Stream It Or Skip It: ‘White House Plumbers’ On HBO, A Comedic Take On The Bumbling Team Behind The Watergate Break-In

If you have any sense of the history of the Watergate scandal, especially the personalities of the people who actually caught breaking into the DNC offices in June, 1972, you know that there is a lot of comedy to mine there. Hell, G. Gordon Liddy alone could be the main character in a ’70s-style family sitcom. But how do you make a satire out of real people who are already self-parodies? Two writers and the showrunner of Veep took on that challenge.

WHITE HOUSE PLUMBERS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: “The following is based on a true story. No names have been changed to protect the innocent, because nearly everyone was found guilty.” Then we see a shot of the exterior of an office building, identified as the “Watergate Office Building.”

The Gist: The group heads to the offices of the Democratic National Committee, ready to trash the place. But the lock picks one of the team brought doesn’t do the job. A graphic says that this was the second of four tries this group attempted before finally breaking in (and getting caught).

About a year earlier, we see E. Howard Hunt (Woody Harrelson) working at a PR firm after retiring from the CIA. He’s not exactly killing it. At home, where his wife Dorothy (Lena Headey), a former CIA asset reluctantly being a housewife and mom, tells him he has a phone call. It’s from Egil Krogh (Rich Sommer), a special advisor to the Nixon White House. He’s starting a Special Investigative Unit to investigate Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers — which gave a pessimistic view of the Vietnam War — to the press. He pairs Hunt up with a mustachioed former FBI agent named G. Gordon Liddy (Justin Theroux). Both alpha males think they’re in charge, but Krogh tells them they report to him.

Hunt is just happy he’s back in the game, and he brags to his kids. Liddy thinks he deserves to be in this position, and seems to use German and Nazi propaganda and history as insipiration.

In their first operation, they go to Los Angeles in costume — they look like leisure-suit-clad tourists — and Hunt charms the cleaning lady at the office of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist to let them in. After getting confirmation that Ellsberg is indeed a patient, they get cocky and call themselves “The Plumbers,” because they stop leaks. Krogh sends them back out to get a picture of Ellsberg’s file; to not implicate the two men on the payroll, Hunt brings on a team of three he knew during is CIA days who will break in for nothing.

The operation doesn’t exactly go well: the team trashes the places instead of leaving without a trace, and they spread pills everywhere to think a junkie brought in. Liddy is doubtful, but somehow the police come to the same conclusion. The file wasn’t there, which confirms it was moved.

Instead of getting reamed, the pair get promoted, in a way. White House counsel John Dean (Domnhall Gleeson) takes over and tells them they’ll be working for the Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP), leading a team that will ensure Nixon gets reelected.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of?: Because it’s related to the Watergate scandal, the most immediate analogue is Gaslit, though this comes from a bit of a different perspective. For a more straightforward history lesson, check out the documentary Watergate: High Crimes at the White House on Paramount+.

Our Take: White House Plumbers is based on a book Egil Krogh wrote with his son about his part in Watergate; it was created by Alex Gregory and Peter Huyck, with fellow EP David Mandel directing. Gregory and Huyck worked for Mandel when he was the showrunner of Veep‘s last four seasons. It’s important to note that because the trio feels like it’s taking a Veep-style approach to the story of how Hunt and Liddy found themselves breaking into the DNC headquarters and how their hubris and relative incompetence got them caught.

There are moments when the show feels very Veep-like, like when Liddy thinks that good dinner party music is playing Hitler’s speeches on his record player, all the while brandishing a gun to threaten neighborhood kids egging his house.

But what the series doesn’t really account for is just how silly Hunt and Liddy were all on their own. Harrelson is excellent as Hunt, who is all conservative bluster despite the fact that his family life is full of messy liberal drama. Theroux, though, is the standout as Liddy. We usually don’t like it when an actor does an impression of a well-known person, but Theroux so thoroughly inhabits Liddy’s persona that we could forgive the vocal impression that he used.

The two of them made a team that was much less competent than either thought they were, and the most effective and funny parts of the story will come from that. Where we’re not sure is the purpose of showing Hunt’s crazy family life, or the fact that Liddy appreciates the Germanic heritage of his wife Fran (Judy Greer) more than her intelligence.

Anyone expecting big, bawdy laughs like we got on Veep, especially when Julia Louis-Dreyfus went on an f-bomb run, will be disappointed. White House Plumbers isn’t trying to skewer the system from within by showing how feckless even people in the most powerful positions are. The show is simply enhancing what has already been apparent for the last half-century: That the break-in that eventually brought down a president wasn’t exactly the slickest heist ever pulled. And that’s fine with us.

Sex and Skin: None in the first episode.

Parting Shot: At CIA headquarters in Langley, two agents develop the film that Hunt and Liddy inexplicably left in the camera they borrowed. Of course, you see the two of them in their wigs and leisure suits, posing for pictures around the office of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist.

Sleeper Star: We have yet to see Kiernan Shipka as Hunt’s oldest daughter Kevan; given just how much against his values the rest of his kids seem to be, we’re curious to see what kind of headaches Kevan will give him.

Most Pilot-y Line: Hunt sees Ellsberg on the cover of Time magazine and asks his son John (Liam James), “How did this leftist propaganda end up in my house?” He replies with the truth: “We subscribe.”

Our Call: STREAM IT. While sometimes White House Plumbers finds it hard to satirize what is already ridiculous at face value, it still gets off some big laughs and is bolstered by the performances of Harrelson and Theroux.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.