MARCH 19 • 2020 | 43

tv

The Plot
Against America
Sets in Motion

T

he first images we see
in The Plot Against
America (Mondays, 9
p.m., HBO) are from newsreel
footage of Hitler sympathizers.
They fill up stadiums, heil
the Nazi flag and chase Jews
down streets. Only some of
this archival material comes
from Germany. The rest of
these smiling anti-Semites are
all-American.
Created by The Wire’
s David
Simon and based on the 2004
novel by Philip Roth, this
six-episode miniseries imag-
ines what would happen if
a populist demagogue came
into power in the U.S. and
began dismantling the fabric of
American society, starting with
the Jews. It doesn’
t have to
imagine very much. Drawing
on the real strain of pro-fascist
sentiment that ran through
many Americans in the 1930s
and ’
40s, as well as familiar
“
America First” rhetoric, this
Plot feels eerily timeless.
The first episode (now
streaming on HBO’
s sub-
scription service) feels like a
wartime “homefront” drama.
Set in Newark, New Jersey,
it follows the middle-class
Levin family as they react to
news of the American avia-
tion hero (and Detroit native
son) Charles Lindbergh’
s
rise to political prominence
on the back of an “anti-war”
movement that happens to
align with Hitler’
s agenda.

Lindbergh’
s dangers seem
obvious to the Jews. But to
everyone else, he’
s a hero.
The Levin patriarch,
Herman (Morgan Spector),
absorbs all this through the
radio and cinema newsreels,
like any cable news-addicted
suburbanite today. He unleash-
es furious rants to the rest of
his family, but his words have
little power beyond his Jewish
social circle. His sons Philip
(Azhy Robertson) and Sandy
(Caleb Malis), their mother
Elizabeth (Zoe Kazan), her sis-
ter Evelyn (Winona Ryder) and
their cousin Alvin (Anthony
Boyle) all grapple with this
new America in different ways:
some by fighting it, some by
embracing it, some by just try-
ing to keep the peace.
Roth structured his novel
as a memoir, looking back on
his boyhood self. But the show
removes the memoir aspect,
and with it the safety net of the
passing of time — so every-
thing feels more immediate
and unsettling. Plot’
s premiere
ends with one of the children
secretly drawing admiring
sketches of Lindbergh under
his bedcovers at night. It’
s a
sign of the insidious ideology
soon to take root in the land of
the free.

Visit TheJewishNews.com every
Monday evening for a weekly
episode recap, and join the
discussion on our Facebook page.

ANDREW LAPIN EDITOR

Azhy Robertson
and Caleb Malis
play brothers in
a Jewish family
in 1940.

HBO

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