‘Impeachment: American Crime Story’ Episode 9 Recap: All the President’s Women

The most impressive thing about Monica Lewinsky in this penultimate episode of Impeachment: American Crime Story is her continued humanity. Persecuted by the legal apparatus, hung out to dry by her erstwhile lover the President of the United States of America, roundly mocked in virtually every sector of American life, she still wants to know the names of the grand jurors who’ll be interrogating her. She wants them to call her Monica, not “Miss Lewinsky,” and looks forward to the day that her marriage will change her name for her. Even when grilled about every single sexual encounter she had with Bill Clinton, in a tiny room with a fly dying on the carpet before her eyes, she takes the time to congratulate her interrogator on her pregnancy. “Mazel tov,” she says. 

“For your sake,” says the lawyer in response, “I hope this is goodbye.” Amen to that.

Titled “The Grand Jury” after the procedure that dominates the action, this episode of ACS Impeachment shines the spotlight not only on Monica and her friend turned nemesis Linda Tripp, but on other women at the periphery of the scandal as well. Paula Jones, the patient zero of independent counsel Ken Starr’s drive to incriminate the president, goes under the knife for a nose job, and then must weather her shitty husband Steve’s belief that she did, in fact, sexually gratify Bill Clinton, despite everything she’s said. He doesn’t hit her in the argument that ensues, but her face is bruised and bloodied from the surgery, which she says she only got because he insisted on making the case a national production instead of taking the initial deal offered to her by Clinton’s team. He did this to her, whether or not he did it with his fists.

Then there’s Juanita Broaddrick (Ashlie Atkinson). Approached by the FBI about the statement she gave denying any inappropriate behavior by Clinton, she changes her tune, alleging that the future president raped her. This should be a bombshell, elbowing out the misconduct of an employer having a sexual relationship with an intern. But because he can’t tie to perjury on Clinton’s part, and because he doesn’t actually give a shit about rape—he actually classifies it as just another sexual peccadillo on Clinton’s part—independent counsel Ken Starr effectively ignores the allegation, relegating it to just another folder on his desk. I’ve said before that ACS Impeachment has taken a studiously agnostic approach to the more serious charges leveled at Bill Clinton, but that’s no excuse for Starr doing the same thing.

And what of Hillary Clinton, Bill’s wife? She stone-faces her way through his teary Oval Office apology, in which he claims she’s the only person whose opinion matters to him, and that he turned to sex with Monica as a way to alleviate the loneliness and anguish brought on by his powerful position, feelings so scary he couldn’t bring himself to share them with the woman he considers his best friend. But when push comes to shove, Hillary is willing to make calls to congressmen to defend her husband and, hopefully, avoid impeachment. Whatever her feelings about his philandering and his deceit, she still says that their enemies are out to destroy them no matter what. It’s a very Game of Thrones, Robert-and-Cersei vibe: She may hate him for making a fool out of her in front of the country, but she hates their mutual enemies even more.

Although Monica’s testimony, both in front of the grand jury and one-on-one with attorney Karin Immergut (Lindsey Broad)—the sole woman in the Starr office, tasked with handling matters that would look gauche if tackled by one of his male minions—is the centerpiece of the episode, the tone shifts radically when Linda Tripp arrives to testify. Unlike Monica, she makes no attempts to relate to the grand jurors on a human level, any more than she tries to relate to anyone on a human level—up to and including the poor saps who share the line for the continental breakfast at the hotel where she holed up until the press stopped showing up at her house. (Even then, her daughter has to convince her to come home; Linda simply can’t believe no one’s there to reinforce how important she is anymore.)

Linda’s best argument for the skeptical grand jury is the same one she used to justify taping her phone calls with Monica in the first place: She was acting in Monica’s best interest. “He had total control,” she says of the president. “His behavior was unconscionable. It was an abuse of power. I had to end it.” Then, repeating for emphasis: “I had to end it.”

The grand jury doesn’t buy it. They listen to her claim that she’s being persecuted for knowing too much about the death of Vince Foster—that he may have been murdered, that a coverup ensued in the West Wing, that her own life was in danger—with barely repressed disbelief. After all, if she was so worried about what the Clintons were going to do to her, why on earth would she similarly risk the life of Monica, about whom she claimed to care so much? Didn’t she realize that, fantasies of murder plots aside, Monica would be much worse off if everything came to light than she’d be if everything were kept secret? Linda has no answers for these questions.

She does, however, have a self-serving address to deliver to the American people. “I’m you,” she says. “I’m just like you. I’m an average American.” She frames the whole debacle—admittedly, not without reason—as a matter of powerful forces in the government, the media, and the entertainment industry ganging up on her. But her need to paint herself as a martyr, above and beyond the average-American schtick, is the undoing of her grand speech. “Iv’e been vilified for taking the path of truth,” she says. Is anyone buying this? Does she even buy it?

Still, it’s Monica’s ordeal that centers the episode. It’s the enumeration of every encounter she had with the president, the details of every sexual liaison, the painstaking descriptions of who touched which body part with which body part or outside implement, the idea of who did what to whom with the intent to arouse and gratify. After spending an entire season largely hiding the actual sexual connection between Bill and Monica from view, ACS Impeachment suddenly rubs our faces in it, making us a party to Monica’s protracted public humiliation. It’s an excruciating choice on the part of showrunner and writer Sarah Burgess—and a smart one. An entire nation hungered for the salacious details of the Clinton-Lewinsky affair. Impeachment serves them to us until we can’t stand it any longer, then serves us more, and more, and more, until choking it down becomes all but unbearable. And even then, Monica is still human and humane, asking her interrogator if she’s expecting a boy or a girl. What did we do to this woman? And what does it say about ourselves that we did it?

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.

Watch Impeachment Episode 9 on FX