The Politician Pits Ben Platt Against Judith Light and Bette Midler

The second season of the Netflix series from Ryan Murphy is even queerer than the first.

Tracy E. Gilchrist

Tracy E. Gilchrist is the VP of Editorial and Special Projects at equalpride. A media veteran, she writes about the intersections of LGBTQ+ equality and pop culture. Previously, she was the editor-in-chief of The Advocate and the first feminism editor for the 55-year-old brand. In 2017, she launched the company's first podcast, The Advocates. She is an experienced broadcast interviewer, panel moderator, and public speaker who has delivered her talk, "Pandora's Box to Pose: Game-changing Visibility in Film and TV," at universities throughout the country.

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Tracy E. Gilchrist

June 16 2020 11:46 AM EST

June 16 2020 11:54 AM EST

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Unbridled ambition collides with social liberalism in Ryan Murphy's satirical The Politician. The Netflix series, which drops its second season Friday, stars Tony-winner Ben Platt as Payton Hobart, an upper-crust Santa Barbara, Calif., teen who forged his plan to become president of the United States when he was a child.

In the first season, Payton fought to win his high school class presidency and gain entrance to Harvard before he could make his way to the White House. When a piece of that plan went awry, he wound up in New York City wallowing in booze and Billy Joel songs until he found a new political race to enter.

This season, as evidenced by the trailer released Tuesday, pits Payton against Judith Light's Dede Standish, a veteran City Council member and a modern woman in a secret throuple, and Bette Midler, who stars as Dede's right-hand woman and ferocious campaign manager, Hadassah Gold.

For his New York City Council run, Payton is joined on his campaign by his previous team, which includes his girlfriend Alice (Julia Schlaepfer), James (Theo Germaine), McAfee (Laura Dreyfuss), Skye (Rahne Jones), and Astrid (Lucy Boynton). And season 2 is even queerer than the first, with every character expressing their fluidity in some way.