Like Bran Stark vanishing for the entire fifth season of Game of Thrones, Steve Bannon has been mostly offscreen since he was ousted as White House chief strategist over the summer of 2017. But now he's back, returning to the Trump Show under the sort of circumstances only 2020 — or a really desperate sitcom writer — could concoct.

The past four years have felt at times like watching a really bad TV show, one I'd have called "unfocused" and "uneven" were I writing a review about it; I wouldn't have spared the bad dialogue, either. Really, the Trump Show jumped the shark long ago, with that storyline about the porn star, the anticlimactic impeachment season, and the president's losing battle against K-pop stans (alright, that last episode was actually pretty good — maybe the show does sometimes have its moments).

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Jeva Lange

Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.