by Mike Hilty, Contributing Writer
The United States of America’s political climate is dysfunctional and in total chaos. I’m not saying anything controversial, especially when it’s clearly true. I’ve been alive long enough to see Congress be able to be semi-productive and bipartisan once upon a time, but it’s evolved into a mess over the years. Political scandals in the U.S. are also mixed at best. I don’t understand how a scandal for one person can take them down politically, while someone else can thrive or bounce back from something similar with ease. Scandals come up so frequently that it feels like just another news story now. I know that’s a crappy attitude to have, one filled with apathy and indifference. The simple truth of the matter is political scandals come out so frequently now that it’s hard to keep up, and it’s hard to sort out which ones to pay attention to and will actually matter. Most of the political scandals that I thought were going to be big deals end up not amounting to any true measure of accountability.
I cannot imagine just how big of a scandal Richard Nixon’s Watergate scandal must have captured America at the time.
Gaslit, created by Robert Pickering and based on the first season of the podcast Slow Burn, tells the Watergate story from a different perspective. The story is from the vantage points of some forgotten players in the scandal that brought down the Richard Nixon administration. Martha Mitchell (Julia Roberts) is the primary focus on the show — she is a prominent socialite who is also married to Nixon’s attorney general John Mitchell (Sean Penn). There are various other people who are shown from their perspective in the Watergate scandal, including John Dean (Dan Stevens), an attorney who assists in the cover-up, and G. Gordon Liddy (Shea Whigham), one of the organizers who planned the break-in at the hotel.
There have been a few shows this year that have shown the 1970s in a great way. Gaslit is another one where the costumes and set pieces are all wonderfully done. The 1970s are definitely having their heyday over the last few months with Winning Timeand Minx as great examples of how to do the 1970s justice. In addition to the costumes, I also have to give props to makeup as well. I didn’t even recognize Penn as John Mitchell, and it wasn’t until I went to IMDB to confirm the actors that I found out he was in Gaslit. So from a costume, set piece, and makeup perspective, this show definitely excels.
I’m a self-professed history nerd, and there are some areas that are a bit of a gray area for me. The Watergate scandal is one of those events, so it was interesting seeing what happened, how it unfolded, why it happened, and some of the key players involved. Sure, this tries to inject some humor and tries different things to tell the Watergate story from all different kinds of angles. It’s also a little distressing to see that the current political landscape hasn’t changed that much for that of the Nixon administration.
From a story standpoint, it’s mainly a linear dramedy that has some time jumps to skip ahead to the prime events. Some of the time, it jumps a little too far into the future, especially considering the jump from episode four to five. That’s when things start to pick up steam with the Watergate investigation. Episodes three and four feel like the calm before the storm before everything starts to fade into chaos. There’s a growing tension, which leads to increased dread, especially among those who are guilty. Certain components of the story make for better TV. The two FBI agents investigating the break-in — Angelo Lano (Chris Messina) and Paul Magallanes (Carlos Valdes) — are two highlights for me. The commentary they both have about systems protecting the powerful and helping them circumvent accountability was a strong sentiment for this series. These two have some of the funniest moments of the series, too.
Upon looking at her filmography, Roberts doesn’t do a lot of TV shows. She is a movie star though and through. With the rise of more options for TV, though, I hope more movie stars take a look at what Roberts is doing and see there are a lot of worthwhile roles in limited series. Roberts chews up scenery as Martha Mitchell. She’s brash and stubborn, but ultimately wants to do the right thing. In this case, doing the right thing puts her in direct opposition to her husband John. He’s put in a pretty tough bond between his party and political allegiances, and protecting his wife and family. Penn does a great job in the role, a conflicted bureaucrat who has to make the call of what is truly the right thing to do. Stevens also does an excellent job as John Dean. He’s clearly drinking the Kool-Aid of the administration, and when he makes the decision, with the help of his wife Mo (Betty Gilpin), to do something about his situation, it comes at a cost. Gilpin might be the moral center of the whole story, and it goes to show how being an outsider can sometimes give you the most clarity in a situation like this. These two are a wonderful match, and I really enjoyed seeing their evolution as a couple.
Liddy might be the closest thing to a main villain in Gaslit,and Whigham plays it almost scarily well. The people to look out for in stories like this are the ones who think what they’re doing is correct, and Liddy falls under this category. He intimidates people to get them to stay quiet, and his beliefs are deeply rooted in natural law, which he believes supersedes man made laws. Whigham has some funny moments, too, as does most of the cast, but Liddy also has the most serious moments where the audience realizes how important of an issue this is. The only other villain is partisan politics, which unfortunately feels like nothing new at this point. I swear at one point, politicians did get along.
Gaslit offers a nice perspective on a story that has been told a bunch of different ways. I like it generally; however, that doesn’t change the fact that there might be other stories from a political scandal standpoint worth telling down the road. Roberts crushes it, and the other performances are fine. The pacing feels a little off, and the structure of the story is all over the place. This is a soft recommendation, especially if you have Starz, but it’s not worth subscribing to it if you don’t have the service already.
Score: 7/10
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