There is new video series on Amazon that is a must-watch, given the countdown to a miserable election.  It's called Goliath.  It stars Billy Bob Thornton, William Hurt, and Maria Bello and a supporting cast of wonderful actors.   

Its creators are David E. Kelley and Jonathan Shapiro, both of whom have many successful series to their credit.  One might assume they are typical Hollywood leftists, pro-Clinton and anti-Trump, and they may well be, but this series seems an obvious metaphor for the current election campaign.   

It is a classic tale of powerful big money – an arms production company with billions of dollars in defense contracts and an international legal corporation run by an unstable megalomaniac and staffed with contemptuous arrogant elites vs. their victims – the powerless.  But as sometimes happens in real life, the powerless are smarter than those who dismiss them as insignificant.  Sometimes the good guy wins.

(Spoiler alert)

The plot is the cause of death, deemed suicide, of a man on a boat.  So who's who in the metaphor?  Hillary Clinton and her campaign are the arms corporation and the international law firm, all-powerful and ruthless.  Donald Trump, despite his real-life personal wealth, is the metaphorical down-on-his-luck lawyer, once fabulously successful but an outcast for having freed a criminal who went on to murder a family.  But he is the good guy.  Like Trump, he has many, many personal flaws and bad habits, but he is the better man, the good guy.  He is the one fighting for what is right, for a moral outcome.  The lesson is an old one that should be instinctive by now: not all moral crusaders are paragons of virtue.   

The underdog's opponents in the trial of the series are, metaphorically, the Clintons, the Clinton campaign, the people with untold billions of dollars with which to ruin their adversaries with opposition research, private investigation, ads, etc.  They are the people who win even when they are guilty as sin because they can pay.  They can pay people to lie.  They can pay people to vote.  They can pay people to do whatever they want them to do.  Does anyone think that those women suddenly coming out to accuse Trump of inappropriate sexual advances have not been paid?  Recruiting amoral people for such tricks is Democrat Tactics 101.  They do it every election cycle.  Sadly, it is an easy task.  There are far too many people ready and willing to sell their nonexistent honor for money.

The  narcissistic megalomaniac who heads the law firm (played by William Hurt) is a malevolent self-appointed puppeteer who relishes his ability to pull the strings of his young legal recruits.  He uses and abuses them for his own ends.  He thinks nothing of killing people to win a case.  He is despicable, and he is in poor health!  Sound familiar? 

The underdog lawyer, Billy McBride, portrayed by Thornton, is the metaphorical Trump: undisciplined, sometimes foolish, a wild card who makes his friends and cohorts who love him and are cognizant of his talent tear their hair out.  But they stick with him. 

There a few weak scenes, especially  the main character's courtroom summation.  But if Kelley and Shapiro are Hillary supporters, this series undermines their ideological platform; the show is a barely disguised full-fledged pro-Trump ad.  What is morally right should win and sometimes does, even when the deck is hugely stacked against it.  Viewers may conclude that Kelley and Shapiro are closet Trump supporters.  Good for them.