‘Hollywood’ on Netflix Episode 4 Recap: Star Power

“Think about it,” says Eleanor Roosevelt to the bigwigs at Ace Studios in Hollywood Episode 4 as she argues that they should cast Camille Washington, a black woman, in a leading role. “What it might mean to a…to a dirt-poor little black girl living in a shanty in some cotton town, where she’s told she’s free, but really her life is no better than that of her grandparents, who were the owned property of another human being. Think about her, what it would mean to see herself up there on that screen—wanted, dignified, valued.”

So far so good, right? Representation matters! Roosevelt is right!

Then she adds: “I used to believe that good government could change the world. I don’t know that I believe that anymore. However, what you do, the three of you, can change the world.”

Needle-scratch sound effect!

So let’s get this straight. Eleanor Roosevelt, veteran of the administration that created the New Deal, ended the Depression, and won World War II, thinks government lacks the power of Hollywood? Good government can’t stop Jim Crow, which is itself bad government, but a movie melodrama can?

I agree with the basic thesis advanced by creators Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan and their co-writer and director for this episode (“(Screen) Tests”) Janet Mock, I really do. Representation matters. Culture sends messages people receive and act on. Hollywood is not nearly so powerless when it comes to what the public will accept and pay for as they make themselves out to be every time they shy away from roles for women and queer people and people of color, both behind and in front of the camera. They’ve got all the power in the world where that’s concerned.

But the idea that they’re more powerful than the goddamn government in terms of their ability to ameliorate oppression and suffering…well, that’s kind of why we’re in the mess we’re in right now, isn’t it? Generations of liberal politicians downplaying expectations, winning the culture war for the most part but ceding vast swathes of the body politic to the sworn enemies of women, of queer people, of people of color. I want Ace Studios to cast Camille, the right woman for the role, same as Roosevelt does. But I also want the government to pound Jim Crow laws into dust, which government and government alone, motivated by mass action, has the power to do.

Anyway, that’s a lot of serious talk, and much as I seem to disagree with Hollywood‘s thesis, I appreciate them addressing these issues at all. Especially when it could have gotten by simply by being enormously entertaining, which it certainly is!

The episode’s plot is really just a big tangle of conflicting desires and motivations. Archie argues with Raymond about the prospect of rewriting the movie to fit Camille, saying he didn’t come to Hollywood to make “message pictures,” i.e. movies relegated to black audiences only. But he also gets upset when his coworker Jack asks him to put in a good word (despite the fact that he’s dating rival actor Rock Hudson) since no one ever gave him similar help. And in the end, he gets his name taken off the picture by studio head Ace Amberg, at which point he admits that he hates having told the story of a white girl from London instead of his own story anyway.

As for Ace, well…

He has a heart attack in the middle of a liaison with actress Jeanne Crandall, leaving the studio in his wife Avis’s control. One of her first acts is to reassure Jeanne, who comes clean about the affair, that she’ll still have a place at the studio.

Camille argues with Raymond since he can pass as white and she can’t. Claire Wood, Avis and Ace’s daughter, puts the moves on Jack Castello and gets gently rebuffed. Avis nearly gets blackmailed by Henry Wilson into casting Rock Hudson in Raymond’s movie, under pain of having photos of herself with the gigolos of the Golden Tip gas station released. But in the end she’s won over by Jack’s performance, rather than that of Rock, who bombed majorly. She’s not exactly taken with the screen test of her daughter Claire, who seemed to self-sabotage halfway through, but she insists the role has to go to her rather than Camille or there’ll be hell to pay.

Enter Eleanor Roosevelt, a friend of Avis’s, who tells her about the whole debacle. Roosevelt then swoops into the studio and delivers the speech recounted above. Boom—Hollywood history rewritten.

It’s fast, it’s funny, it’s fraught with big ideas, and though Mock’s direction of Archie in particular tilts into melodrama-in-a-bad-way—he cries so suddenly when Jack asks him for help that I thought he was doing a bit—it’s a delight to watch. It makes you want to believe Hollywood the industry has the power that Hollywood the show ascribes to it. I just don’t want to see it cede the rest of society’s ground to the enemy.

READ NEXT: Hollywood Netflix Recap Episode 5: “Jump”

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 Hollywood Episode 4 ("Screen Tests") on Netflix