The new 5-part HBO miniseries “White House Plumbers” (“Plumbers”) opens with this text: “The following is based on a true story. No names have been changed because nearly everyone was found guilty.”
At the end of each episode, different riffs on this same pithy, tongue-in-cheek commentary are offered up, reiterating (where none was really needed) that we are watching a satire of one of the most embarrassing, self-sabotaging events in the history of American politics.
Also shown in the opening are the names of the director (David Mandel) and the writers (Alex Gregory and Peter Huyck). Either together or separately, these guys were staff writers on “The Larry Sanders Show,” “The Simpsons,” “Seinfeld,” “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” “King of the Hill,” and “Veep.”
Seriously?
Prior to directing “Dr. Strangelove,” Stanley Kubrick and his co-writer Terry Southern determined their adaptation of Peter George’s 1958 Cold War thriller “Red Alert” couldn’t be produced as the drama they had first intended, as it was too absurd. They decided satire was the only way to present the story, and they were beyond correct. Some events are just too ludicrous and far-fetched to be taken seriously.
In the half-century since the Watergate scandal, there have been over a dozen TV and feature films which directly or casually acknowledge it, the two most notable being “All the President’s Men” from 1976 and the “Gaslit” miniseries released last year.
Collateral Damage
In “Plumbers,” Mandel and the writers do something no one has done before: They put emphasis not only on those that participated in the break-in, but also on events taking place long before Watergate went down, and the collateral damage inflicted on their families after the fact.Included as secondary figures (or not at all) in all other Watergate-related productions, the principal characters in “Plumbers” are G. Gordon Liddy (Justin Theroux) and E. Howard Hunt (Woody Harrelson).
Ex Marks the Man
Being labeled as an “ex” in any three-letter government-spy organization is not a good sign. If “retired” or “former” indicates leaving on favorable terms, that’s OK. “Ex” (as implied here) means one was fired and/or let go because of incompetency. Both Liddy and Hunt more than fit that description. Each was a gung-ho Nixon supporter and would do anything to “help the cause,” which made them ideal experimental “lab mice” on a multitude of levels.Mandel and the writers take their time in working up to Watergate. The entire first episode (and most of the second) is dedicated to the Ellsberg fiasco. Why exactly Nixon’s underlings thought failure should be rewarded with a future covert assignment is dumbfounding, but also somewhat clever. Putting them back into circulation on another assignment as coalmine canaries wasn’t a total misfire. Liddy and Hunt proved to be “company men” and each remained “radio silent” even after their capture, conviction, and beyond.
Pointless Exercise
While “Plumbers” offers up nothing previously unknown about Watergate, it does so from a different angle and through a lens that points out its overall comic uselessness. Nixon had a commanding lead in the lead-up to the 1972 election, and the final results confirmed it.Watergate was a pointless exercise to prevent losing a race that was all but already won and that is the point here.
Don’t fix it if it isn’t broken, and if you attempt to do so, you deserve everything negative you get in return.
