White House Plumbers Review: A Broad, Tonally Haphazard Farce

The series takes itself a touch too seriously to succeed as a farce but draws its characters too broadly to achieve any real pathos.

White House Plumbers
Photo: HBO

HBO’s White House Plumbers is born out of a simple truth: that the events that occurred at the Watergate Office Building on June 17, 1972, while accounting for one of the most seismic political scandals in American history, were profoundly stupid. By walking us through each step in the planning, execution, and attempted cover-up of the operation, Alex Gregory and Peter Huyck’s five-part limited series—based on Egil and Matthew Krogh’s 2007 book Integrity—effectively underlines just how braindead the whole thing was, even as it struggles to wring many laughs from its depiction of the events.

“No names have been changed to protect the innocent, because nearly everyone was found guilty” reads the opening title card, accompanied by a jazzy, Ocean’s Eleven-esque number as our suited-and-booted burglars stride confidently into the Watergate building. They almost immediately encounter a door that they’re unable to unlock and have no choice but to retreat. The sequence is interrupted by two subsequent title cards, one explaining that “There were four Watergate break-in attempts” and a final one that drolly adds, “This was attempt number two.”

These little meta flourishes give the opening sequence a winking comic energy reminiscent of Adam McKay’s The Big Short, as White House Plumbers sets out to tell its own stranger-than-fiction tale. But from here, the series finds itself unsure of whether to lean into the farcical nature of the Kroghs’ source material or attempt something a little more grounded, leaving it with a split-personality dilemma that’s neatly represented by its two protagonists, E. Howard Hunt (Woody Harrelson) and G. Gordon Liddy (Justin Theroux).

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Hunt and Liddy are washed-up spies who’ve been consigned to the edges of the intelligence community until they catch the eye of the Committee for the Re-Election of President Nixon. After pitching a series of ill-conceived ideas to the higher-ups, their plan to bug the Democratic Party’s headquarters is given the green light and—with nothing more than a few dodgy disguises, a band of bitter Cuban expatriates, and a questionable set of lockpicking tools at their disposal—they set off on their mission. The rest, as they say, is history.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuKM2sTTmHg

While the budding bromance between the two hapless plotters is occasionally amusing, Hunt and Liddy feel like characters who walked in from completely different shows. Hunt is a growling figure who seems on the verge of a cardiac event at all times, while Liddy is a pure Looney Tune—a gentleman spy who delivers each line in a plummy monotone.

Though Harrelson’s performance often tilts toward caricature, Hunt seems to be the character that White House Plumbers wants us to take the most seriously. We spend a lot of time learning about his life and his family’s various struggles, and the later episodes bring about a personal tragedy that’s played mostly straight. Horrible people can still make for compelling characters, but there’s not much going on beneath Hunt’s bellicose surface.

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For his part, Theroux’s Liddy is a Nazi fanatic who likes to entertain his dinner guests by blaring Hitler speeches from his record player. He unfailingly suggests cold-blooded murder as the solution to any problem that he and Hunt encounter. The details of the Watergate scandal are so extravagantly stupid that Liddy’s cartoonish energy makes a perfect match for it. And Theroux makes a meal out of every punchline, relishing high-handed put-downs like “You have used up your daily quote of moronic questions, you towel-snapper, and it is only 9:17 a.m.”

Unfortunately, these moments of comic mischief are hard to come by. White House Plumbers weighs itself down with scenes from Hunt’s home life that never add to his basic characterization as an angry man with an all-consuming contempt for all things left-wing. And while the various burglary attempts that he and Liddy embark upon are filled with incompetent errors, their mishaps are rarely funny, and the banter between their crew of would-be burglars mostly falls flat. In the end, White House Plumbers takes itself a touch too seriously to succeed as a farce but draws its characters too broadly to achieve any real pathos.

Score: 
 Cast: Woody Harrelson, Justin Theroux, Lena Headey, Domhnall Gleeson, Liam James, Zoe Levin, Judy Greer, Kiernan Shipka, Ike Barinholtz, Yul Vazquez, David Krumholtz, Rich Sommer, Kim Coates, John Carroll Lynch, F. Murray Abraham, Kathleen Turner  Network: HBO

Ross McIndoe

Ross McIndoe is a Glasgow-based freelancer who writes about movies and TV for The Quietus, Bright Wall/Dark Room, Wisecrack, and others.

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