Brian De Palma famously remarked, “The day I include the cliché of a plane landing in one of my movies is the day I retire.” Unfortunately, HBO's new series White House Plumbers falls short of the network's once-unrivaled standard for producing high-quality programming. While not necessitating the visual panache of a De Palma film, the series fails to live up to the occasional excellence of recent HBO productions. While an HBO mini-series with “Plumbers” in the title need not be as formally competent as the heir to Hitchcock, a modicum of style is still necessary.
The network, since its inception, has prided itself on being more than just television, but since rebranding to HBO Max, it’s frequently been much less. Whereas HBO’s earlier programs were distinguished by forward-thinking showrunners who acted like auteurs and whose writing often exceeded contemporary literature, the network now prioritizes quantity over quality in its rush to compete with Netflix and capture a wider, global audience. As a result, the network’s rebranding has left its longtime followers frustrated with the decline of its pioneering legacy.
White House Plumbers, like many HBO series of the last decade, panders to a boomer sensibility. Whether it be the overt political commentary of The Newsroom or the satirical elements of Veep, this mini-series lacks direction as it attempts to make light of the historic Watergate scandal in exchange for passé satire. I may be partial to the former, but at least Aaron Sorkin’s creative output possesses a certain captivation. This attempt, on the other hand, falls flat as debut director David Mandel struggles to balance the comedic tone with the significant historical backdrop, failing to maintain interest for the five-hour duration of the series. One can only presume Mandel’s hiring was intended to mirror the incompetence of those implicated in the scandal.
Although Justin Theroux, who plays G. Gordon Liddy, has delivered outstanding performances in The Leftovers and the movies of David Lynch, his signature charm is nowhere to be found. In Plumbers he looks like a deer in headlights: not sure where to go and doomed to jeopardy. Directed with no real direction, White House Plumbers deploys Liddy alongside Woody Harrelson’s E. Edward Hunt, but their failed chemistry appears to be the result of conflicting visions of the characters, further detracting from the already poorly executed concept.
The mini-series is merely a cheap repackaging of the 1976 film All the President’s Men without benefitting from the competent direction of Alan J. Pakula. White House Plumbers provides nothing but a trite rehash of a familiar story. Though the A-list stars attempt to carry the show, they’re ultimately powerless in light of its soulless and clichéd script, which only seems to exist for the sake of a paycheck.
