Ryan Murphy’s show “The Politician” just premiered its second season on Netflix on the last week of June. The show serves as a political platform for what our youth is most concerned about: climate change.
In the first season, we watched how Payton ran a student government campaign. Now, on season 2, he is running for state senator against Dede with the help of his high school friends after finishing college.
Payton and his team (James, Infinity, Astrid, Mcafee, Alice, and Skye) introduce a broad view of liberal politics in the US to a young audience. The issues they tackle hint to the type of politicians that will disappear in the future, introducing young politicians into the arena instead.
The series is an educational, funny, artsy, inclusive, and diverse storyline of what we hope to see in the future along with the darkness and ethics of politics.
So here are a set of essential lessons from season 2 of “The Politician”:
Teaches you how to care for the environment:
Infinity, the girl who used to believe that she had cancer, turns into a climate change activist who decides to go zero-waste. There’s a specific scene in episode 3. She is giving a rally for Payton, where she explains her journey towards becoming carbon neutral and zero-waste.
She becomes inspired to change when she was in a skyscraper in Beijing, trying to enjoy the view when she couldn’t breathe fresh air.
The fact that the writers decided to choose China as the enemy of the environment portrays the political “cold war” that the US is going through. Without the need for dialogue, the series raises awareness of the overproduction of Western goods China has assembled in the last decades, which has raised pollution to hazardous levels.
Infinity realizes in her stay in Beijing that she filled three garbage bags with waste in just a week. This realization made her more conscious of how a single person can reduce the amount of pollution they emit in their lifetime by just learning how to say no. The scene of Infinity with traces of her waste inspires young viewers to measure the levels of waste produced in their households, allowing room for changes in their waste culture. Read more…
