a house in town, they drive by a beer garden where a number of Germans yell at them and call them “Juden”. Bess discourages the move, because, growing up in Elizabeth, she knew what it was like to be singled out as the only Jewish family in town. She doesn’t want that for their sons Sandy (Caleb Malis) and Phillip (Azhy Robertson).

Things have been getting tense like that for awhile, especially since Charles Lindbergh (Ben Cole) has been giving indications that he’s going to run as a Republican in the upcoming presidential election against incumbent Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Lindbergh, who has proven in the years since his solo transatlantic flight to be xenophobic at best and anti-semitic at worst, is calling for the U.S. to be isolationist with regards to involvement in the war raging on in Europe. Levin and most of his neighbors chatter on the street day and night about it, and Levin doesn’t mince words about Lindbergh, calling him a “fascist bastard” as he listens to a Lindbergh speech on the radio.

Levin’s sons still have some hero worship for the former pilot, however; older son Sandy has drawings of Lindbergh that he has to keep hidden from his parents, and younger son Phillip has a stamp with Lindbergh’s plane The Spirit of St. Louis in his collection. Levin is also dealing with the fact that his nephew Alvin (Anthony Boyle), whom he took into his home after Alvin’s mother died, was not only fired from the mechanic job Levin got for him, but routinely gets into trouble as he runs around with his buddy Shushy Margulis (Steven Maier).

In the meantime, Bess’s sister Evelyn Finkel (Winona Ryder) takes care of their mother and is painfully single. She’s been dating an Italian man in the city, but she ultimately finds out that the man will never leave his wife. But she’s charmed by a Southern rabbi named Lionel Bengelsdorf (John Turturro), whom she meets when he speaks at the school where she substitute teaches.

After kicking Alvin out of his house, Levin thinks better of it and drives the streets of Newark looking for him. But Alvin is somewhere else, driving with Sushy and two buddies to Union to get revenge on a friend of theirs, who got beaten by the same Lindbergh supporters that called out Herman and Bess.

Our Take: Simon doesn’t mince words in this adaptation; his allusions to how the world of 2020 is as divided and xenophobic as Roth’s fictional version of 80 years ago are all pretty on the button. For instance, when Herman talks to his friend Shepsie Tirchwell (Michael Kostroff), a projectionist at a movie theater that shows newsreels of Hitler’s march through Europe, he laments at how easily France fell, wondering how people can so easily buy into Hitler’s rhetoric. Shepsie, citing a newspaper poll, talks about the majority of people surveyed think that Jews should be restricted or even deported. “If he runs, he’ll be the spark,” he says of Lindbergh.

Sound like anyone we know? Yes, Simon and Burns are using Lindbergh as a substitute for our current president, right down to the fact that a large segment of the population will think of Lindbergh as the same hero who crossed the Atlantic, no matter what he says or does (Trump didn’t cross the Atlantic, but you get the idea). That’s essentially the message of the first episode, despite the fact that it’s set up as more of a slice-of-life portrait of working-class Jews in New Jersey during Roth’s childhood (there’s a reason why the youngest Levin son in the story is named Phillip).

What the show is working towards is the idea that Lindbergh is going to ride a populist wave to a defeat of FDR, and the U.S. starts a policy of isolationism that leads to fascism. By starting the alternate history in the mundane, though, Simon and Burns are trying to set a baseline before things diverge from what really happened. Of course, in doing it, they make the first episode less than urgent. We hope that as things go on, and we see Lindbergh rise to power, more will happen.

Spector and Kazan are both fantastic as the Levins; Spector was especially adept at balancing trying to get ahead despite being “the other” as well as the rage he feels for the country he loves leaning towards fascism. Kazan has the thankless role as the family matriarch, but she gives Bess a dignity and grace that shows that the character is more independent than she lets on initially. The rest of the cast is equally skilled, as we’ll explain below.

Sex and Skin: Besides Evelyn being in bed with her city boyfriend, not much.

Parting Shot: Sandy goes under the covers late at night, and keeps working on his sketch of Lindbergh, even though he knows his father won’t approve.

Sleeper Star: Ryder shines as Evelyn, who we know is going to find herself in a romance with the charming Rabbi Bengelsdorf. But the real star of the first episode was the location scouts, as the shooting locations in and around Newark gave the show a real sense of authenticity, giving a real feel for what suburban and urban New Jersey was like in the prewar era (and, to a large extent, what they look like now).

Most Pilot-y Line: A fictional Walter Winchell report about a potential Lindbergh presidential run sounded a bit fake, but we also realize that Winchell’s voice was quite unique and difficult to replicate, so this is just a quibble.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Despite moving a little slowly, The Plot Against America‘s parallels to today’s political and ideological landscape make us want to keep watching.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company.com, RollingStone.com, Billboard and elsewhere.

Stream The Plot Against America On HBO Go

Stream The Plot Against America On HBO NOW