As a student of American history and politics in general, there are certain areas that I often think I have exhausted all my knowledge of. Pre and post Civil War politics. Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive Era. Every aspect of the Kennedys. And to an extent, I thought I knew every conceivable detail about the Nixon administration and Watergate. As Gaslit will no doubt demonstrate, that is because I left out the point of view one very specific woman.
Martha Mitchell was the wife of John Mitchell, Nixon’s attorney general and until fairly recently one of the most controversial men to ever hold the office. During the Administration, Martha was known in Georgetown and to the nation as ‘eccentric’ that euphemism that we often use when we don’t want to call a person crazy. (When a summation of Nixon gets you recognized as ‘the sanest one of the bunch’, that honestly seemed to be saying less about Martha than the men in the White House.) But in this case, eccentric was probably more a euphemism for someone who did something that wasn’t thought of highly in the 1970s for a woman, particularly the wife of someone who worked for Nixon. She spoke her mind, and when she did, it was often against the administration’s policies. She was one of the harshest critics of the Vietnam War, which understandably was never going to make her popular. And because of her marriage and more importantly her relationship with James McCord, one of the Plumbers G. Gordon Liddy hustled into burgling the Watergate, the administration and John Mitchell himself was very concerned with what Martha knew and when did she know it. So the same geniuses who cooked up invading the DNC decided to launch a scheme to discredit her, whatever it took.
Considering in the half-century since Watergate brought down the Presidency we seem to have heard the story of every single person even tangentially attached to the Nixon White house or the scandal, its kind of astonishing that it’s taken this long for anyone to tell the story of Martha. It’s slightly less astounding that the story is being told under the auspices of Sam Esmail, one of the greatest creative forces of the last decade, who brought us the astounding Mr. Robot and the remarkable Homecoming. It is that latter series that no doubt led to the casting of Julia Roberts as Martha Mitchell.
Roberts is perfectly on point as Martha, a woman who is completely independent in thought and as politically savvy (if not more so) then her husband. In the second episode, she and John make a trip to California where after John fails to convince a Reagan backer to endorse Nixon, Martha challenges him to a game of pool and lays out plainly why Nixon succeeded at the 1968 convention where Reagan failed, justifying it by saying that the South looks at Nixon’s granting their promises as if he were Christ. When the backer numbly asks if Martha is seriously comparing Jesus to Nixon, Martha says: “Of course not. Jesus couldn’t survive a Republican primary. (A fact truer now than then,)
The Mitchells marriage is stormy, to say the least. In the middle of a DC party, John tears Martha aside to berate for her horrid behavior and they have a knock down drag out argument that leads to an actual fight. After John slaps Martha, she actually berates her husband harder saying: “My mother hit me harder than that.” (The side of the youngest Mitchell daughter, hiding in a coat rack with a cigarette in her mouth is one of the saddest things I’ve seen, particularly as it shows one of the few absolute innocents in this entire story.) Could the Mitchells, seen in happiness have walked away from this if things had gone their normal course? Well that night the break-in happened, so the odds are no.
Everything that we see involving every aspect of the Watergate unfolds as if it were being played out by the Marx Brothers. Gordon Liddy (magnificently portrayed by Shea Whigham in yet another masterful character portrayal) comes across as someone who should never have been taken seriously by anyone in government, least of all the lead council to the President. He presents one of the most elaborate eleven point presentations as to dirty tricks that everyone tries to gently suggest is beyond ridiculous. When he requests Cubans for a far smaller operation and Jeb Magruder (Hamish Linklater) laughs in his face, he puts him in a chokehold. When the initial bugging goes south and he orders another one, the Cuban he’s hired publicly mock the group as amateurs. The actual break-in involves so many blunder, pratfalls, ridiculous code names and God help us, a discussion between the difference between a windbreaker and a parka. This is the rare case where history played out first as farce, then as tragedy.
Martha’s involvement in all this would have been tangential at best if not for the fact that one of her bodyguards was McCord, a man she actually seems to like and respect. John Mitchell seems to dismiss this at first, but the day afterwards when Martha discovers him gone, there’s a strange man in her room and he looks genuinely threatening to Martha and the audience.
Roberts is brilliant as Mitchell, obviously taking cues in her accent and behavior from the conservative socialite she played so well in Charlie Wilson’s War, one of her most undervalued performances. But the entire cast is just as good. You may know that Sean Penn is playing John Mitchell from the ads, but even after two episodes the viewer may very well think their leg is being pulled. It’s not just the padding and makeup that makes him invisible, it’s the fact that Penn utterly disappears into the portrayal of Mitchell. This could have been another chance for histrionics disguised by makeup, much the way Christian Bale’s performance as Dick Cheney in Vice was. Not so. Penn utterly disappears into Mitchell and makes the role his own.
Surrounding the two big movie stars are several of the greatest actors in television. I’ve already mentioned Whigham and Linklater and Chris Bauer are quite memorable as McCord, basically a decent man who gets in far over his head in command of greater forces. But the soul of Gaslit perhaps more than anything is Dan Stevens as John Dean, the man who essentially ended up breaking the Watergate conspiracy open before the Senate. Gaslit does everything possible to make Dean seem like a wimp, always being browbeaten and bullied by everyone above him. Halderman and Ehrlichman don’t know who he is when he meets them. In his first White House meeting, Rosemary Woods doesn’t get his name right and he is forced to reschedule when a meeting with Strom Thurmond runs long. He attempts to resign in the first episode, until he sees his name on a memo on John Mitchell’s desk and takes a letter opener with the seal of the President on it. When the meeting is postponed three months, he tries futilely to break it by stabbing into his desk. Dean wants to be a member of the President’s Men, and is desperate to be accepted as one by Maureen (Betty Gilpin) even though she tries to get him to believe in his better nature. You get the fundamental feeling that Dean is a good man (when he encounters Mitchell’s daughter in the coat rack, he actually seems human for the first time, even offering to represent her for legal emancipation) But Dean wanted to be in the club even though they never considered him a member. I’ve never had use for Stevens, either on Downton Abbey or the ultra bizarre Legion but here he more than demonstrates his value as an actor.
The most remarkable thing about Watergate is why it happened. Over and over in the first two episodes you keep hearing that Nixon will be reelected in a landslide and that the entire mission of bugging the DNC was a big of waste of people who knew the fact. You got the feeling that everyone was doing this to protect the ego of Nixon rather than any real belief in him. (Nixon himself has never stepped on stage so far, and it’s unlikely we’ll ever see him.) The fact that the true monstrosities of everything he did only came to light because of an unnecessary farce is astounding – if Nixon had just been satisfied with his landslide, he would have a full second term, retired to Yorba Linda as an elder statesman quietly hated by everybody. Gaslit makes all this clear in its story as well as showing in subtle ways how badly we treat the people who do the right thing. (After discovering the burglary at the Watergate, security guard Frank Willis is rewarded with a raise – of $2.50 a week.)
This is where I should add by saying Gaslit can be found on Starz, a channel that I have spent the better part of my life not having as part of my cable package until relatively recently. I’ve had no real use for Outlander, it’s most famous offering, but I have regretting never watching Power or any of the two spinoffs that came afterward. Starz has produced some interesting television series in its history – the intriguing Kelsey Grammer series Boss and the 1960s gangster drama Magic City – but has yet to ever truly present an offering into major contention for Emmys. Gaslit looks a lot like it could be its breakthrough series. I admit it’s going to be a tough field to break into, especially in an already overcrowded Best Actress category, but Roberts’ being shutout by the Emmys for Homecoming after dominating so many previous awards show with drama nominations was one of the Emmys biggest blunders in the past decade. But like so many of the other series that will likely be considered, Gaslit is a period piece that is more relevant now than you would think. Malevolent political forces were once in the executive branch and were conquered by their own incompetence. If it were to happen again, would the Martha Mitchells and John Deans be able to save us this time?
My score: 4.5 stars.
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