Series / White House Plumbers

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

Deep Throat, All the President's Men

White House Plumbers is a five-episode satirical political Miniseries that aired on HBO in May and June of 2023.

E. Howard Hunt (Woody Harrelson) is a former CIA agent who was sacrificed with the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion. He works a mind-numbing job at a public relations agency and writes spy novels on the side to relive his glory days. So he's pretty happy when he's hired by the Nixon Administration to form a new "Special Intelligence Unit" to investigate leaks. Hunt is paired up with former FBI agent G. Gordon Liddy (Justin Theroux). They rechristen the SIU as the "Plumbers" because they "fix leaks." Hunt, Liddy, and the Plumbers proceed to botch a break-in to Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office, but that does not stop them from getting another assignment, namely, to break into Democratic National Committee headquarters. That break-in, at the Watergate office building, destroys the presidency they tried to keep safe.

The series also stars Domhnall Gleeson (John Dean), Lena Headey (Hunt's put-upon wife Dorothy), Judy Greer (Liddy's dimwitted, Stepford-esque wife Fran) Kiernan Shipka (Hunt's daughter Kevan), Ike Barinholtz (Jeb Magruder), Yul Vazquez ("Macho" Barker, one of the Cuban burglars), David Krumholtz (William Bittman), Rich Sommer (Bud Krogh), and Kim Coates (Frank Sturges). Kathleen Turner pops up in one episode as Dita Beard, a troublesome GOP operative.

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Tropes for the series:

• The '70s: Takes place during Nixon's presidency and the Watergate break-in.
• Actor Allusion: Domhnall Gleeson is initially dismissed as having too much old lady in him, yet gains command of the White House Plumbers when Bud Krogh is ousted and is initially complicit in their schemes until he becomes a liability for Nixon's presidency and decides to betray them by testifying to the Senate, though unlike Armitage Hux, his betrayal is genuine.
• Adaptation Expansion: The series is an adaptation of Bud Krogh's memoir Integrity. But since Krogh left the White House soon after the Ellsberg break-in, and wasn't involved in the Dita Beard affair or the Watergate break-in, the series takes a broader perspective by focusing on Hunt, Liddy and their comrades and families, with Krogh himself a relatively minor character.
• All for Nothing: Dot uses this exact phrase in episode 4, as the reports of Nixon's landslide roll in and she observes that all the trouble Howard has gotten them in was absolutely pointless.
• Answer Cut:
  • When Hunt says that the CIA will provide disguises for the Dr. Fielding break-in, Krogh says "What kind of disguises?" Cut to Hunt and Liddy at a CIA safe house, getting ridiculous fake teeth and silly wigs and glasses.
  • Hunt says that he's bringing in team members who will work for free. After Liddy calls them "real Americans", Hunt says "Better." Cut to three Cubans, vets off the Bay of Pigs, arriving at the hotel.
  • Liddy is told that one of the Project Gemstone missions is a go and Howard asks which one is approved. Cut to the gang, looking at the Watergate, at the end of episode 2, showing that Project Opal was the approved Project Gemstone mission.
• Anticlimax: In-Universe. Hunt doesn't finally decide to testify until after John Dean's explosive testimony blew the lid off of Watergate, so when Hunt finally does testify, nobody cares. Liddy, still in jail, watches Hunt's testimony and chortles "You're too late!"
• All Psychology Is Freudian: Liddy explains how his German housekeeper brought Hitler as an orator to his attention. The housekeeper was likely a mother figure for Liddy.^note This is Truth in Television, perversely enough. Though the series doesn't mention that Liddy's father fired said housekeeper and replaced her with a Jewish woman. After the latter told Liddy about Hitler's mistreatment of Jews, Liddy admitted that he'd been wrong to admire him...which didn't stop him from constantly using Nazi-inflected language and code words. Liddy notes how his wife is blonde and has Teutonic lineage.
• Artistic License – History: The show implies that the crash of United Airlines Flight 553 which killed Dorothy Hunt was murder done to silence her. A vaguely shady guy takes a long look at her as she's boarding, the crash happens while she's confessing a lot of stuff to a reporter about Watergate and the Kennedy assassination, and the closing Credits Gag refers to "a mysterious plane crash." In fact, while CBS News reporter Michele Clark was also killed in the crash, there's no evidence that she and Dorothy ever talked, and the cause of the crash isn't mysterious: it was pilot error. Though given the timing and the people involved, it certainly generated a lot of conspiracy theories, so it's safe to assume that, given the dry nature of the Running Gags, the producers are being a little tongue-in-cheek.
• Axe-Crazy: Liddy has to constantly be reminded that murdering political opponents is, in fact, off the table.
• Bait-and-Switch: Viewers expect to see Hunt having sex with the stewardess Linda. He is actually having sex with his wife and insists that she call him Edward.
• Based on a True Story: Played for a gag in the opening titles of every episode.
  "The following is based on a true story. No names have been changed to protect the innocent, because nearly everyone was found guilty."
• Binocular Shot: Many times in Episode 3, as the gang has the Watergate under surveillance from across the street.
• Blatant Lies: When Hunt arrives at the bedside of Beard, her daughter notes that he's wearing a wig, and it's on backwards. Hunt stiffly states, "I assure you that I do nothing on accident." He's then immediately told that the jar he just inserted flowers into was for Beard's drinking water. After an awkward pause, Hunt asserts, "I know."
• Call-Back: Bud Krogh says John Dean "has too much old lady in him." At the end of episode 1 when Dean takes control of the Plumbers, he says the exact same thing of Krogh.
• Call-Forward:
  • Mark Felt says that the FBI, while unwilling to do anything illegal, is dedicated to ferreting out White House leaks. Felt will soon become the biggest White House leak of all when he starts leaking to the Washington Post as "Deep Throat".
  • Liddy says "If all I've done is to undermine the average American's faith in the government, that will pay dividends for the Republican Party far into the future." He's right.
• The Cameo:
  • In episode 4, Hunt gets a phone call from Bob Woodward. It's a voice cameo from none other than Robert Redford, who of course played Woodward in the definitive movie about Watergate, All the President's Men. To make it even better, the dialogue in the conversation between the two is exactly the same as it is in the film, except we see it from Hunt's perspective instead of Woodward's.
  • Gary Cole appears in one scene as Mark Felt. Decades later he would be unmasked as "Deep Throat", the guy who was leaking to the Washington Post.
• Cloud Cuckoo Lander: Liddy is slightly off his rocker and makes pretty much everyone uncomfortable.
• The Comically Serious: Liddy. He attacks all his ridiculous missions as if they're the Manhattan Project, never uses contractions, and he talks in an oddly stiff and formal way that the CIA disguise guy laughs at when handing out their silly wigs.
• Comically Small Bribe: Hunt bribes a cleaning lady at Dr. Fielding's office with the princely sum of $1.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: In the first episode, everyone laughs at John Dean and claims he has a little too much "little old lady in him." Dean turns out to be the savviest operator of all of them, and ends up far better off than Hunt or Liddy.
• Dartboard of Hate: The detectives grilling the Watergate burglars are McGovern fans, and they have a dartboard with Nixon's picture up on the wall.
• Diagonal Billing: Used for co-stars (and executive producers) Theroux and Harrelson in the end credits.
• The Dog Bites Back: Everyone on the job is horrendously dismissive of McCord, admonishing him for his incompetence and for being a little slow. When an opportunity arises to turn State's evidence during the trial, he takes it and leaves the other burglars, Howard, and Liddy out to dry.
• Dramatic Irony:
  • When discussing how to resolve the Dita Beard issue, Howard mentions to Gordon that killing Jack Anderson or Dita herself would not lessen John Mitchell's legal scrutiny. Anyone who has even the faintest knowledge of the Watergate scandal would know that while Mitchell's legal troubles with Dita Beard are done and over with, his legal scrutinies would be revived with the Watergate scandal itself, culminating in his arrest.
  • Howard and his son, Saint John, frantically destroy incriminating evidence late at night on a bridge knowing full well that an envelope with his name and address on it are at the scene of the crime.
• Dumbass Has a Point:
  • Howard and Jeb chastise Gordon for shredding the Nixon reelection campaign's money, though Liddy defends his decision since money can leave a paper trail that the federal authorities can identify one way or another. Considering what happens when the Nixon White House has Dorothy Hunt pay the Cuban burglars with hush money, which is one of the factors that causes Nixon to resign as President, he's technically right.
  • Liddy points out that the Dita Beard memo could actually pose a serious problem. His concerns are brushed off by Jeb, who assures him that it'll all blow over. Smash Cut to the Senate Judiciary Committee announcing an investigation...
• Establishing Character Moment:
  • Hunt is introduced miserably receiving obnoxious criticism for promotional copy he wrote, showing how low his career has stooped and how eager he is to get back into the game.
  • Liddy is introduced showing a secretary how to kill an attacker with a pencil, establishing him as an unhinged and self-appointed defender of justice, yet under all that, actually has meaning behind most of his methods, such as the rapists that prowl the streets of DC.
• Everyone Has Standards: Howard has some issues with Gordon Liddy about certain things throughout the series.
  • During the stakeout on Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist, he mentions to Gordon that he and his wife Dorothy were uncomfortable about the Nazi speeches, since he fought in World War II to help America stop Hitler's mad ambitions.
  • Howard is upset with Gordon shredding money, suggesting that less destructive methods could've been used, such as burying it, laundering it, etc. However, Gordon points out that it can easily be identified one way or another regardless.
  • Gordon himself is eager to make clear that despite his love of Nazi speeches, he doesn't share the ideology and agrees that Hitler was evil.
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: When Howard and his lawyer, William Bittman, are talking with Earl Silbert and the prosecution, Bittman asks about the contents of Howard's safe and Silbert allows them to see everything, though Howard asks if that's everything, wanting to make sure his files on Fielding and Project GEMSTONE were present. Earl tells him that it was everything that John Dean turned over to the FBI, causing Howard to freak out in the bathroom and realizing that John Dean has decided to cooperate with the FBI and that his name was all over the GEMSTONE files.
• Extreme Doormat: Fran Liddy, who shows Stepford-ish subservience to Gordon. When she ventures to disagree with Gordon at dinner with the Hunts and he says "Shush," she does. As she's driving Gordon to a meeting in episode 4, she chirps that she's only driving the car because he said she could.
• Fake Action Prologue: The show starts with what appears to be a How We Got Here opening of the Plumbers breaking into the DNC offices at the Watergate...only for one of the burglars to realize that he left his tools in Miami. A title card then reveals that this was the second break-in attempt out of four.
• Four Is Death:
  • Howard and Gordon are forced to break into Watergate one more time to get the other bugs in O'Brien's office working properly in what would be the Plumbers' fourth and final break-in attempt, culminating in the Cuban burglars having a check that Howard has to pay to the Lakewood Country Cub when they and John McCord get caught by Watergate security, Frank Wills the security guard discovering the piece of tape on the locked stairwell door, among other things that would be the beginning of the end for Nixon's presidency.
  • At the end of Episode 4, Howard's wife Dorothy dies on the flight to Chicago.
• The Ghost: Richard Nixon appears only in archival footage of him signing the Salt Treaty with Leonid Brezhnev, the 1972 State of the Union address, and discussing his denial in the Watergate coverup, despite being the driving force of the Plumbers. His orders and wishes are expressed only through subordinates.
• Gilligan Cut:
  • Magruder says, regarding the ITT bribe, that "This will blow over, trust me." Cut to a news report saying that Dita Beard has been subpoenaed to testify before the U.S. Senate.
  • As Hunt and Liddy are making their panicked retreat from the hotel after the rest of the crew has been arrested at the Watergate, Hunt says "Nothing leads back to us. We're fine." Cut to one of the cops asking one of the Cuban burglars about the envelope in his pocket, the one that contains Hunt's dues to the Lakewood Country Club.
• Glasses Pull: Liddy does this a couple of times in episode 4 in an effort to look like a badass, but it just makes him look like a buffoon, like when he takes his sunglasses off to tell John Dean that he'll be happy to stand on a street corner and be assassinated for Nixon.
• Government Conspiracy: One of the most famous of all time. The Nixon White House attempted to undermine its political rivals by underhanded dirty tricks.
• Hauled Before A Senate Subcommittee: Not the first one in American history but the Trope Codifier. Various people testify before the Senate Committee on Watergate; Hunt waits too long to give his testimony and John Dean steals his thunder.
• Historical Beauty Update: Justin Theroux is noticeably more conventionally handsome than the real Liddy, having smoother, more elegant features than Liddy's round, rougher ones and having a full head of hair while the real Liddy was already noticeably balding by the time of Watergate.
• Historical Domain Character: Most all of them, this being a series about an actual historical event.
• Hope Spot: During the Plumbers' 3rd break-in at Watergate, they finally manage to plant the bugs in O'Brien's office, even celebrating with champagne and their usual jabs at John F. Kennedy. When Howard Hunt and Gordon Liddy go to see John Dean, however, they find out the only bug that DOES work is O'Brien's secretary talking about her hairdo, since all the others were defects.
• How We Got Here: The first episode begins with the Plumbers' second attempt to break into the DNC office at the Watergate in 1972. Then the series jumps back over a year to Hunt and Liddy meeting and forming the Plumbers in 1971.
• Hourglass Plot: Hunt's two most prominent children, Saint John and Lisa, switch roles by the end of the series. Lisa is introduced as an unbalanced and irresponsible troublemaker, while Saint John is the earnest son trying to make good. By the end, Lisa has become the voice of responsibility to her father and support for her brothers, while Saint John has become a pill-popping mess.
• I Want You to Meet an Old Friend of Mine: Krumholtz and Harrelson previously worked together on Scorched.
• In Medias Res: The Fake Action Prologue is the failed second break-in of the Watergate Hotel, which is shown again and in context during Episode 3.
• Jock Dad, Nerd Son: Hunt has a hippie elder son and hippie daughter.
• Killed Mid-Sentence: In episode 4, Dot is spilling the beans about the Kennedy assassination to a reporter on a plane. She says "The truth is, Howard was in a—", and the plane goes into a dive. It proceeds to crash, offscreen.
• Logo Joke: Episodes open and close with what appears to be the very first HBO logo. Home Box Office launched in November 1972, around the time the events dramatized in this series took place.
• Married to the Job: Howard Hunt. His older son has a band but Howard ignores an invitation to see them play. He is surprised to find out that his younger son has gotten very good at the piano. And in episode 3, he declines to accompany his wife and two of his children on a family vacation to Paris, preferring to stay in Washington so he can burglarize the Watergate again—which leads to disaster.
• Match Cut: A series of match cuts in episode 4 show Dorothy Hunt in various different outfits in various different locales, as she crosses the country doling out cash to various members of the Watergate team.
• My Greatest Failure: Hunt is haunted by the memory of the Bay of Pigs, a CIA-supervised attempt to overthrow Castro that ended in a humiliating fiasco and wrecked his career in the CIA. When his better instincts briefly prevail and he says he won't go back for another Watergate break-in, Liddy goads him into agreeing by reminding him of the Bay of Pigs, of how Kennedy betrayed him and his superiors like CIA Director Angleton left him holding the bag.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Or Nice Job Fixing It, Villain, depending on your perspective. During his "The Reason You Suck" Speech to Liddy at the end of the last episode, Hunt points out that the government dropped all charges against Daniel Ellsberg, because of the two of them. All their buffoonery, and specifically their job of breaking into the psychiatrist's office, tainted the prosecution.
• No Honor Among Thieves: Dorothy Hunt ridicules Liddy for "this honor among thieves nonsense" when Liddy refuses to cooperate on a potential tell-all book about the Watergate break-in. On Election Night 1972, a pissed-off Dorothy tells her husband that Nixon won't lift a finger to help them, because, with his second term secured, he no longer has to.
• Only Sane Man: Only Sane Woman in the person of Dorothy "Dot" Hunt, who seems to regard her husband as something of a joke. Dorothy, herself a veteran CIA agent, also sees through all the Project Gemstone stunts as ridiculous, describing them as "high risk, low reward."
  • In episode 3, Dot points out that all of Howard and Gordon Liddy's stunts are entirely pointless, that Nixon is going to win reelection with ease so there is no need for all of their comic skullduggery. Nixon won every state save for Massachusetts, but Hunt and Liddy's stupidity wound up driving him from office less than halfway through his second term.
  • Dot also observes that the Watergate burglaries are starting to smell like the Bay of Pigs, the fiasco that wrecked Hunt's CIA career. Hunt almost takes this advice, but Liddy convinces him to go back to the Watergate once more, and this time ends in disaster.
  • Howard's White House contacts figure out that Dorothy is a lot smarter than he is, so she is the one that they deal with when it comes to the cash payoffs.
• Pet the Dog:
  • Liddy keeps himself busy in prison by helping several wrongly convicted inmates file their appeals. He also petitions to enable a Jewish inmate to obtain kosher meals, though he ruins the moment by bursting into a Nazi ballad.
  • Hunt genuinely loves Dot and is utterly devastated when in episode 4 she reveals she intends to divorce him.
• Pop-Cultural Osmosis Failure: When Hunt learns that he and Liddy are the only Plumbers left in their prison, he makes a reference to "Vladimir and Estrogan" of Waiting for Godot. A confused Liddy asks, "Are those Russkies?"
• Purely Aesthetic Glasses: John Dean was not in the habit of wearing glasses, but he wore them for his Senate testimony to look more serious. At the end, when Dean is striding out to give a lecture to a big audience, he has to be reminded to put his glasses on.
• Reality Is Unrealistic: Both Theroux and Harrelson match the cadence and tone of Liddy and Hunt. See William F. Buckley's interviews with the two on Firing Line.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Hunt to Liddy at the end of the last episode, as they sit in a shared jail cell. Hunt, who has decided to cooperate with the Senate committee and has had enough of Liddy's bullshit, finally lets him have it with both barrels.
  Hunt: You, are not some elite Nazi stormtrooper, Gordon! You are just a failed FBI agent, a failed politician, and a failed spy! You know why Watergate went sideways? Because you are so full of shit, Gordon, that it is dripping out of your ears!
• Retired Badass: How both Gordon Liddy and Howard Hunt view themselves. Liddy's mustache and loud '70s clothing greatly contrast with the conservative, clean-cut image of Hoover's FBI. Liddy wants to use lie detectors, which Special Agent Mark Felt tells him the Bureau no longer uses. Hunt resents Kennedy for not supporting the Bay of Pigs invasion, and writes novels to escape his boring job in public relations.
• Running Gag:
  • Gordon Liddy's weird Nazi fetish. Liddy would like to name their special ops group "Project ODESSA" after the operation that smuggled ex-Nazis to South America. During a meeting with Mark Felt, he references Night and Fog. When he and Hunt are flying back east after breaking into an office, Liddy asks a stewardess for a beer—"anything German." When Howard and Dorothy pay a visit to the Liddy home, Gordon entertains them by playing Hitler speeches on the record player, much to Dorothy's horror. When swearing, he's prone to snapping, "Scheisse!" During the last episode, Liddy sings a Hitler anthem and does the Nazi salute, which some of the prisoners do in return.
  • Liddy threatening to kill people with pencils. He's introduced showing a secretary how to defend herself against an attacker using a pencil. Several times, when furious, he reveals that he's holding a pencil in a stabbing grip in his fist. When Hunt and Liddy face off, Hunt snarks that the prison has no pencils with which Liddy can kill him.
  • Liddy's neighbors keep egging his house.
• Scandalgate: Hunt and Liddy were co-conspirators in the Trope Maker, breaking into the Watergate building and starting a gigantic political scandal.
• Serious Business: After Liddy's house gets egged, he runs upstairs, gets a gun, climbs out the second-story window, and chases down the culprits.
• Shameful Strip: When Hunt and Liddy have to strip and spread their cheeks for a body cavity search upon reporting to prison. Liddy the freak is not actually shamed at all, but Hunt clearly is.
  Hunt: This reminds me of my frat days at Brown.
  Guard: Shut the fuck up!
• Shout-Out: The phone call Hunt receives from Bob Woodward in episode 4 contains the exact same dialogue, played the exact same way, as the phone call Woodward makes to Hunt in All the President's Men, except this time we're seeing it from Hunt's perspective instead of Woodward's. And to make it even better, Woodward's voice cameo is played by an uncredited Robert Redford, who of course played Woodward in the film.
• The Show of the Books: Based on Egil "Bud" Krogh and Matthew Krogh's memoir Integrity: Good People, Bad Choices, and Life Lessons from the White House.
• Shown Their Work: Liddy did indeed become an occasional actor once released from prison, with a recurring role on Miami Vice as well as appearances on Airwolf, MacGyver and nearly a hundred other movies and TV show episodes. He would also become a popular public speaker, radio talk show host and author. After prison, Hunt would go back to a successful writing career and remarry, having two more children. Both men would die millionaires.
• Small Name, Big Ego: Both Liddy and Hunt think that they are heroic spies valiantly protecting America from communism and are valued by Nixon and his administration. In reality, they are a pair of incompetent crooks whom Nixon and his reelection committee view as expendable idiots and the only thing they are protecting is Richard Nixon's political career, which they ironically end up destroying. Hunt eventually figures this out, but Liddy, being the delusional fool he is, still thinks he's a big shot all the way to the end.
• Soul-Crushing Desk Job: The story begins with Hunt, once a CIA agent who was canned, working for a PR firm called Mullen & Co. He's depressed about it.
• Stealing from the Hotel: When Liddy realizes that he'll soon be under investigation for burglarizing the DNC headquarters at the Watergate, he attempts to find and dispose of the little Watergate soaps he brought back home.
• Stealth Insult: Fran Liddy manages to do this to herself while talking about how she and Gordon got married, after Gordon the creepy semi-Nazi praises her "Celtic and Teutonic genes."
  Fran: Lineage is very important to Gordon. Even more so than intelligence!
  • When Liddy the idiot starts babbling JFK conspiracy theories, Hunt says "Gordon, I think you're a far smarter man than anyone gives you credit for."
• Stupid Crooks: The main thrust of the series is to highlight and satirize how incompetently the nation's biggest political scandal was conceived, executed, and covered up.
  • The series opens by showing that they had to abort a burglary attempt because their locksmith forgot to bring the right tools. It then reveals that this was their second attempt.
  • When snooping into the doctor's office, the Cubans accidentally trash the place and leave a blatantly obvious cover-up. Liddy points out that junkies looking to steal drugs don't bring drugs with them and leave them behind.
  • Hunt and Liddy get a CIA camera for use when scouting Dr. Fielding's office. They leave the film in the camera when returning it, so at the end of Episode 1, the CIA has photos of the two of them on their absurd recon mission.
  • The gang's first attempt to break into the Watergate goes wrong, and they get locked into the conference room they were using as a staging area. Hunt and one of the Cubans have to hide in a closet all night; Hunt pees in a whiskey bottle.
  • Liddy makes the questionable decision to shoot out a light bulb in an alley the group plans to hide out in near the DNC headquarters. He misses repeatedly, forcing his comrades to lift him up on their shoulders so he can get a closer shot.
  • When they finally make it into the Watergate, everything works perfectly, and they plant the bugs and get out—except that only one of McCord's several bugs works, and that one only gets a secretary talking about her hairdo. Liddy and Hunt are humiliated.
  • The group is forced to go back a fourth time, even though their handlers think that this is only their second attempt, and almost immediately get caught because of Frank Willis finding the lock on the door from the underground parking garage suspiciously taped open again, despite initially removing it prior to his current discovery, and subsequently calling the police afterwards.
• This Is a Work of Fiction: Played for a gag in the disclaimer at the end of episodes.
  "This program is a dramatization inspired by true events. Some of the events, characters and dialogue have been fictionalized, modified or composited for dramatic purposes. But Richard Nixon definitely resigned from the Presidency in disgrace.
• Unfortunate Names: SIU, or Special Intelligence Unit, the organization's full name, is noted by Howard as making him and Nixon's cronies sound mentally disabled, which Bud Krogh immediately realizes the poor name choice. When it's renamed The Plumbers, Bud approves and it remains that way for the rest of the series until Nixon's resignation.
• Upper-Class Equestrian: Hunt's wife rides horses. The Hunts live in a nice home and drive nice vehicles in a nice neighborhood.
• Vertigo Effect: Used for a tense moment in the last episode when Liddy, in a phone booth, threatens John Dean by saying that everyone in the White House has bigger criminal exposure than he does.
• Victory Sex: Hunt comes home from the scout of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office and has sex with his wife. Evidently their sex life hasn't been so great lately, because after they've climaxed and he tells her that "the LA operation was a success," Dot says "That explains it."
• Who Shot JFK?: Hunt is increasingly implied to have been involved in the JFK assassination. Hunt tells Liddy that on the day of the assassination, he was in DC having lunch with his wife, "as I told the Warren Commission." In episode 4, Hunt demands that the White House protect him, saying that he knows about "a certain event in Dallas." At the end of her interview, Dorothy seems to be about to spill the beans on Hunt's role in the assassination, but does not get to finish. In episode 5, Frank Sturges tells Howard to keep his mouth shut about the "trip to Dallas."
• Wig, Dress, Accent: Hunt and Liddy have a habit of putting on ridiculous wigs for their secret missions. In episode 2, Edwina Beard cackles in disbelief at the stupid wig Hunt is wearing while talking to her mother, saying "It isn't even on right!"
• Women Are Wiser:
  • Dorothy has a better grasp of the situation than Howard and manages most of the hush money payments to the Cuban burglars. Once Dorothy is killed, Howard's inability to understand that the White House is going to scapegoat him proves to be his downfall.
  • Howard's other daughter Kevan also contrasts Howard's situation with John Dean's. She states Dean has clearly listened to his wife and manages to turn whistleblower and then later a celebrity pundit.

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