When a television show figures out something that it does well, the series can go back to that bit of shtick an almost infinite number of times. “Breaking Bad” always managed to make the actual act of cooking methamphetamine look interesting on screen. On “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” I could listen to Jake Peralta (Andy Samberg) make asides about the horrors of American culture and history pretty much forever. Leslie Knope’s (Amy Poehler) over-the-top acts of generosity to her friends on “Parks and Recreation” are endlessly endearing.

This week, “The Trump Show” decided to test that proposition. It’s not that the show hasn’t figured out the essential character beats and personal tics of its main character, because the writers of “The Trump Show” have President Trump absolutely down cold. Instead, it’s that these repeated beats the series executes so perfectly are so sufficiently horrifying that “The Trump Show” is testing my continued willingness to watch. I know the craft is good. I know that the series’ themes are strongly executed and vitally important, given the present state of our country. And I’m aware I’m watching an absolutely bravura performance. But even though I know I learn something new every time “The Trump Show” returns to its foul, polluted wells, I’m just not sure how much longer I, or any other viewer, can stand to do this.

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Let’s take this week’s biggest plot thread. Trump has always shown a strong desire for approval from people who have served in the military and a tendency to venerate people whose military service he finds impressive. At the same time, these yearnings, coupled with Trump’s total inability to deal with criticism, have led him to lash out particularly harshly at military families who criticize him. His feud with Khizr and Ghazala Khan, Gold Star parents whose son, Capt. Humayun Khan, died in Iraq, was one of the most unsettling moments of the pilot for “The Trump Show.”

And yet, somehow the series has found a way to make this potent psychological brew even more discouraging. In this episode alone, Trump managed to lie about President Barack Obama’s* calls to the families of service members who were killed overseas; to offend the family of Sgt. La David Johnson, who was killed in Niger; and to have been discovered failing to follow through on a promise of $25,000 to Chris Baldridge, whose son, Army Sgt. Dillon Baldridge, was killed in Afghanistan. (In the last seconds of the episode, he finally sent the check.) These incidents might seem repetitive, but each reveals a new flaw in this single part of Trump’s personality. The first highlighted his chronic dishonesty and profound insecurity about his predecessor; the second his fundamental clumsiness in the ceremonial role of the presidency; the third his continued cheapness even after his hollow pledges to characters were so manifestly exposed in the pilot episode.

I know how well-executed this all is, and yet I find it sickening. I don’t want to watch this, and yet I can’t stop myself. I don’t think I’m alone, and yet here we are.

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And this was true for so many other little bits and bobs in this episode. There was his flip-flopping on a bill that would stabilize America’s health-care system at a time when Trump himself has done so much to throw it into chaos, an illustration of his fundamental drive to destroy Obama’s accomplishments without much thought for how to deliver on his own promises. There were his self-revealing and agonizingly embarrassing tendencies to repeat his own praise. There was a continuation of his fight with the National Football League, an opponent that allows Trump to win with his base even as he backs himself into a narrower and narrower corner. (In one exception, the show briefly appeared to have introduced a subplot involving first lady Melania Trump and a body double before backing off of that particular experiment, in a sign both of good sense and that fans of this show can over-analyze anything.)

In a normal television show, this would all be leading to something. Even “House of Cards,” ridiculous as it is, recognizes that it can’t keep us stuck in a patently nonviable premise for too long, before shaking everything up and giving us a new crazy scenario to work through. But “The Trump Show” has already defied so many rules of television that I wouldn’t be surprised if it continues to torture us like this.