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Netflix's Death by Lightning is a historical dramatic comedy, or maybe comedic drama, about the brief presidency and subsequent assassination of President James Garfield.
And it's not quite the stuffy stately take that you and your dad are probably expecting.
It pits actor Michael Shannon as Garfield against a squirrely Matthew McFadden as Charles Guiteau, the disgruntled would-be political operative who shot him.
Toss in a brace of white middle-aged actors in great big bushy beards and sideburns Shea Wiggum, Nick Offerman, Bradley Whitford and you got yourself a show.
I'm Glenn Weldon, and today we're talking about death by lightning on Pop Culture.
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Joining me today is NPR Culture Desk correspondent Chloe Veltman.
Hey, Chloe.
Hello, Glenn.
Thanks for having me.
Of course.
Also with us is Kristen Meinzer.
She co-hosts The Nightly on Hatch+.
Hey, Kristen.
Hey, excited to be back.
Excited to have you.
Death by Lightning stars Michael Shannon as James Garfield, a salt-of-the-earth Ohio congressman who reluctantly accepts the nomination for president and ekes out a surprising win.
He makes it through despite the wishes of party bosses representing different factions.
They're led by Shea Whigham and Bradley Whitford.
Nick Offerman shows up as a drunk bluff sausage-obsessed Chester Arthur Garfield's vice president.
And you got pop culture happy hour favorite Betty Gilpin on hand as Garfield's wife Lucretia.
Over the course of the four-episode series, a dishonest and self-aggrandizing schemer named Charles Gatteau doggedly attempts to worm his way into the halls of power.
He's played by Matthew McFadden.
Historical spoiler, does not go well.
Death by Lightning is streaming on Netflix.
Kristen, what'd you make of it?
Okay, I have to say full disclosure first.
I just happen to be a sucker for these kinds of slick, modern presidential biopics.
So take what I say, knowing that.
So here's the deal.
I really enjoyed this.
I thought it delivered.
It gave the excitement of bloody, bloody Andrew Jackson, the sincerity of John Adams, the sense of humor of Abraham Lincoln.
Vampire hunter had all these things I really love in these kinds of retellings.
And I'm sure some people are going to take issue with the fact that Garfield is so saintly.
He's essentially Ted Lasso in this.
We'll talk, yeah.
You know Charles Guiteau.
He gives the ick so well.
Through the whole.
I really enjoyed both of these characters and I also enjoyed learning more about Garfield.
What I knew about him was mostly about how his life ended.
I learned a little bit more about what platform he had, and it inspired me also this series to learn more about the truth of who he actually was in real life.
Spoiler, he may not have been as perfect as the show tells us.
In fact, he may have even canoodled with the same married woman that his biggest political rival did in real life.
So not covered in the show.
Not covered in the show, but you dug it.
OK, Chloe, you're a little bit more mixed, I gather.
Yeah, yeah.
I agree with Kristen.
For me, the most amazing thing was getting to know about this president who to many people is just a footnote, I guess in the ranks of American presidency.
That for me was the most powerful thing.
I was walking through Golden Gate Park here in San Francisco, where I have walked and run and cycled for 25 years, very frequently since I lived in this city.
And it wasn't until this week, having watched the show, that I noticed that There's a massive bronze statue of Garfield.
You know, it's amazing.
It's like I'm seeing this person for the first time.
And what a powerful character.
There's a lot of good things about this series.
Some of the settings, for example, inside the Republican National Convention with its majesty.
And there's a wonderful women's boxing match in a theatre.
I just really liked these massive crowd scenes, honestly, with lots of characters.
And you realise how... intensely close people were physically in their lives then.
There was no separation.
People in power and all the lower class people all mixing it up together.
But I don't know.
I mean, I think for me the chief issue is the story of Garfield, and Guiteau is a bit of a non-starter.
Guiteau is just not really fundamentally that interesting a character.
He's a boob, somebody who didn't have a lot going for him.
And while I do think Matthew McFadden, who is one of my very, very favourite actors we share the same birthday and I've followed his career for years, ever since we used to work for the same theatre company in London.
This is an actor who can do anything, and he does a lot with essentially a role that is, you know, not that interesting.
And the writing too tries to make more and more and more of this character.
But the real character is Garfield, and he's very bland, no matter what.
What Michael Shannon does, this character just sort of seems quite nothing.
And I was just found myself wishing I could have the real story of Garfield, more of that and less emphasis on, you know, the relationship that really didn't actually exist too much in real life between these two men.
OK well, in the tug of war between Team Kristen and Team Chloe, I'm kind of more on Team Chloe's side.
I like this.
This went down easy.
Maybe because it's good.
Maybe because I'm becoming my dad.
You know, why not both?
My favorite thing is the political machinations, which I thought were presented pretty nimbly.
You got Bradley Whitford on the sidelines making all these political calculations.
So there was a definite West Wing with sideburns vibe that it's giving off.
And I'm here for that.
And this cast, you can't ding this cast.
You can bounce a quarter off this cast.
Shea Whigham shows up.
Whenever Shea Whigham shows up, I'm happy.
I think if you looked at his script, his every stage direction would be chortles into his beard, because that's all he really does at the show.
And there's a lot of hair acting in this whole thing, too.
There's a lot of hair.
The facial hair alone, the hair and makeup budget, my God.
And you got Betty Gilpin.
And the script does try to give Betty Gilpin more to do than be the long-suffering wife.
It doesn't entirely succeed, but it tries.
And, you know, it's a law of the universe around here.
Annie Gilpin is good Gilpin.
Yeah. even when she shows up at the end in a gray Party City wig.
I mean, where was the makeup budget then?
Where was the hair and makeup budget then?
And I didn't know that my life was lacking seeing Nick Offerman like stumbling around a hall shouting music, fighting sausages.
Music, fighting, sausages!
That happens, and I was happy.
But I will say that kind of touches on the thing that challenged me about this show, which is from the first 45 minutes of the first episode or so.
You think there's going to be a light comic touch right threaded through every single scene of this thing.
It's going to be part of it, but that comedy, that humor drops out for long stretches of time.
It does kick back in.
But the problem there, as chloe mentioned, is that when it's not doing the comedy, its approach to history is to flatten things into good guys and bad guys and we are running right up to the edge of hagiography with this portrait of garfield.
I haven't checked if there's a james garfield Reddit.
James Garfield stands on there.
I'm sure there is now.
I mean, if you're out there and you got I heart Jimmy G on your butt, then this is the show you've been waiting for.
I mean, that's a tattoo that I want, though.
I'm so impressed with this man, honestly, because I read the book that the series is based on.
See, that's it.
This show and probably the book haven't read the book probably wants you to think of this man as a capital G, capital M, great man of history.
That's the thing that I thought was flat about the show.
You felt like he was just painted as so good that he didn't seem human.
Is that what you mean, Glenn?
I thought he was painted as so good that he didn't seem interesting.
This is one of the best actors of our age.
And it was just like, you know what reaction he's going to have to anything when the scene starts.
And he has that reaction because that's how a great metaphysicist would react.
Yeah.
I mean, I will give you this.
For a lot of the series.
For like the first half, his biggest flaw is that he hasn't finished building a table or something like that.
That's like the biggest flaw he has.
But-
It does become more nuanced as we go along.
We do see his daughter takes him aside and says, what's up with your anti-racism?
It doesn't apply to Chinese people.
Yeah, that's true.
Let's talk about some of your flaws here.
But I will say this.
I agree with both of you, Glenn and Chloe, that I think it would have made him a richer, more interesting character if we did dig into more of his other flaws.
He wasn't a great husband, for example.
And he wasn't as perfect as the show makes him out to be.
Chloe, I'm sure you can speak to this more having read the book.
He was not a perfect man and He wasn't a perfect man.
But I think that you can create drama without necessarily dwelling a lot on the imperfectitudes of this character.
I mean, yes, you can get into that.
But I think the problem fundamentally is that the dramatic relationship in this series exists between Garfield and his assassin.
There actually, in reality, is no real relationship there.
The two actually barely meet.
Garfield does not register Garfield.
Guiteau very much at all in his life, but for Guiteau, Garfield is huge.
The real drama and I wish there had been more of this is between Garfield and his many, many adversaries in politics.
The real, shall we say, villain of Garfield's life and also of the series, I think, is the New.
You know, of all the hair in the series has the best hair.
That little kind of weird kiss curl thing he has in the middle.
That's Shea Whigham, yep.
Yeah, Shea Whigham.
So, Whigham, Whigham!
Yes!
So, you know, I wanted more of that because to me that's where the drama truly lies.
And I found myself thinking, as I think Michael Shannon did in the New York Times when he spoke about this series.
Shannon said had Garfield been able to serve out his term or had a second term, we could be living in an entirely different present, based on what he started, what his vision was, his dream for the country.
Perhaps it would be less divided.
And, you know, it did get me thinking, what if this series had actually gone down that road?
You know, made it not really so much about Guiteau versus Garfield which I think is a bit of a non-starter, frankly but and been more about well, what would this guy have done actually?
And there'd have been plenty of drama in that, I think.
Chloe, what I'm getting from you is something that I feel when I watch movies like Serendipity or Sleepless in Seattle.
The two protagonists we don't even see together until the last 30 seconds of the movie, and that, for me, can be very frustrating.
So it's not that I don't understand what you're saying Chloe, but I think I was just entertained enough with the acting, the showmanship, the theatrics and
You know, the West Wing stuff that you were mentioning, Glenn.
That was good enough for me.
And I really was impressed with Matthew McFadden's ability to give ick.
I've never seen ick done so well.
He's so good at giving ick.
Yeah, he's great.
I want to talk about the characterization of Get To.
I want to drill down on that because it's interesting.
It's good.
But I think it could have been great.
And I do not fault the actor here.
I think it's the show's approach.
Every time we see him, he's a fool, he's a grifter.
That's.
It doesn't matter if his convictions are real or not, because the cynical party bosses reject him.
And I think we are left to maybe decide for ourselves if they reject him because they see right through him, or maybe they see some of themselves in his you know manipulativeness.
But there is a real tonal wobble here because, again, when Garfield's on screen, it's a drama.
When Guiteau's on screen, it's a comedy.
That doesn't deepen or complicate either of their characters.
And I go back and forth with thinking, you know what was wrong with the show?
We didn't get enough Guiteau.
I don't know if that's true with these writers because –
Every time we see him, to the extent he's compelling, he's compelling in just the one way.
You know what you're going to get from him.
Yeah.
I mean, I will say, I agree, though, with Kristen that Mac Fadion's performance is masterful.
I mean, he's so unhinged as Guiteau.
The slightly too long beard that's scruffy, his grubby suits, those moist puppy dog eyes and the way he protectively clutches the valise that he always has with him.
You know, there's this wonderful mixture of madness and also childlike optimism in that performance.
It's very powerful.
It reminds me a little bit of his role in succession, also a very sort of dislikable, icky kind of a character, also with those sorts of moist eyes and those.
The striviness of him, you know, is very, very similar.
I cannot think of an actor who could try to clothe this rather, you know, non-entity of a character frankly, and make him something powerful, and I mean for me.
He held my attention and did the most that you could possibly do with it.
Yeah Now, the odd thing about this series is it's four episodes long, so it doesn't really have the Netflix bloat, but its focus is not where I thought it was going to be.
If you know anything about Garfield, besides the fact that whenever his name is mentioned on the Internet, people make lasagna and Monday jokes, it's that he did not die until months after he was shot.
And the historical narrative that has arisen around this whether or not it's true is that Dr Willard Bliss went rooting around in the body for the bullet with unsterilized instruments and maybe that's what killed him.
His finger.
Yeah.
His fingers.
Yeah, his filthy bare hands.
Right.
That is like the Jeopardy clue about Garfield.
That's the only thing people really know.
And I kind of thought, given that, we would spend a lot of time in those months.
But we don't.
You see that the actor Jelko Ivanik is playing him.
And he's one of those guys who tends to play bad guys.
And whenever he shows up, you're like, oh, here it comes.
And it doesn't really ever come.
And they also cast...
Kyle Soller from Andor as Robert Todd Lincoln.
And to my memory, that doesn't have any dialogue.
So I thought we were going to spend a lot more time in this kind of medical malpractice area.
And it kind of zips by in a few minutes.
And I will say that, Glenn, that I found that part of the book hard to read.
I found it a little dull, honestly.
It's all about the jostling of different doctors, jostling for power and all the different medical ideas of the day.
You know, I didn't find that material so very compelling.
But of course you could create a really interesting show around medical practice of Victorian times and looking forward to what's going on today, for example.
Either debugging the myth or fully... bunking it.
You're like just telling us what actually happened.
Yeah.
I mean, I have to say, I know a lot about his death.
I've read a lot about it.
I've listened to a lot of podcasts about it.
Really gross.
If you have a delicate stomach, I suggest don't read too many details about some of the things they did to him and what his body was doing during these last two months.
But I really appreciated that the show was went beyond that, because I do think that there are a lot of people like me who it's like that's all they know about him.
And for me, I really appreciated having the door open to who he was as a person, not just who he was on his deathbed.
And, like I said earlier, it did entice me to read more about his life not on his deathbed and learn more about his marriage, learn more about his politics and so on.
So I appreciate that the show did that for me.
I already kind of alluded to this, but there's one big thing for me that I love, that is different to how politics is done today, and the fact that you know you can physically rub shoulders with celebrities like big politicians and presidents.
Even in that era they didn't have the security that anybody who's even vaguely renowned has today, and i find that very, very interesting.
But you know, that's very, very different to the times we live in today, where you know the idea that you could get within i don't know many many, many feet of the president of usa, Unless you were in his inner circle.
That's very different now.
It is.
All right.
Well, we want to know what you think about this show.
Are you on Team Chloe?
Are you on Team Kristen?
Or are you somewhere in the wishy-washy middle?
Like Team Glenn.
We are on Facebook and Letterboxd.
That brings us to the end of our show.
Kristen Meinzer, Chloe Veltman, thank you so much for being here.
Thank you.
Thanks so much, Glenn.
And just a reminder that signing up for Pop Culture Happy Hour Plus is a great way to support our show and public radio.
And you get to listen to all of our episodes sponsor-free.
So please go find out more at plus.npr.org slash happyhourplus. or visit the link in our show notes.
This episode was produced by Carly Rubin and Mike Katzeff and edited by our showrunner, Jessica Ritti, and Hello Come In provides our theme music.
Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR.
I'm Glenn Wilden, and we'll see you all next time.
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