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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