Ticket 2 Ride

G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt are like Lethal Weapon’s Riggs and Murtaugh. Well, that’s how they are presented in White House Plumbers. Watergate is now playing as a comedy series.

Justin Theroux is Liddy, the flame-retardant, former FBI agent who dreamed-up bizarre under-cover ops, and was a fan of Hitler. Woody Harrelson plays Hunt, a grumpy, lemon-sucking, paranoid, former low-level spy. Together, these two were the “brains” of the Plumbers, Nixon’s group of secret operatives who broke into the office of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist and later the Democratic Offices at the Watergate Complex.

The HBO series looks at the role and exploits of the Plumbers in a satirical view, though the real men were nuts enough to be funny on their own. Liddy and Hunt would be right at home in American politics today.

Liddy, whose mustache takes half of his face, is best known for holding his hand over a lit candle, unflinching as his hand burns. He gave his wife a handgun as a wedding present, after of course running a background check on her as a prospective mate. One cannot be too careful.

What goes around, comes around, again. I’m reminded of Dr. Strangelove watching this series, Liddy and Hunt are exaggerated characters like General Ripper. Theroux as the Nazi-loving, quick-to-shoot, but horrible shot Liddy, pushes the “wound too tight” label into the absurdity. The hand over the flame story is true, as other alpha-male craziness. His loyalty to Nixon got him extra jailtime, but reinforced his reputation as the man with the iron will. His later autobiography was indeed called Will.

Harrelson as Hunt makes you want to laugh just looking at him. While Liddy is intense, but cool, Hunt seems ready to fall apart and be consumed by his problematic life. Hunt appears the more rational of the two, but can be swept up by Liddy’s wild ideas. Harrelson is fun to watch, the viewer can imagine the turmoil inside, and his sense of failure at most turns. Hunt’s wife is portrayed as tough and independent, and no real match for him. In fact, she had the more impressive backstory. When he is sent to the kitchen to retrieve cookies while she converses with Hunt’s attorney is priceless. Her death in a plane crash was real, although one might suspect foul play.

Suppose the Plumbers had already broken into the DNC, not once, but had attempted three previous times, and that it was the fourth time when they got a bit sloppy and were caught. That’s the premise here, that these burglars were so inept that the had to break in a fourth time to correct what they had screwed up before. The series actually takes the truth and stretches it into an absurd, black comedy or errors. In reality, history shows at least twice the plumbers set foot in DNC offices, but there was a third effort that failed because of the wrong lockpicking equipment. There could have been a fourth, but who knows? Somehow, characters like Jack Mitchell, John Dean and Jeb Stuart Magruder come off as reasonable and somewhat moralistic in the whole dirty tricks / Watergate misadventure.

What does ring true in the series is the paranoia and self-destruction of the Nixon inner circle and Campaign to Re-Elect the President – CREEP, indeed. Nixon was not seriously threatened by George McGovern, although if the Ellsberg and Watergate break-ins had happened much earlier in the election campaign, candidate Nixon would have been in major trouble. What is also true, information about Hunt’s country club was indeed found on one of the plumbers, which led to Hunt.

The supporting cast is terrific. Lena Headly and Judy Greer are great as the wives. The actors portraying the plumbers bring quirkiness and sarcasm to the characters. The Hunt kids are particularly funny as they both rebel and support their father. In small roles are Corbin Bernsen as Attorney General Richard Kleindienst, F. Murray Abrams as Judge John Sirica, Gary Cole as Assistant FBI Director Mark Felt, John Carroll Lynch as John Mitchell, and Kathleen Turner as Dita Beard.

The abundance of money is the other reality that despite campaign laws, is like rain during the monsoon season, which begs the question, what has really changed in 50 years? Not that much.

This is a fun series to watch. The line between fact and absurdity is blurred, which is how these satirical stories work best.

Millermetric: 4.5/5