Gaslit Season 1 Episode 1 Review: Will
Carissa Pavlica
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Sometimes, history is so mind-boggling that you don't even need to change it up much for entertainment value.
Such is the case of Watergate, the historical background of Starz's new series, Gaslit.
With an award-winning cast scraping the barrel of some of political history's most outrageous characters, Gaslit Season 1 Episode 1 proves that we won't be able to take our eyes off of this one.
Gaslit is telling Martha Mitchell's (Julia Roberts) story. However, the premiere suggests a more rounded approach to Martha's herstory (I kind of like that word, and it really fits here, so I'm going to use it.) with the Watergate men getting lots of attention.
From the opening scene, featuring Shea Whigham as crazy man G. Gordon Liddy, the mastermind behind the Watergate schemes, you can smell the stink of desperation to secure an election that seemingly would be a landslide victory for President Richard Nixon anyway.
With some of the most notable government officials today skirting 100, refusing to clear a path for new ideas, it's not surprising to imagine that the powerful will take extraordinary measures to stay there even when a win seems in the bag.
Something was amiss in the White House from the get-go as John Mitchell (Sean Penn) ran Nixon's reelection campaign.
Jeb Magruder (a peevish Hamish Linklater) and Mitchell lured John Dean (an almost unrecognizable pinch-faced Dan Stevens) to Mitchell's office under the guise of being recommended by someone Dean respected to help with the reelection campaign.
You are wanted. You are essential. You cannot be fired.
John Dean [to himself]
How and why Dean thought to wrangle Liddy to help with the already crazy ideas on the table is unclear, but we can surmise that he wanted to look well connected and appear competent when he was really more ego than effectiveness.
Mitchell is a foul-mouthed talker, but even he wasn't prepared for the lunacy that started pouring out of Liddy's mouth when Liddy began his Operation Gemstone presentation.
The gist of Gemstone was to kidnap the democrat party's most essential and influential member, skirting them to Mexico in an attempt to throw the party into chaos.
The second phase would be to entrap other party members with hookers, blackmailing them into... what, I'm not entirely sure. -- stepping back, maybe?
Liddy: Operation Quartz. A covert manipulation of the democrats' outer circle. We will round up their fringe activist leaders and export them to black sites deep in the heart of Mexico. Each capture will slice a viper from Medusa's crown. Their leaderless ranks will wither away.
Magruder: Is that export as in kidnap?
Liddy: Forced rendition is the optimal descriptor.
These plans were crazy pants. Liddy, who reveres Adolph Hitler (no, really, he said as much in his autobiography, Will, after which the episode is titled) and tests his reserve repeatedly by burning his hand with a candle, should have scared the pants off of those in the room.
Liddy: You've never tasted your own blood.
Magruder: Pardon me?
But nope, he was onboarded as if they thought they might temper him and put him to good use anyway. Well, he might not have kidnapped party members, but after Watergate's debacle, they did as much to Martha, who ultimately became Nixon's patsy for all that went wrong.
Julia Roberts nails many aspects of Martha's personality in the premiere, teetering on edge without revealing too little or too much.
Martha was no shrinking violet. Other politicians' wives might have been happy to sit behind their men, holding no sway while propping up their husbands, but that wasn't Martha.
Mitchell: The election is in eight fuckin' months, Martha. If you can just keep your mouth shut for eight months, we'll be fine.
Martha: Get another wife if you want a silent one, or marry that portrait I made you that you never thanked me for, by the way.
Mitchell: You wanna know the truth, Martha? There's no conspiracy against you. There's no collusion hiding in the shadows. People just don't like you. That's why we can't fly on Airforce One. All those journalists that you call in the middle of the night? They're not your friends. They just can't take their eyes off a good show.
She goes toe-to-toe with Mitchell (because there are two Johns, all men are called by their last name for my purposes), and although he's still gruff, Martha knows how to play him like a fiddle.
That ability allows her to make "friends" with reporters, whom she regularly calls, often in the middle of the night, to plant seeds for articles that place her and her husband in the media's sweet spot.
Martha: We are empathetic creatures. Now, some people see that as a weakness. But I decided long ago that I will say how I feel, and if that does not conform to the president's message, so be it. If that gets me banned off of Airforce One, I will fly commercial.
Winnie: So, you were banned from Airforce One.
Supposedly, Martha's early aspirations were to be an actress, but her family disapproved. Her eagerness to claim and stay in the spotlight makes sense in that regard. And in a city of political elites, being one of the movers and shakers would be right in her wheelhouse.
The premiere shows that Martha likes pleasing her husband and that even the power she has isn't enough, as demonstrated through her feelings about First Lady Pat Nixon.
The First Lady must have felt the envious eyes on her back, or she wouldn't have planned an event on the same night as Martha's fundraiser or placed her in the rear of the room of her own.
The things that thrust Martha into the spotlight are also signs of her fragility.
Matha has no friends to speak of, which makes her phone calls to reporters sad. Mitchell even tosses that into her face during an argument, cutting her to the quick.
Her connection to her husband is also sad when it comes to smoothing the waters of her impressive phone bill to those non-friends and her feud with the First Lady because Matha used sex to temper discussion about those topics.
Martha is loud and brash, nicknamed the Martha the Mouth or Mouth of the South, but those traits mask a lonely existence and a desire to contribute.
Although she didn't pursue acting, she did get a degree in history, a perfect companion to politics. Had the times been different, Martha could have been the woman in office instead of trying to make waves from her husband's coattails.
From the opening scene on, Gaslit seems like fiction. When you learn how much of it is true, it is, in fact, mind-boggling.
Times change, and so do scandals, but I'm willing to bet that as we've gotten more sophisticated, so too have the political machinations and shenanigans used by the powerful elite to manipulate the American government and its people to their own ends.
Perhaps, when scandals of the past are almost long forgotten, Gaslit will serve as a cautionary tale for anyone who takes Washington too seriously.
Nothing that we'll see Martha suffer during Gaslit will be funny, but with the players involved, there's no other way to treat this history than with dark humor.
Taking it seriously and giving it the weight it deserves could prove too frightening of a consideration.
Carissa Pavlica is the managing editor and a staff writer and critic for TV Fanatic. She's a member of the Critic's Choice Association, enjoys mentoring writers, conversing with cats, and passionately discussing the nuances of television and film with anyone who will listen. Follow her on X and email her here at TV Fanatic.
