Gaslit: California

May 1, 2022 8:49 PM - Season 1, Episode 2

Martha and John rekindle their love--and their power-couple working relationship at a campaign event in California, overshadowed by G. Gordon Liddy and his team bungling the break-in at the Watergate.
posted by geoff. (3 comments total)

I don't care how many times I read or watch a movie about Watergate it is just so unbelievable. From memory and a quick review of Wikipedia the show skipped some steps that actually added tension to the burglary. Presumably to save time and not have all the episodes about the burglary they dropped stopping the elevators and parts of the arrest.

I love how they're depicting women as second class citizens from a plot perspective. If they went all in and just gave us Martha being drugged and kidnapped I don't think it would come off as believable. Instead they're setting us up with things like bugging a secretary and then giving us the locker room scene of reading her dirty talk transcripts and the bodyguard's controlling behavior of Martha. We're very much made aware that women are seen as nothing more than bit players in this.

And the 11 year old ordering a Bloody Mary basically made the entire episode.
posted by geoff. at 11:56 PM on May 1, 2022 [3 favorites]

That came off a bit awkward, I guess what I meant to say if you want to create a believable world in which people actually beat, drug and kidnap a woman (the wife of the attorney general no less!) and for it to be relegated to basically the Style section you can't just throw out there. They're creating a world where women are nothing more than furniture unless they're used for sex.
posted by geoff. at 12:27 AM on May 2, 2022 [4 favorites]

I’m actually enjoying this show a lot so far. Shea Wigham’s Liddy is perfectly over the top.
posted by computech_apolloniajames at 6:52 PM on May 4, 2022