They managed to turn one of the biggest political scandals in American history into a boring travesty. Maybe that's exactly what they wanted. The focus seems to be more to make things appear comedic instead of dramatic. And it's not working for me.

Given how off-putting I find Sean Penn irl and having yet to watch anything starring Julia Roberts that makes me understand why she was so big in the '90s, I didn't come into this with high expectations thinking it'd probably be a one-and-done. My low expectations were consistently surpassed with this becoming a reliably enjoy watch each week. While it felt like this show was sold as starring Penn & Roberts, it's very much an ensemble show and what an ensemble it is, a uniformly strong cast from lead characters to the smaller roles. Penn & Roberts are very good in their roles (I've seen some scathing headlines about Roberts but I thought she was more than fine). Dan Stevens is serviceable and occasionally pretty good in a line delivery. The reliably good Betty Gilpin, Martha Kelly, and Alison Tolman are reliably good with Kelly bringing her deadpan goodness and Tolman, as usual, making a case for her to get more screentime in any project she's a part of. Stevens & Gilpin make their opposites attract relationship work instead of coming off as contrived which could've easily been the case Shea Whigham as Gordon Liddy is chewing up scenery like he's a gd termite, going for broke and sucking the air out of most scenes he's in and which would not work nearly as well in the hands of a different actor and it's a hoot to watch. Get this man an Emmy asap Nat Faxon and Patton Oswald, though normally comedic actors, do well in their handful of appearances (without me expecting a punchline at the end of their dialogue) Chris's Bauer and Messina also bring characteristically good work to screen The actress who played Gale(/Gail?) in the one episode where the FBI agents were sitting in a car trying to intimidate her husband into cooperating was amazing and made the absolute most out of her 3 minutes of screentime Darby Camp was good as the Mitchells' young daughter, making me worry about her future the same way as I did for the daughter from FX's _Fosse/Verdon_ Historical political shows often either collapse on their own sense of self-importance or end up too dry and didactic, the good ones make it feel like you're watching news unfold before your eyes in real time: the sense of opening a newspaper (/twitter/news home page) and getting the drip drip drip of a story piece by piece from different angles, still unsure of the fuller picture, that you're living through history and _Gaslit_ does that and does it well. Framing Watergate through Martha MItchell's story and the romance of John & Mo Dean is an interesting angle to take and it very well might've been a mistake but Roberts is compelling and watchable as Martha and the chemistry between Stevens and Gilpin is good, making the opposites-attract of their relationship believable (and root for-able) and both those things go a long way in making the show work.

It is not marvelous, but it is entertaining and interesting. The first episode is not good but if you give it a chance until second episode it will catch you.

Interesting show with a good cast but by ep 7 I was wondering why it wasn't over already.

It has difficulty finding the balance between a historical narrative and a portrayal of grotesque characters, but it's an interesting look at the structures of corruption from today's perspective. The protagonists have a ridiculous entity, a naive behavior that makes them justify criminality as the only way to cure a society in decline. What is an interesting, representation of the darkest aspects of the human being.