Fridge / 1776

Fridge Brilliance

• The film begins with the entire Continental Congress aligned against John Adams ("Sit Down, John") and ends with the entire Congress aligned against John Dickinson. Pointedly, however, Adams is a whirlwind of obnoxious insistence during the entirety of that song, while Dickinson is standing stock-still after losing the independence vote - much to his great shock. It points to why the outcome turned out that way: Adams spends the whole film tirelessly trying to rally the Congress while Dickinson's style is to sit and wait it out.
• Ben Franklin concludes (along with other delegates such as Lee) that the independence movement is at a standstill because the delegates can't help but link the movement with the "obnoxious and disliked" Adams. Thus, the proposal coming from Lee and Virginia rather than Adams and Massachusetts. Dickinson notes this too, because he opens the independence debate (and spends the entirety of it up til the adjournment to write the Declaration) frantically trying to re-link Adams to the resolution. "It reeks of Adams, Adams, and more Adams!" he declares, and everything he says during that debate (other than a brief appeal to English tradition that ironically includes the Magna Carta) can be seen through the lens of his attempt to keep Adams, rather than the actual cause of independence, at the forefront.
• In "He Plays the Violin", Franklin and Adams waltz with Martha Jefferson. During "Cool, Cool Considerate Men," Dickinson and his allies dance a minuet. The minuet was an older, more established and respectable dance; the waltz, modern and scandalous. Kind of like the respective parties' ideals in congress, eh?