Splitsider

Battleground’s first crime is that it’s unfunny, and sometimes painfully so. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s Hulu’s first attempt at original programming, and is not very good. It’s an Office knock-off, which, sure, fine. The setting is what made me watch it in the first place: a political campaign. I’ve worked a few campaign cycles (that’s what we call them, cycles! Lingo! And ‘08 Obama and a bunch of Congressional races, if you must know) and it's an environment just begging to be mocked: a high-pressure workplace of mostly strangers thrown into practically living together, working seven days a week and trying to sleep with each other on the eighth. What’s shocking, and this goes for Parks and Rec too, is Battleground’s second crime of not even understanding the basics of a political campaign.

Sure, it’s not essential to get everything. Comedy is about maximizing the ridiculous, and it’s not like The Office needed to really be about a paper company to be good. But from the scene at the beginning of Battleground where an volunteer has to beg his way onto the campaign, and every single campaign scene in the surprisingly clueless Parks, I figured that Hollywood Funnypeople could use a guide as to What Campaigns Are and What They Are Not. READ MORE