Win One for the Clicker? New 1980's-Themed TV Shows Prove Reagan Mockery Never Goes Out of Style

By Clay Waters | August 29, 2015 | 9:02 PM EDT

Well, he may have been a "cynical figurehead," a "sinister puppet master" and "saber-rattling menace," but he did have nice hair. President Ronald Reagan is still a reliable figure of mockery in the liberal entertainment world, and a compliment about his hair was the most flattering thing in Jeremy Egner's Sunday New York Times sidebar on the current crop of Reagan impersonations on 1980's-themed shows: "A New Term, on TV -- Children of the 1980s are making shows and they're turning to Ronald Reagan."

Egner casually portrayed the late president as enemy number one for the new crop of television creators, before letting cult actor Bruce Campbell offer a backhanded half-compliment:

So what’s behind TV’s Reaganaissance? Children of the 1980s are making television now, and clearly the former president’s era-defining effect makes him a convenient, indelible foil for any showrunner looking to re-examine that period.

Egner quoted Bruce Campbell, the cult actor known for the “Evil Dead” series who will play the former president in the FX show Fargo, observing that in an age of shadowy enemies, there's nostalgia for a president who says, "I’m gonna bomb your ass....that guy’s hair was magnificent.” Campbell also characterized Reagan as "the scolder-in-chief."

Egner surveyed three other Reagans currently on the small screen, with subheds that either reflect the mocking slant of the show, or that of the Times itself.

Cynical figurehead

“Narcos” posits, somewhat fuzzily, that Reagan’s hard line on illegal drugs was motivated by American business leaders, who were concerned about all the money flowing into the foreign narcotics trade, rather than concern for America’s youth. Cue the famous “Just say no” speech that he and the first lady delivered.

Sinister puppet master

In Netflix’s “Wet Hot American Summer” prequel, Michael Showalter gives an “it-sort-of-looks-like-him-if-you-squint” performance as the president, who oversees a plan to destroy a summer camp to hide a toxic waste plot and who is more than happy to slap his aides over and over again. The premise recalled Phil Hartman’s classic Reagan impersonations on “Saturday Night Live,” in which the folksiness masked a coldly calculating dark side.

Saber-rattling menace

The 1983 “Evil Empire” speech opened the first episode of “Deutschland 83,” a German-language series that debuted this summer on SundanceTV, and closed out the most recent season of FX’s “The Americans.” “The man literally wants to destroy us,” Keri Russell’s spy character tells her husband in “The Americans.” Maybe, but how about that hair?

> Earlier: “FX’s The Americans Wraps Up Season With KGB Agents Distraught at Reagan’s ‘Evil Empire’ Speech”

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