ROBERTS RULES SERIES

BACKGROUND IN WATERGATE SCANDAL GETS PERSONALIZED

By PETER THOMAS BUSCH

Julia Roberts plays a fiercely independent character still tethered to the love of her life as her and her husband follow stubbornly traditional gender roles.

Sean Penn costars as United States Attorney General John Mitchell as US President Nixon’s Administration hits some heavy chop created by misdirected underlings in the streaming series, Gaslit (2022).

Director Matt Ross spins three narratives around the main narrative about Roberts’ leading character, Martha Mitchell.

Penn, Dan Stevens as Whitehouse counsel John Dean and Shea Wigham as Whitehouse general counsel G. Gordon Liddy each run their own narratives intersecting with one another’s while Penn continually brings everything going on in the deep background of the Oval office during the Watergate Scandal back in sync with what Roberts is up to as dear Martha.

Ross paints everything going on and the characters involved with a brush of parody, even at one point giving away the underlining current in a self-reflective moment in Mitchell’s office by calling those running the operation a bunch of morons.

Penn puts on a facial prosthetic and curls back his character inside himself a bit so as to be able to fit with the fiery television wife he has come to know all too well.

Stevens portrays Dean as an ambitious underling willing to look the other way as long as what he has to do against his otherwise ethical inner self gets him closer to the flame of power.

Scenes are compelled by the clever acting that mixes reality with fiction and the serious nature of the topic with a bit of hyperbole, which creates several moments of dead pan laughter in the mix.

In the end of the day, the truth is too surreal to be digested without a few chuckles.

Just enough of a gentle score adds tone and atmosphere to scenes filled with clever dialogue. 

Script creator Robbie Pickering blends a number of social engineering issues going on in the foreground with the political machinations of the Washington elite going on in the deep background.

Characters are built bit by bit as the camera swings to and from the main narrative involving Roberts to the more personal narratives showing how Mitchell works the political crowd while running the special covert operations within the Committee to Reelect the President.

The director’s camera also follows Dean away from the office and through a more personal window as he pursues a love interest in the Washington dating circuit with a California based airline stewardess, Mo Dean, played by Betty Gilpin.

Mo sees but ignores all the red flags at play just as Dean does at work, and the two together thereby become a personification of the Whitehouse Watergate blunder that brought down the President of the United States.

But all their artful efforts are for not, as all the attention inevitably swings back to the attention grabbing moments of Washington socialite Martha Mitchell.

Roberts is surrounded by talented acting performances cast well together, but Martha is inevitably the center of attention, and Roberts’ acting really becomes a fine art form with each episode strangely compelled by her presence and her absence as everyone watches her until she leaves the screen and then waits silently for her to return.

Wigham opens the series with the dark telling of Liddy with his fanatical loyalty to power that rests on a bit of recklessness that predictably gets them all caught.

Liddy is over the top even in the coffee room. And so the Watergate burglars acting on behalf of the President must fail despite what seems as a well planned, well prepared covert operation. 

This streaming series is tightly produced away from the alarming politics of the time and gives quick short personal vignettes of the people away from the office.

Gaslit is streaming on Starz, which is available in Canada on Crave.