YMMV / Impeachment

• Catharsis Factor:
  • After an entire episode of Monica being terrorized and verbally abused by Ken Starr's legal team, it is immensely satisfying to watch her lawyer berate all of them over the phone and then tell Monica that she's free to go (and that there's nothing the lawyers can do to stop her.)
  • "The Grand Jury" presents three:
    • First of all is Monica's testimony. After several episodes of getting beaten up in the press, Monica encounters a surprisingly sympathetic jury who are appropriately horrified when she describes how she was treated by the OIC.
    • Second is watching that same grand jury absolutely eviscerating Linda Tripp after all of her paranoid, self-serving excuses for everything she's done, after the jury realized that she threw Monica under the bus.
    • Third is Paula finally divorcing Steve after several episodes of putting up with his abusive selfishness.
• Creator's Pet: Linda Tripp, as played by Ryan Murphy's muse Sarah Paulson, was noted by viewers as taking up time that they'd have preferred to be spent on other parties whilst also being criticized as being wholly unsympathetic, despite the series trying to elicit sympathy for her.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Marcia Lewinsky, Monica's mother, for being a loving and protective Mama Bear and urging Monica to value her self-preservation and stop protecting Clinton.
  • William Ginsberg, for his delightful Cluster F-Bomb "The Reason You Suck" Speech to Mike Emmick and being Monica's funny defender.
  • The Grand Jury in the eponymous episode were very popular on Twitter especially with African-American viewers for demonstrating Tough Love and support for Monica and naming Linda's sins to her face, especially for being willing to ruin, or endanger, Monica's life.
• Genius Bonus:
  • The most prominent member of Ann Coulter's team is only referred to with his first name George. People familiar enough with the time period will realize he's actually George Conway, who would later rise to prominence as a rare anti-Donald Trump voice among the Republicans despite his wife Kellyanne being in Trump's inner circle as a counselor.^note (Even people who only know George from his later anti-Trump activism might be able to realize it, as his actor in the show shares an uncanny resemblance to him.)
  • Similarly, political junkies might recognize Linda's confidante, Lucianne Goldberg, as the mother of conservative commentator Jonah Goldberg.
• Hard Truth Aesop: Often your loyalty, no matter how much you love and care for that person, doesn't matter if that other person won't pay you the same sense of sacrifice that you would for them so you have to really prioritize your own self-preservation even if it means that the other person would face grave consequences for their actions.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • On the very same night that the second episode aired, in which Clinton shares his frustration at how easily he won his election to a second term, California governor Gavin Newsom went through a recall election so ridiculously lopsided in his favor that most news stations called his victory within half an hour.
  • Beanie Feldstein plays a young woman who is screwed over by a bespectacled blonde woman (played by a highly acclaimed actress) for the blonde's self-serving agenda and is mocked by the media for her appearance and passionate nature; later that same year Beanie's brother Jonah Hill plays a character in Don't Look Up who is screwed over by a such a blonde (this time played by Meryl Streep) and a passionate young woman is mocked in the media for her appearance and truth-telling tirade in said film.
• Hollywood Homely: Justified and enforced, to showcase the extent that the 1990s, especially the media, was very misogynistic and held toxic beauty standards.
  • Monica's photo ID with the government, which she hated and was mocked for. While Monica's Real Life photo showcased a remarkably pretty woman under harsh lighting and a nervous, wide-eyed expression, the Moe Beanie Feldstein's re-enactment showcased a more poised visage with no teeth showing albeit the same lighting. The real-life Monica Lewinsky received this treatment as well, with the media ridicule exacerbating her self-consciousness about her appearance (especially her weight) for years after the scandal and only recently have people commented that the gracefully aging Lewinsky was always beautiful.
  • As noted under Adaptational Attractiveness on the main page, all the weight gain and prosthetics and frumpy clothing couldn't make the Moe-like Sarah Paulson look unattractive.
  • Paula Jones was a pretty, yet unsophisticated woman with a large nose and is portrayed by the gorgeous Annaleigh Ashford.
  • Hillary is written off as a woman with little if not an ounce of appeal by Ann Coulter and Linda Tripp, which looks even more ridiculous given that she is played by Edie Falco, aka Carmella.
• Hollywood Pudgy:
  • There was back-and-forth with viewers whether Beanie Feldstein was plumper than Lewinsky was during most of the scandal, with many accusing the show creators of insulting the already fat-shamed Monica, never mind that the casting was approved nay recommended by Monica and that the real-life woman fluctuated in weight during the 1995-1999 timeline and Beanie, for her part, wore constricting shapewear to emulate her curves.
  • While Clive Owen was willing to dye his hair grey and wear a prosthetic nose to play Bill Clinton, he joked he didn't need to wear a prosthetic for Bill's then-protruding stomach because he had one already, but Owen is still more slender than Clinton was, which makes Ann Coulter's comments about Bill being "the fat boyfriend voted in by American women" look all the more ridiculous.
  • Despite a 30-pound weight gain and additional padding to resemble the tall and plus-sized Linda Tripp, Sarah Paulson still looks for more slimmer and small-jointed than the real woman, leading to the costumes and accessories to be done in a way to disguise features like small wrists.
• Ho Yay: Implied with Laura Ingraham who is mentioned to be spending time with her "female golf partner", which is a Take That! to the real-life Ingraham who is rather infamous for her rampant homophobic statements.
• Jerkass Woobie: Linda Tripp is not a perfect person and does a lot that will try the audience's sympathy for her. Still, the way she is ridiculed and mocked in the press in such a vicious manner is rather heartbreaking. Then her childhood of being ridiculed for her appearance becomes more acute when she points out that her town looked the other way as her father cheated on her mother and left the family.
• Just Here for Godzilla: Many tuned in to see the All-Star Cast and many, while considering the season meh, professed admiration for Monica Lewinsky for bringing her story to a wider audience and for eschewing the image of the perfect victim and owning both her vulnerability and responsibility.
• Moment of Awesome: Even in a series as bleak, there are still a few moments.
  • Monica resisting attempts by the OIC to get her to spill the beans about Bill Clinton.
  • Paula finally kicking Steve off with the confidence to say that she doesn't want him anymore.
  • Hillary finally telling Bill off in a damning "The Reason You Suck" Speech.
  • Monica winning the Grand Jury over with her friendliness and telling her truth about what happened to the OIC which helps in her favor (and they turn on Linda for betraying and using Monica).
• Moral Event Horizon: If she hadn't already crossed the horizon by that point, Linda takes a great flying leap over the line in "Do You Hear What I Hear?" when she sells Monica down the river in order to protect herself from felony charges arising from her own selfish, paranoid actions. Even the OIC prosecutors look aghast.
  "A jury would fucking hate that woman."
• Paranoia Fuel: In addition to the issues of sexual harassment in the workplace and abuse of power, this series would get most viewers to think twice before they tell people their deepest, darkest secrets, especially their co-workers.
• Questionable Casting:
  • Clive Owen's casting was met with a ton of confusion as while he does a decent enough vocal impersonation of Bill Clinton, he does not really look anything like him, especially since the rest of the cast do indeed seem to have been chosen for their resemblance to the real people.
  • Having Sarah Paulson don a fat suit to play Linda Tripp^note Though she did actually gain 30 pounds for the role rather than an actual plus-size actress got a lot of criticism. Paulson herself admitted she didn't think enough about the implications when she accepted the role.
• Realism-Induced Horror: Bernard Lewinsky and Marcia Lewis weren't expecting that their college graduate daughter would get into an inappropriate relationship with the President and that her older friend would use the secrets she told her to get her in the crosshairs of a far-right independent counsel. Monica wasn't thinking nothing of telling a older, seemingly-kind older friend about her affair and all the details, not knowing said friend was taping their conversations and would use her insecurities against her.
• Seasonal Rot: The first season of American Crime Story (The People v. O. J. Simpson) was widely acclaimed and the second (The Assassination of Gianni Versace) received criticism but was still agreed to be quality television with fantastic highs to make up for that. This season was generally regarded as just okay by most.
• She Really Can Act: After playing a plucky teen in Booksmart and the Fat Best Friend in films like Lady Bird and Neighbors 2, Beanie Feldstein carries steps into a serious lead role and gets to be sexy, complex, hurt, vulnerable, and witty as Monica Lewinsky.
• Stoic Woobie: Betty Currie, Clinton's loyal secretary and friend. Betty has no choice but to be privy to the details of Bill and Monica's inappropriate relationship, has to field her calls to him with her own personal number, her own feelings do not matter in this, and Clinton pretty much coerced her to lie about the relationship. This even goes out-of-universe, as not addressed in the series is Betty Currie's own bad experiences with the media (for example, Linda Tripp wasn't the only female figure to be portrayed by a man in drag on Saturday Night Live; Tim Meadows and Tracy Morgan portrayed Betty) and her voice in this scandal goes unheard because she lacks the privileges of the other white women involved. Creator Sarah Burgess even noted that the media fallout over Betty was both racist and misogynistic as they blamed her for Clinton's actions.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • Linda. We are supposed to feel bad about her Weight Woe and insecurity over not being considered as feminine or appealing as other women, especially after she watches John Goodman play her on Saturday Night Live but this was during the same episode where her ex-friend is being hounded by the press and is having her character assassinated (she also uses said friend's insecurity over her figure to manipulate her), add to that her large ego at being surrounded by the press. Many commenters in social media stated that Linda was the least sympathetic character compared to the other women in "The Assassination of Monica Lewinsky" (Monica, Hillary, Betty, Paula, Monica's mother Marcia). Simply put, if you didn't go into this series with a perception of Linda as an odious, selfish, delusional, and utterly loathsome individual, you'll definitely come out of it that way.
  • Juanita Broddick came across as this to some critics and fans as they said that due to some of her real life counterpart's despicable actions in later years (spouting dangerous anti-vaxxer conspiracy theories about COVID-19 on social media, attacking other sexual assault survivors like E. Jean Carroll and doubting their stories, even targeting Monica Lewinsky, etc.), the show trying to frame her as sympathetic came across as woefully misguided, with many saying they found it difficult to feel any kind of remorse for her in the show when her interview about Clinton gets largely ignored and dismissed due to the public being sick of hearing about Clinton by that point.
• The Woobie:
  • Poor Paula Jones only wants to quash a rumor that she'd had an affair with the President of the United States, but between her fame-hungry husband and a group of lawyers with ulterior motives, she is manipulated into launching a lawsuit that everyone else knows is doomed to failure, and which only compounds her humiliation.
  • Monica Lewinsky is a nice, if naive young woman who is exploited by both the most powerful man on Earth and a bitter dead-ender who pretends to be her friend, resulting in her becoming a walking punchline.
  • Perhaps astonishingly given her historic struggles to be "liked", Hillary Clinton is genuinely in love with Bill Clinton and is devastated when she is forced to confront that her husband cheated on her, lied to her, and has humiliated her before the whole world. Worse is that she knows she is too closely tied to Bill to where she cannot separate from him, but staying with him also will forever define her.
  • Linda's children, especially her daughter Allison, as the young woman is privy to her mother's egomania and knows about her mother's awful childhood as her confidante, and has to plead with her mother to come home from her self-imposed prison at the hotel and deal with the press showing up at their front door. She also doesn't get along with her father, meaning that Allison doesn't have stable parental figures.
  • If one wasn't feeling sorry for Chelsea Clinton by the time her father confesses to his affair with Monica, then one will after she is seen reading the Starr Report after hearing her fellow schoolmates gossip about it and learns just how wretched her father has behaved.