Waiting for results on Election Day can be an agonizing process–even before polls start closing. If you’re climbing up the walls waiting for news (your humble blogger is mainlining The Good Wife), here’s the definitive guide to how to distract yourself until the buzz about exit polls has died down and hard data starts coming in, depending on what flavor of Election Day Crazy is plaguing you.

If you’re: Getting burnt from your GOTV efforts.
Watch: You’re probably pretty busy, but grab S2E22 of Parks and Recreation
Why: If Leslie Knope can gut out the worst block of a diabetes telethon in Pawnee, all while Tom Haverford’s absconded with Detlef Schrempf, we can make it through a single day of turnout when the stakes are higher and where people only have to sacrifice their time, not their money.

If you’re: An atmospherically disillusioned Obama voter.
Watch: Definitely, Maybe
Why: I know, I know. Definitely, Maybe is my personal Swiss Army Knife of romantic comedies. But seriously. If you were swept up in the hope-y, change-y thing and are considering staying home today because you’re discouraged (rather than because you are, say, disappointed in Obama on an issue area and yet inexplicably see no daylight between him and Mitt Romney: I have no ideas for you), watch Definitely, Maybe as a reminder that the road of apathy runs through terrible Chinese food, jobs in the advertising industry, and ill-advised marriages. Save yourself. Watch this. Then hit the polls.

If you’re: The racialized run-up to Election Day drove you nuts
Watch: The Man (1972)
Why: James Earl Jones starred in this TV movie, available from Netflix that addresses the question of what it would take for a black man to convince America of his legitimacy as president. The movie’s more optimistic than reality, set in a world where a black president could intervene in apartheid, for example, as part of that legitimizing campaign. But post Jay-Z’s appearance on behalf of the Obama campaign yesterday, it’s a nice thought experiment in what this election would be like if we’d started this work forty years earlier.

If you’re: Sick of horserace coverage
Watch: Marathon the British miniseries of State of Play
Why: Actually, there are a lot of great wishful thinking reasons to want to watch State of Play. There are Britishly excellent lawmakers calling BS on climate scientists who’ve been bought by the energy industry, political flacks telling the lawmakers they represent how disgusted they are by them, and lots of parliamentary note-passing. But most importantly, it’s a look at what it might be like to cover a scandal that actually has implications for the character of the people involved. Also, it’s six hours.

If you’re: Wondering how Hillary Clinton would be doing if she were fighting for her second term.
Watch: Catch up on Political Animals
Why: I’m sorry we’re only getting one installment of the USA Network miniseries. But Sigourney Weaver is great as Elaine Barrish, a former First Lady who lost her shot at the Presidency to a younger, hipper flavor of candidate, then swallowed her pride, went to work in his administration, and dumped her husband’s cheating ass. Silly? Sure. But that doesn’t mean it’s not brain candy.

If you’re: More worried about Congress than the Presidential election
Watch: Wait until Friday and see Lincoln
Why: At its best, it’s an incredibly impressive, funny movie about what it takes to get ephochal legislation passed, with, among other amazing bits of casting, John Hawkes and Jame Spader as the first lobbyists. And as brilliant, hardline Republican Thaddeus Stevens, Tommy Lee Jones will make you wish that the House of Representatives was both less civil and much, much more articulate.

“For the first time in my life, when confronted with a horrible, insensitive person, I knew exactly what I wanted to say and I said it,” bookstore owner Kathleen Kelly exults in You’ve Got Mail, when she finally delivers the perfect zinger to Joe Fox, the chain store mogul who is putting her out of business. In Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, Evelyn, the unhappy housewife who’s kept silent her entire life, finally finds her words after an obnoxious teenager steals her parking space and tells her “Let’s face it, lady, I’m younger and faster than you are,” totaling the younger woman’s car, and declaring “Let’s face it, honey, I’m older than you are and have more insurance than you do.” It’s a very specifically female dream, I think, to be able to deliver an cutting line, to express yourself and your anger perfectly, without censoring yourself in the name of politeness, or fear. And it’s a dream that Political Animals, the USA Network’s new miniseries, which started last night running against Breaking Bad, expresses perfectly.

As I explained in The Atlantic, Elaine Barrish, the show’s stand-in for Hillary Clinton as a former First Lady turned Secretary of State:

Is brilliant and competent, and one of the pleasures of the show comes from seeing her as a version of Hillary Clinton who is tougher on her Bill (here called Bud, and played with a thick coat of oil by Ciaran Hinds) than in real life. “I know, given your epic levels of narcissism, that it’s impossible for you to fathom this loss has nothing to do with you, but imagine for a moment that it doesn’t,” Elaine tells the husband she’s about to kick to the curb in the pilot episode, after she concedes her run for the presidency. “The country loves you, Bud. They will always love you. It’s me they have mixed feelings about.”

Greg Berlanti, who created the series, gives Weaver lots of juicy lines with which to zing the powerful, entitled men who make her life more difficult—it’s a terrific fantasy of having exactly the right words precisely in the moment that you need them. After Victor, the Russian ambassador, cops a feel while she’s giving a speech, Elaine remains composed. But in the hallway afterwards, she confronts him. “Did you enjoy the ass-grab, Victor? Good, because the next time you touch me, I’m going to rip off your tiny shriveled balls and serve them to you in a cold borscht soup,” she tells him, before switching into Russian to inform him “I will fuck your shit up. Do you hear me?”

A lot of the time, fantasies about strong women turn strong into invulnerable. As much as it can be fun to see Angelina Jolie kick ass, her lipstick perfect even as she rappels down a building, that requirement that female heroes have no flaws or weaknesses except those that can provide a few brooding, Bond-like shots per movie or television season, creates problems for how we talk about strong women on television. On The Newsroom, MacKenzie McHale isn’t grating because she has vulnerabilities, but because she seems to lack capabilities: we see only hysteria, not her ability to work through it, to procure a source, to effectively fire Will up. By contrast, Elaine has a deep attachment to the man she was married to for thirty years, but she works through those feelings as opposed to being ruled by them.

The requirement to be perfect, impregnably principled, unswayed by those who’ve done you wrong, is exhausting. And it’s narratively uninteresting. As I wrote in Slate:

In the second episode, there’s a flashback to Elaine and Bud’s time in the White House that acts as the corrollary to the questions Susan asks of Elain. Bud says to his wife, “You should leave me. I’ll cheat again. And I’ll lie again. And I’ll break your heart again. Retain Stacy Phillips. You have to come out of this looking good. You get no flack from me, Elaine.” But she stays until the moment, impossible to explain or justify to anyone, where she’s finally had enough.

As much as I wish I could save myself some heartache, there is no clear answer as to how Hillary and Elaine ended up with Bill and Bud, why Hillary stayed, and why in Political Animals, Elaine left. Hillary and Elaine are reminders that strength and brilliance won’t save us from complexity, confusion, error and pain. Instead, they’re tools to use to work through the most difficult decisions of our lives.

I don’t want to pretend it’s easy or clear to walk away from a man you were married to for thirty years no matter how he hurt you, or that work-life balance is simple. I don’t want my heroines, my strong women, to be without weakness and vulnerabilities. I want to see them possessed of the self-awareness to recognize those points in themselves, and the capacities to grapple with them. If men are allowed to fall into error around power and violence and remain fascinating anti-heroes, women should have room to do the same about love and family as well. It’s not the site of your weakness that makes you a rich and serious character. It’s how you deal with the dark places in your heart.

The bridge is yours.

-I hope this showcase for women director results in some pickups. I’d really like to see these movies in theaters.

-Spencer Ackerman figures out why the military was reluctant to get in on The Avengers.

-And where The Avengers go next.

-Hollywood: less than thrilled with President Obama’s equal marriage rights waffling.

-Every move Political Animals makes has me more excited for the show.

I’ve been saying repeatedly how excited I am for Political Animals, the USA Network’s six-hour show this summer about a First Lady turned divorced Secretary of State, and the trend of women politicians on screen in general. And now, we’ve learned that Sigourney Weaver is going to be playing the main character in that show, who is clearly based on Hillary Clinton. Given that she’s one of the most commanding women on any screen, large or small, I think Weaver will play the hell out of this part—she can credibly, and interestingly, give hell to just about anyone, be they head of a paramilitary strip-mining operation, insect-like alien, or recalcitrant foreign leader.

It also seems fitting that Weaver, who played a First Lady who had to endure the indignity of being cheated on in Dave, gets to come back and play the hell out of the next chapter in that real-life story.

I appreciate that we’ve gone from stories where the woman gets to be the President’s wife or girlfriend, as in Dave or The American President, to stories where she gets to be one of the most powerful people in the free world entirely in her own right.

It’s not exactly surprising that there’d be a lot of interest in politics in a presidential election year, but even given that, the heavy investment by networks in political shows feels unusual. And it’s even more unusual that all the political or Washington shows coming down the pike sound—or are, given what I’ve seen of them—surprisingly smart and fun.

What’s making this an official trend is USA’s announcement that it’s picked up a series called Political Animals. The network’s other Washington show, Covert Affairs, can be a little silly about Washington geography and what kind of shoes Washington women can afford on civil service salaries, but it had a decent sense of the relationship between the press and the administration and of tension over leaks. So I’m not shocked that USA’s first real political drama is doing something intelligent in focusing on a main character who is a not-so-thinly-veiled version of Hillary Rodham Clinton: a former First Lady who is now Secretary of State. The civil service geek in me is pretty excited about this and Kal Penn’s workplace drama set at the UN, both of which are a welcome expansion beyond the White House and spies for subject matter. And I think it’s smart to get out of the legislative process, which by this point is fairly well-worn dramatic territory, and into diplomacy and the press—the main character’s best friend will be a reporter. I don’t exactly count on this to be an accurate depiction of diplomacy any more than I expect Royal Pains to be a penetrating look at the Hamptons, but the concept is savvy, and should provide a couple of good roles for non-twenty-something women.

As does Veep, HBO’s terrific comedy about a female Vice President dealing with needy staffers, a president who ignores her, and a press corps that picks up on her every misstep. The sitcom, which premieres April 22, certainly is heightened and ridiculous, but the pilot nails the rhythms of speech and attitudes in Washington, along with the obnoxious and prickly gatekeepers and the minor screw-ups that become major catastrophes. “I want it to be right. I want it to be accurate,” creator Armando Iannucci, the force behind In the Thick of It and In the Loop, told me at the Television Critics Association press tour. “I want to know the dull stuff. What time do people get in in the morning? Who do they sit next to? If someone calls from a newspaper or a television show, who takes the call? How do they issue a retraction?” He and star Julia Louis-Dreyfus told me that they continue to consult with advisors on both sides of the aisle in the city, and from what I’ve seen of the show, that care and attention pay off. When a prominent and aged Senator dies, the Vice President muses about the last time she saw him: “He was full of bourbon, and he grabbed my left tit.” Later, when Amy (Anna Chlumsky, who appears to be Iannucci’s current muse), her chief of staff signs her own name to a condolence card for the man instead of the Veep’s, she moans of the screwup “it’s going to look like the Veep couldn’t be bothered to sign a condolence card for one of the most celebrated perverts on the senate.” And the show mines a lot of humor out of the Veep’s lame attempts at humor, a perfect example of official Washington squareness. “I have stepped into the president’s shoes this evening and who knew he wore kitten heels,” the Veep says to kick off a speech. ” Just kidding. He’s more of a stilettos guy.” Sometimes, politics is both small, and small-minded (as is also the case with Hulu’s first original scripted series Battleground, about campaign workers in a Wisconsin Senate race).

And then there’s Scandal, which is essentially Revenge for the Washington set. Based on the experiences of Judy Smith, the Washington crisis manager, the show is soapy as hell. The president is sexy and straying! The cases handled by Kerry Washington’s PR firm are totally over the top. The real estate is improbably gorgeous. But if you can appreciate it for what it is, Scandal is a wonderfully entertaining funhouse look at Washington from Hollywood’s perspective—it’s Hollywood for ugly people with the ugly people subbed out. I imagine it’ll drive real politicos nuts, but if you can suspend disbelief and just enjoy it, Scandal is going to be awfully diverting.

Which is good. Even political junkies need a break from what will undoubtedly be a bruising campaign. And if we can only downshift to political shows, rather than to something entirely off-topic and escapist, it’s nice to know that there will be diverting alternatives to dusting off our West Wing DVDs.