It's reflective not only of the current political atmosphere, where the tarnished illusion of stability is all that Republicans can hold onto, but also of a tale of powerful women envisioned entirely by a man. The perfectly balanced aesthetic of the world Erica helps run and exists in is more important than the furies of feeling that run underneath that we only get brief glimpses of as her own need for control leads her down a catastrophic path. His shots often place the characters far off, amidst the oppressive, bland tastefulness of modern design, whether in Erica's luxurious apartment or the ballroom where she susses out what a billionaire donor wants from tax reform with clinical precision. Where Seimetz's episodes are replete with color, tricks of light, and close-ups, Kerrigan's world is marked most notably by a sense of alienation and detachment. What Kerrigan convincingly gets at here is the impossibility of being a woman in power in professional and personal life simultaneously, using the same tactics and excuses as any given high-powered man in D.C. The imbalance she feels there is slightly evened out by her relationship with Anna, but when her concrete control over that also seems to falter, she reverts to the cold, insular veneer that is required in her work and lets herself return to a few other defaults as well. In this, he gives a sense of just how hard it is for Erica to find real control in her professional life, a fact that is underlined when she meets with businessmen who can throw her candidates $25 million without breaking a sweat. Kerrigan doesn't bother getting too expository about the political realm, or at least he doesn't seem to mind presenting Erica's work as densely interwoven and reliant on an ever-expanding set of details that's easy to get lost within. This transfer of personal power and control, as well as the untenable ambitions that arise from her new relationship, converge with her professional life as well, just as she is securing millions of dollars from major Republican donors looking less to support a candidate than to control fiscal and social legislation without having their beliefs and personal faults judged by the public. And when Erica begins regularly seeing an escort, Anna ( Louisa Krause), that dynamic returns in an unexpected, unpredictable, and unfixed way. In their early interactions, Darya and Erica both seem to be enveloped by the icy glaze of disappointment and hurt, but we eventually find out that the relationship hinged on an extreme imbalance of emotional power. Behind her hardened exterior as an elite finance director for a Republican super PAC, Erica ( Anna Friel) is wounded by her split from Darya ( Narges Rashidi of Under the Shadow), a powerful figure in the world of D.C. In the case of the "Anna & Erica" storyline, which Kerrigan directed in its entirety, the severance in question is romantic.
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