Previewing The Comey Rule |Scooter McGavin's 9th Green

Thursday, September 24, 2020

Previewing The Comey Rule

Late in the second and last episode of The Comey Rule, the United States Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, fighting back tears argues to the acting director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation Andrew McCabe the he should wear a wire in meeting with the president of the United States, Donald Trump, so he and the cabinet would have enough evidence to invoke the 25^th amendment of the condition declaring the president is unable to serve. Wow, what a bombshell if true. I jumped on my phone and apparently this news was already out there with the New York Times reporting this back in September 2018 and McCabe, in an interview with 60 Minutes in February, confirmed such. It is amazing that there has been so much craziness in the past four year that is easy to forget something as big as a conspiracy to remove the president.

Weirdly Rod Rosenstein is sort of the narrator of The Comey Rule. He opens the two night event trashing the titular character sometime after the bulk of the show takes place and is also the last voice we hear. We actually see more of Rosenstein in a post mortem of the show than during the time James Comey was leading the FBI. But hey, it is weird to even have a show based mostly on the memoir of James Comey on the eve of the election featuring the guy who fired him.

The limited series was originally scheduled to premiere in late November, I guess because it wanted to adhere to the FBI rule of not wanting to open a case that might influence an election. But unlike James Comey who stubbornly stuck to principals in hopes to keep the FBI non-partisan (and was attacked for it by Rosenstein who called him a boy scout, which apparel to Rosenstein is considered an insult) Showtime caved to pressure to move the show up to just six weeks before the election. Granted, who at this point watch The Comey Rule and realize maybe it is not wise to re-elect a psychopath?

This is the second straight year Showtime has aired a based on a tell all political show, thankfully The Comey Rule comes off as much less icky than the Roger Ailes show, The Loudest Voice. But Showtime split the five hours and forty-five minute over seven weeks, for The Comey Rule, they split the three and a half hour into two back to back nights. Why not spread that out across four week, especially in the middle of a pandemic where they are probably running low on things to air?

Much like The Loudest Voice, The Comey Rule has a very recognizable cast led by Jeff Daniels as the former FBI director. Granted this is weird for me as I was also watch The Newsroom while watch The Comey Rule because I mostly saw Will McAvoy with slightly darker hair (ironically the episode I watch prior to The Comey Rule was the first Anthony Weiner scandal, probably not a spoiler to say Weiner comes up in the new show too in a major way). I am not sure why they did not go with the full black dye job that the real Comey likely does. Brendan Gleeson (Gangs of New York) does a pretty bad job as Donald Trump and the bad wig and bad make-up job do not help him at all, granted, just how can anyone replicate such a mess? Kingsley Ben-Adir (Love Life) does a better job as the former president Barack Obama despite looking a good thirty years younger than the guy he is playing.

Thankfully the show puts up a name card whenever someone new comes on screen, taking out the guess work of who they are playing. It is surprising how many names I recognized. I probably could not name many in past administrations other than maybe the head of the FBI, but I recognized most of the people who popped up on the show. The limited series also features (honestly, I am just copying and pasting this from the Showtime press release) Holly Hunter (The Piano) as former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates, Michael Kelly (Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan) as former FBI Director Andrew McCabe, Jennifer Ehle (Zero Dark Thirty) as Patrice Comey, Scoot McNairy (Halt and Catch Fire) as former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, Jonathan Banks (Better Call Saul) as former National Intelligence Director James Clapper, Oona Chaplin (Game of Thrones) as former FBI lawyer Lisa Page, Amy Seimetz (The Girlfriend Experience) as former FBI lawyer Trisha Anderson, Steven Pasquale (The People v. O. J. Simpson: American Crime Story) as former FBI agent Peter Strzok, and Peter Coyote (The Disappearance) as Robert Mueller. Steve Zissis (Togetherness), Shawn Doyle (House of Cards), Brian d’Arcy James (Spotlight), Dalmar Abuzeid (Anne with an E), William Sadler (When They See Us), Richard Thomas (Tell Me Your Secrets), T.R. Knight (Grey’s Anatomy), Joe Lo Truglio (Brooklyn Nine-Nine), Spencer Garrett (Bombshell), Michael Hyatt (Crazy Ex-Girlfriend), Damon Gupton (Black Lightning) and Seann Gallagher (Good Witch) also star.

Bizarrely, comedian Truglio is playing former Attorney General Jeff Sessions and it is not as a joke. I got to wonder just who The Comey Rule is for. Unlike The Loudest Voice which came off as a liberal hit job, The Comey Rule seems to want to be as noble as James Comey wants us to think he was. The second episode starts shortly after the election and we see a guy shooting off an e-mail about how Hilary got what she deserves and then pans to a crying woman upset than Clinton lost (well this is right after a pretty hilarious song that almost makes the series worth it). The show also takes painstaking ways to make Comey out to be the Boy Scout Rosenstein complains about like when first briefed on the Steele dossier, Comey actually asks, “What’s a golden shower?’ which was just very eye rolling. The liberals hate James Comey because they think he swung the election to Trump while conservatives hate him because they think the Russia investigation was just done to delegitimize his presidency. So just who is The Comey Rule for? Probably political junkies who want to complain on Twitter how poorly their side is being represented.