My condolences to Sarah Paulson and Beanie Feldstein, two skilled actors who have been tasked with finding 900 ways to have the exact same conversation every episode. Accused, allegedly a series on the impeachment of a president, is also an elegy for the culture of fixed telephony. Monica and Linda call each other obsessively, countless times a day. Even Linda’s teenage daughter – the peculiar ’90s creature for whom board games Dream phone, in which you talk on a hot pink phone to find out who loves you, and Girl conversation date line, in which you are talking on a pale pink phone to find out who loves you, have been created – think that’s a bit too much. Linda and Monica talked so much on the phone about this episode that I developed a phantom ear burn, like the one I would have at 16, pressed wirelessly between my face and my pillow, as I argued with my up-school boyfriend to find out who would hang up first.

It’s August 1997 now, a year since Monica was sent to DoD Purgatory and more than three since Paula Jones filed her lawsuit. Bill’s assistant and longtime friend Marsha Scott tries to break the bad news which, at this point, should be more than obvious: there is no room for Monica in the White House. There will never be a place for Monica in the White House. As far as Monica is concerned, the White House may as well be Mars, but no longer airless and hostile to life.

But Monica is delusional. I just read Linda News week Account of the date with Kathleen, she begs Linda to apologize, so that the Big Creep does not chase her out of revenge from the White House (which has already happened). Linda matches her delusions, of course. She was worried that there was a target on her back because she used to bring Vince Foster his lunch tray. (To be fair, someone anonymously left a list of Clinton results on her desk.) Still, Linda is right about one thing: no one in the White House is looking after them.

Suddenly panicked that she News week the splash left her vulnerable, Linda calls Lucianne (again) and tells her (again) that she’s ready to write a full story about the White House and the Pentagon, not limited to, but including the fact that The president has maintained a two- year relationship with America’s most persistent 20s. The devious witch reveals that she took notes on everything Monica tells her, but Lucianne says she needs irrefutable proof. She encourages Linda to start recording their calls, but Linda hesitates (again).

Soon, however, Linda convinces herself that she is doing her daughter a favor by blowing her place up. Monica (again) visits the White House without an appointment (again), but Bill watches GI Jane with Chelsea (decent movie choice). We’ve seen this scene in previous episodes before, but what struck me this time around was how much Betty is friends with Monica, how happily complicit in her boss’s adultery. Monica calls the sobbing and suicidal Linda from a nearby pay phone, and Linda calls Lucianne to tell her that she is ready to take down the leader of the free world. For an explanatory reason that the show does nothing to predict or explain, Lucianne becomes tender. She warns Linda that the Clintons are no joke when it comes to their enemies; Monique will be smeared.

Linda goes to RadioShack and, like a powered reducer to unwrap a new toy, rushes home, shoves a new tape into her recorder, and begins questioning Monica again about the dates and details of all of her executive dates. After a few weeks, Linda and Lucianne try to play the convos for Isikoff, but he doesn’t think it’s interesting that the president hates when his girlfriend cums. It’s not an abuse of power, just a bad relationship.

So Linda goes fishing for something more conventionally conspiratorial. During a phone call that we don’t see (praised either!), A friend of WH tells Linda that Monica’s name has a black mark next to it. She relays the devastating but obvious news to Monica during a phone call we see. Linda is even the one to suggest that Bill owes Monica a job, possibly outside of Washington. She mentions that Vernon Jordan, Bill’s friend and assistant, could probably find him a job in New York. It would be a thoughtful suggestion if it wasn’t also a trap.

Monica calls Betty to yell at her about the White House’s duplicity, and Betty calls Bill to tell her how mean Monica was, and Bill calls Monica to urge her to be a “good girl.” CALLS, CALLS, CALLS. Monica informs Bill that she is moving to New York, which he thinks is a great idea. She asks for Vernon’s help, and Bill says he will call her and, just like that, Linda has completed the creation. Monica laments that she won’t be seeing Bill in New York, and he tells her he’ll be there as soon as he’s finished being president. “Life is long,” he says condescendingly, because men are assholes.

For such a young person, Monica is oddly good with older men. She knows the right ways to stroke Vernon’s ego and how to poke fun at his conversation with nothing. She has a compelling story about why she wants to retire from politics, and he offers a job with Revlon. “It’s so nice to meet someone genuine in this town,” Monica told him cunningly. He gives her a pat on the ass on the way out because he can guess everything about his friend Bill’s daughter on Friday.

Surprisingly for an episode that happened almost entirely in phone calls, it still dives into a great montage of Linda / Monica phone calls. Bill needs to follow up with Vernon, Linda said. It’s banana and milk day, says Monica. No, it’s beet day. No, fucking beets; Linda is made with beets. The bands are piling up. The bands live in a basket on the coffee table. Monica slanders Babs. Linda and Monica fall asleep on the phone, much like me and my boyfriend from high school. The US Ambassador to the UN offers Monica a job, but she prefers to wear makeup. Bill is going to call Vernon, said Monica. Maybe it’s time to apologize to Betty, said Monica. Maybe Monica should go to the West Wing Christmas party. RIBBONS, RIBBONS, RIBBONS.

Eventually Linda loses him and hangs up, and I can’t blame her. Monica’s emotions also give me whiplash. She hates the president; she loves the president. She needs to get out of DC; she can’t bear to put a piece of Acela between her and the love of her young life. Linda ends up calling her back, guilty. “I have something to confess,” she begins. “I lost three pounds.” Monica generously invites him to take pieces from her big closet, which I guess is Linda’s skinny closet.

Women peruse Monica’s messy wardrobe when Linda unearths THE DRESS, curled up on the floor, perhaps awaiting dry cleaning, or perhaps kept as a bizarre memento: the President’s sperm kept on a blue dress in cotton blend from Gap. It’s a revelation you can’t get away with in fiction; it is too implausible to be anything other than 100 percent true.

But as the women swap war stories, it turns out that Monica’s relationship with Bill is the most satisfying she’s ever had. As a teenager, she had an affair with a guy from her high school drama team. When she left for the University of Portland, he followed and the relationship resumed. Before that, when she was 14, a camp counselor tried to have sex with her. And since then it’s really only been Bill, who bought him a bobby pin and got him a job at Revlon that starts in the New Year. It is nothing like love, and yet it is the closest to her. Linda watches her young friend sleep, her face is an image of maternal concern. Then she immediately informs Lucianne of the soiled dress.

Linda doesn’t have time to write a book; she must free Monica, who has spent the last decade in the grip of older men, at the moment. It will hurt Lucianne’s results, but I guess her hatred for the Clintons means more to her. She talks about Monica and the dress to a lawyer who works with George Conway, and George talks to Jones’ team about it, and soon after, Monica and Linda’s names appear on a list of potential witnesses. Linda even smiles as she gets served.

Bill doesn’t blink when he learns that Monica is donned in the Paula Jones costume. Monica is a good girl, and she will say what to say. He may not know that the problem is already bigger than the loose lips of a loving intern. On his way to the Residence, he walks down a corridor of presidential portraits and glances at JFK, the second most famous leader in the United States. He looks at his sleeping wife across the room and… what? We don’t know Bill well enough at this point to imagine what he is thinking. But we can guess.