Borgen Casts A Vote For Change

The annals of TV are stuffed full of beloved fictional politicians, for obvious reasons: it's a profession with high stakes built in, making for good television, and if they're made of whole cloth, the writer has the opportunity to let the characters star in their wish-fulfillment fantasies. Fictional politicians can be smarter, cannier, more ethical, and more effective than real ones can, which is why watching political dramas is a lot more fun than following real-life politics. (I feel like House Of Cards's Frank Underwood would throw his hands up in disgust at the current do-nothing Congress: even a scumbag like him couldn't be bothered to work his evil magic on these idiots.) There have certainly been times when Borgen's Birgitte Nyborg has enjoyed improbable triumphs of the sort Leslie Knope or Jed Bartlet have, but the challenges she's faced in the show's just-ended third season — not all of which proved to be surmountable — made it the most compelling one yet.

After an offscreen defeat in the election she called at the end of Season 2, Birgitte decides, in the Season 3 premiere, to leave her high-paying private sector job and challenge Jacob Kruse for leadership of her old party, the Moderates. Apparently, 2013 is such a banner year for Michael Fassbender that anyone who even looks like him is untouchable, and Birgitte loses the fight, leaving Kruse in place. Fortunately for Birgitte, though, Denmark's parliamentary form of government means that her next idea is not as unreasonable as it might seem to an American viewer: because she believes that the core values of the Moderate party she knew are no longer being represented in government by said Moderates, she's going to start a new center-left party to take them on.

This leads to all the problems one would expect — going into personal debt paying for stuff before the new party has members; getting politicians to defect from existing parties across the ideological spectrum to prove the New Democrats' broad mandate; clashing with Bent when he accidentally finds out about the new party from Katrine (though fortunately this doesn't last long, as Bent is moved to follow Birgitte into her new project); having one weak-minded member sell out the party's policies to the Moderates — at the same time Birgitte is dealing with something that's come at the most inopportune possible time: the numbness she's been experiencing in her right hand is the result of precancerous cells in her breast. So at the same moment she's supposed to be gearing up as the leader of a brand-new party going into a national election, she's also undergoing radiation treatments, which she's hiding from everyone around her. (What is it with breast cancer and fictional female heads of state? ...Fine, it's just her and Laura Roslin, but still!)

Through it all, Birgitte must constantly recalibrate what she's willing to do for the sake of her political career. Will she trade a place in a possible Labour-majority government for her sign-off on policies she doesn't actually endorse? How important is it for the New Democrats' integration spokesperson not to be...uh, white? The ultimate test of her (new) ethics comes when Kasper, her old-style spin doctor, leaks to his ex-girlfriend/Birgitte's NEW spin doctor Katrine that Birgitte's main opponent, Jacob, has an old drunk driving arrest that was buried at the time. At first, Birgitte resists the temptation to leak it, even though the Moderates' election strategy has been to claim that there is no discernible difference between the Moderates and the New Democrats. But when a journalist from the tabloid Ekspress accosts Birgitte's teenaged daughter Laura outside their apartment, Birgitte changes her mind and orders Katrine to strike back. Fortunately, Katrine overrules her — and volunteers to let Birgitte fire her for her temerity — but Birgitte agrees that Katrine was right, and thanks her for being more sensible than Birgitte herself was. That's a Season 1 Birgitte move: most of Season 2 and all of Season 3 have been about Birgitte coming to the conclusion that there's no point being a politician if you aren't promoting policies you passionately believe in; dirty tricks can't be part of that mission.

Meanwhile, Birgitte is getting some on the semi-regular: her fancy private-sector job introduced her to a dashing English architect, Jeremy Welsh, and it turns out that a long-distance relationship with someone who's the same kind of ambitious workaholic is actually perfect for both of them. Though she's cautious at first about introducing him to the kids (even after his identity becomes a matter of public record when tainted pork makes him sick up all over a Copenhagen restaurant when he's on a date with her), Birgitte eventually decides to be a grownup — not just with regard to integrating him into her family life, but letting herself lean on him when she, you know, has cancer. The first lesson of her divorce from Philip was how to manage her life without taking advantage of a man; fortunately, Jeremy spent this season teaching her that total self-sufficiency isn't really possible for anyone, and that when people offer help, it's okay to take it.

Parallel to Birgitte's love story this season is Katrine's (which my esteemed colleague John Ramos has already covered). In the wake of her breakup with Kasper, Katrine has imposed on her mother, rather than Kasper, for help with child care, but has pined for Kasper while enjoying booty calls with an inappropriate parter, both of which call to mind Season 2 Birgitte. Fortunately, Katrine's propensity for relationship missteps can't drive away the partner who might actually be right for her: Soren Ravn. While Kasper finally admits to Katrine that the reason he couldn't make things work with her is that he couldn't reconcile her identities as both his child's mother and a sexual person, Ravn is not just older but more mature. One of the hottest things he does this season is, after talking her into going for dinner with him, taking her purse from her and tossing it over his shoulder like it ain't no thing. This is a guy who's lived enough life that he has nothing left to prove to anyone, including Katrine, so that when she slinks out of his apartment, unable to face breakfast with his twentysomething children, he's secure enough to tell her that it's not okay for her to act like that; when his directness forces her to confess that she might not be ready to be in a relationship with him, he's not thrilled, but he shrugs that now they've had the conversation and she doesn't have to avoid him around the office anymore. In the end, Katrine is woman enough to admit that this kind of masculine confidence is fucking irresistible, and she asks for — and gets — another chance. The best Kasper can hope for, in my opinion, is to sort out his own issues around sex so that he can find another lady to be happy with; for Katrine, Ravn is where it's at.

Speaking of issues around sex: OH, TORBEN. Of course, I can't countenance adultery. But I appreciate the way the show's producers built a case for Torben's affair with Pia as a response to the feelings of impotence that resulted from Alex's aggressive interference in his professional decisionmaking. Anyone who's had the experience of building something only to have a functionary installed to fuck it up can empathize with Torben's need to seek comfort from someone who'll do nothing but tell him how great he is. I also admire the scene where Torben tries to end his torment by asking his old school friend Laugesen for a newspaper job, only to be told he's too old to change careers; though Torben is probably only in his forties, that's certainly true, much as TV shows like to show us characters changing jobs on a bi-weekly basis (Parks & Recreation, I'm rolling my eyes in your direction). Torben's love story found him blowing up his marriage — but, unlike S1 Birgitte, finding forgiveness from a spouse who believed in the sincerity of his regret. (There's probably a separate essay to be written here on what these storylines' divergent outcomes tell us about how much people of either sex have to lose when marriages fall apart and what makes a seeming lost cause worth fighting for.)

When the current third season started airing in the U.K., Vicky Frost at the Guardian identified it as the show's "final" season, a status that seems to be corroborated here...but seems impossible? We don't get to see what it's like for Birgitte to serve as Foreign Minister in Lars Hesselboe's cabinet? That moment of Kasper pondering a return to spin doctoring in the finale will come to nothing? We'll never see the outcome of Benedikte Nedergard's Freedom Party coup? NO FAIR. I literally never say this, but I'm afraid I'm going to need a Borgen movie to wrap things up. I saw Adam Price's A Hijacking, so I know he can do it, and I demand satisfaction.