This Hamilton Episode of Drunk History Is Better Than Your Kid’s Social Studies Class
(Via Entertainment Weekly)
Drunk History is not ostensibly an educational program, but somehow it is. Having comedians get so drunk they can’t stand up, then having them tell stories about important historical events and figures, then having some of the world’s best actors act out the drunk narration sounds like wacky lowbrow fun, but just watch a few episodes and see if you don’t learn something. And now the long-awaited Alexander Hamilton episode of Drunk History is coming, and it’s going to be even better than anybody imagined.
According to Entertainment Weekly, Lin-Manuel Miranda, creator and star of Hamilton, is the episode’s drunk narrator, and as if that were not enough of a draw, they cast Aubrey Plaza and Alia Shawkat as Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton.
Hamilton and Miranda were already famous for casting non-white actors as founding fathers, and now they’re taking it a step further and casting women. Funny women. Arrested Development‘s Alia Shawkat is brilliant and one of the funniest actors to appear on Drunk History. Aubrey Plaza is basically a real-life Daria Morgendorffer, except that she’s not actually a painfully awful human being. (It’s tough to re-watch Daria as an adult and realize that the only way every nerd girl’s teenage idol is not a brutal bully is that the show relies on the conceit that everyone else is too dumb to realize how badly Daria is insulting them.) But Shawkat and Plaza are brilliant, and the idea of the two of them playing Hamilton and Burr is the most wonderful news to come out of Hollywood in weeks
I’m not the only person looking at the photo at the top of this article and thinking she needs to try wearing beachy waves and a tricorn hat, right? I wouldn’t have thought that was a look that could work, but they’re both making that look work.
Drunk History might not be a show for young kids, but it can be educational for adults, and this episode looks like it might be worth a special dispensation. And if they ever put an Alexander Hamilton question on the SAT History tests, everyone is going to get perfect scores.
