White House Plumbers

Gordon Liddy was a certified psychopath, willing to kill journalists and break the law in the name of patriotism, and yet even after being hired to, and then convicted of conspiracy, burglary, and illegal wiretapping, upon being released from jail, his views made him a hero to millions as a demagogue radio show host. For decades, he was living proof of the power of progranda-style language to fire up the fear and loathing hidden in people's minds, allowing listeners to overlook the tiny detail that they were listening and being influenced by a psychopath.

This satirical TV show on one of Liddy's more well-known bungles is funny and educational. But ultimately its real value will hopefully be to give insight and awareness to the particular younger generations whose parents and grandparents got sucked into believing the fear-based rhetoric that came out of Giddy's radio show for decades.

My brother and I watch a lot of tv and then review it so even though this came out last summer we just now finally got around to watching White House Plumbers and were very entertained by it. So much so that we binged all 5 episodes over a weekend. Woody Harrelson and Justin Theroux are absolutely brilliant in this political satire on one of the most famous events in American history. HBO is known for putting out the best quality tv there is and White House Plumbers is another home run from them. Even though there is a lot of satire in this, they never stray from the facts of what actually happened. You won't find anything that you didn't already know about Watergate but I promise you've never seen it from this point of view. I promise you'll laugh mo matter what political party you support. At only five episodes long, it's definitely worth your time.

White House Plumbers is a five part HBO mini-series based on the actual historical events when Nikon's own saboteurs got caught during Watergate Scandel. E. Howard Hunt who is played by Woody Harrelson and G. Gordon Libby played by Justin Theroux are former FBI agents who are hired by Nixon to break-in to Watergate to steal or to overhear the Democratic parties strategies. Unfortunately they were unprofessional and careless undercover operatives that got caught in the act. The series was more comedic and a historical piece than anything else. Lena Headley acted as Woody's wife who was a former operative herself, unfortunately she ends up dying in a plane crash which might or might not have been cohorts by the FBI. Judy Greer played Justin's stay at home to help raise there five kids. Although they were implicated and indicted for over 20 years they served less than 5 years in minimum federal security prison. Kim Coates, Tony Plana, F. Murray Abraham were the Cuban individuals who were hired to break in, I never knew they failed twice to get into the hotel. The story started out slow but it was a good piece, I could definitely see Justin and Woody being nominated for their roles.

White House Plumbers was nothing like I expected. I thought it was going to be just another show on Watergate, Nixon and how everything went down. There is no doubt that Watergate is one of the biggest presidential scandals in United States history and led to the embarrassing resignation of Nixon. That's what I thought this show was going to be about and it is, but it's so much more. It's absolutely hilarious. This is shown from the perspective of E. Howard Hunt (Woody Harrelson) and G. Gordon Liddy (Justin Theroux) and how ridiculously comical their attempts at Watergate were. Both Harrelson and Theroux were so good in this that they were nominated for several awards for their performances. The only negative was it's only five episodes long, I could've watched this a lot longer.

I started watching this series for nostalgic 70's cultural and historical references. But I was quickly hooked on the satiric brilliance of Theroux and Harrelson portraying the Keystone Cops comedic element of the bungling undercover operatives of the Nixon administration. The portrayal of the Liddy's and Hunt's domestic complications works well, too. Their wives/kids play into the cultural zeitgeist of the time, nicely framing the unhinged nature of the "'plumbers' " mission as being detrimental to their families. But the highlight for me has to be Theroux's pitch perfect portrayal of Liddy's pomposity.