‘Impeachment: American Crime Story’ Episode 3 Recap: Here Come the Drudge

Camp icon Matt Drudge? That’s certainly one takeaway from the third episode of Impeachment: American Crime Story (“Not to Be Believed”). As played by comedian Billy Eichner, the enfant terrible of Internet muckraking is painted as a poseur, a (euphemistcally) flamboyant, self-consciously self-styled hardboiled reporter whose persona stems as much from a love of the Golden Age of Hollywood and its chief gossip Walter Winchell as it does from his right-leaning politics or any actual affinity for journalism. Here, he’s the forerunner of a million online dorks in fedoras, settling grudges and talking shit. He just so happens to be a major figure in a plot to take down the President of the United States, is all.

There’s a sense of pressure building within this episode. As Bill Clinton’s peccadilloes become more and more obvious—his secretary Betty Currie (Rae Dawn Chong) is painfully aware of what goes on with Monica behind his closed doors—the sharks, i.e. the entire right-wing messaging machine, begin to smell blood in the water. In large part this because of the chum being tossed in by Linda Tripp, who can’t keep her mouth shut because opening it gives her the attention she craves. But it’s also because of an entire cottage industry, populated by the likes of Drudge and Ann Coulter and Susan Carpenter-McMillan and Laura Ingraham (Kim Matula), who are bound and determined to take the president down no matter what. A relatively straightforward reporter like Newsweek‘s Michael Isikoff finds himself essentially an instrument in their hands when he’s not being scooped by Drudge outright, regardless of his high-minded mission to hold the powerful accountable.

The funny thing is that American Crime Story the show is not above the kind of gossip that the characters in American Crime Story are so fixated on. Coulter’s insecurity about her alma mater is very funny, for example, as is her assertion that the virtually identical pundit Ingraham is secretly gay, an assertion somewhat shored up by Ingraham referencing a golf buddy from Palm Springs.

So what does American Crime Story think is true regarding the president’s sexual (mis)conduct? That’s a bit unclear, perhaps purposefully so. Linda’s relatively benign hallway encounter with Kathleen Willey in the pilot would seem to preclude Willey’s allegation that she was assaulted. (That’s certainly not how she phrased it at the time, though that doesn’t necessarily mean it wasn’t the case.) But an unexpected kiss from your boss is harassment any way you slice it, and overall Kathleen seems like a much more reliable figure than Linda does. Similarly, Paula Jones, who at the end of the episode rejects Clinton’s settlement offer, is painted as far too naïve and, frankly, too stupid to concoct her story out of whole cloth. But does the disapproving presence of her idiot husband, or the feverish anti-Clinton fervor of her adviser Susan Carpenter-McMillan, affect how she tells that story, from the start until now? 

Then there’s the matter of Clinton and Lewinsky, the heart of the series. Monica is portrayed as head over heels and out of her depth, which makes sense. Clinton’s a harder figure to figure out. He appears sincere in his struggles with infidelity and his feelings for Lewinsky, to say nothing of his fury about his ongoing legal troubles. But wouldn’t it be just like a serial sex creep to utilize his residual conscience and his paternalistic feelings for a much younger woman to shore up his own self-image as a tormented but fundamentally just man? I think there’s a way to buy the show’s portrayal of Clinton, brought home by a fine and steely performance by Clive Owen, and still think what he, the most powerful man in the world, did with an intern was inexcusable.

Linda Tripp, by contrast, is easy to get a handle on. “She wants to matter,” she says of her ex-friend Kathleen. “It’s very sad.” This, of course, is Linda’s own story. Kathleen herself says as much: “You love this,” she tells Linda. “You love the drama. You love having a Newsweek reporter come by your desk, telling him you don’t believe me and somehow making it all about you.” Why? Because “In your own life, there’s absolutely nothing.” Kathleen really has Linda’s number; I mean, shit, she goes on the record about Kathleen with reporter Michael Isikoff primarily as a means to stave off the disappointment of not being able to give Major Dad star Gerald McRaney a tour as she’d planned. She needs to fly close to the sun or she doesn’t feel alive.

So she makes Isikoff use the code name “Harvey” when he contacts her. She arranges off-site meetings, including a JFK-style rendezvous at a park bench. She effortlessly lies that he’s her cousin when a Washington Post reporter bumps into them. She keeps hinting at a much bigger story than Willey or Jones without naming names (yet). She’s just killing time until she can insert herself into the planet’s central storyline, Andrew Cunanan-style. She won’t have to wait long.

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: American Crime Story Episode 3 on FX