Reactions to the most recent Presidential debate were predictably scathing, with Weird Al parodying it in song and Mark Hamill calling it worse than the infamous Star Wars Holiday Special. It's possible that a stronger hand from the moderator would have made that debate, and this week's Vice Presidential debate, more tolerable, and Legion star Aubrey Plaza has now offered her services for that job.On Twitter, Plaza wrote that she wanted to moderate the next debate. She accompanied her Tweet with a still of her Legion character Lenny Busker sporting the professional look one might expect of a debate moderator. However, there's another reason why that character would be appropriate to referee the next encounter between Donald Trump and Joe Biden.
Plaza's role on FX's trippy X-Men show required her to juggle multiple personas at a time, similar to Tatiana Maslany on Orphan Black. In one of her roles, Plaza played the Shadow King, a powerful villain who worked to manipulate protagonist David Haller. The look Plaza has in the image she shared is one of the looks the Shadow King took on in his task, with this specific iteration working as a therapist.
Response to Plaza's Tweet were enthusiastic. One follower suggested that she moderate the debate as her Parks and Recreations character April Ludgate's alter ego, Janet Snakehole, instead of one of her Legion personas. Snakehole was an aristocratic widow with a "a very terrible secret" who always wore a veil. Her clothes and speech were deliberately anachronistic, which would make her an ideal candidate to moderate a debate between the two presidential candidates.
Plaza as a moderator would be enough to make viewers who swore off watching another debate tune in -- at least from the demographic that cherishes her roles on Legion and Parks. If she were to channel the Shadow King as a moderator, she would take the debate to another level and would very likely be an improvement to the fiasco overall.