Mrs. America Review: Houston (Season 1 Episode 8)

Mrs. America Season 1 Episode 8, “Houston,” focuses on the fictional character of Alice Macray in the setting of the historical National Women’s Conference.

Up until now, Mrs. America has centered on dramatizations of real life women during the ERA fight. It is a bold choice to change that up at this point of the season—the penultimate episode that takes place at the monumental convention—and it succeeds tremendously.

And that success is largely due to Sarah Paulson’s outstanding performance as Alice.

There is the fight between the pro-ERA feminists and the STOP ERA housewives as the main premise of the series, but on this episode we get to see the fight warring inside one individual. It is so beautifully done with a kaleidoscopic, drugged up journey for Alice who is questioning a lot about what it is she is actually fighting for.

Alice has been trying to fight the good fight for the greater good since the beginning. She is the one that first brings up that racism shouldn’t be tolerated in the movement on Mrs. America Season 1 Episode 3, “Shirley.” But, patriarchal principles are so ingrained that she says “We want roses, not rights” on Mrs. America Season 1 Episode 6, “Jill.”

There is an internal struggle going on, and Paulson deftly plays each and every aspect of that in her portrayal of the naive yet conscientious Alice. There is a resistance within to certain things she has been taught to blindly accept. The Houston convention is eye-opening for her, and rather than rejecting these feminist ideas outright, she quietly examines them.

Following the norm trips her up. She bungles an on-camera interview, but later she is able to express herself and the ideas that are true to her very well. 

Alice: Excuse me, I wanted to ask why we are opposing all of the feminist resolutions. We’re not anti employment or education or minority women. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t fight for what we believe in, but shouldn’t we try to find consensus about something?
Jacquie: But you give the libbers an inch, they’ll take a mile.
Alice: Let them. There’s a lot of land. If we want to be taken seriously we have to show that we are not hard-hearted, that we are not stubborn just for the sake of it. That’s not Christian. I came here to defend myself, but I have to ask, who exactly is attacking us?

This comes after a night of drug-induced discovery for Alice. The feminists show her kindness and direction while she’s lost. Her friends and colleagues continuously ignore her very valid concerns.  

Something inside Alice is waking up. Paulson has been bringing this visceral evolution to life in the brief moments we’ve seen so far, and it is thrilling to see that on the larger scale of a focalized episode. Especially an episode as visually and sensorially engaging as this one. 

The episode begins with the running of the torch. Alice and Pamela are lost on the road to the convention when the runners pass by. “I guess we could just follow them,” says Pamela.

Maybe a torch is being passed to Alice. Maybe she will defect to the other side and fight for what she truly believes. 

What did you think of this episode of Mrs. America? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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Mrs. America airs Wednesdays on FX on Hulu.

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