Oscar-winning film-maker Barry Levinson’s docuseries Bucks County, USA examines the political divide in one town in a revealing and infuriating manner
Like many teenage best friends, Evi and Vanessa have a penchant for finishing each other’s sentences. Whether enmeshed on a couch or telling a story, one, a red-headed musical theater nerd with a personality nearly as boisterous as her signature puffy skirts, collides with the other, darker in hair and disposition, their speech bubbling with indecipherable affirmations and giggles. In a heady chorus of “duuude” and “no, you!”, it can be difficult to tell where one girl ends and the other begins.
Except, that is, at their respective homes. Evi’s mother, Lela, who like her daughter, espouses views considered left of liberal in the US context, speaks in support of LGBTQ students at local school board meetings and advocates for fact-based history lessons. Vanessa’s father, Paul Martino, is a right-leaning venture capitalist who likes to brag about installing school board members by spending $500,000 on local campaigns, an effort triggered by what he saw as unjustified school closures in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.
