IR TV Review: DEATH BY LIGHTNING [Netflix]
The aspect of a forgotten time (or a forgotten president) is an interesting diatribe since a hundred years from now, the strafed experience we are seeing now might be looked at through a completely different lens. With "Death By Lightning" adapted from the book "Death Of The Republic", showrunner Mike Makowsky who also made the film "Bad Education" creates an interesting parallel story to both certain aspects of modern day but also odes to Abraham Lincoln which occurred just a decade before this is set. James Garfield, played with regal restraint with pockets of fire by Michael Shannon is an unwarranted president. He became the party's nominee through a need for something else and a backlash against the corruption which is many ways becomes personified by his would-be and eventual vice president Chester A. Arthur (played by a knowing Nick Offerman).
Offerman plays a battered buffoon with pain but also a nihilistic streak which is an interesting angle. Shea Whigham plays the more conniving Senator Conkling. It is almost a King John/Sheriff Of Nottingham set up. That alone is intriguing but then setting into play Matthew McFayden as the wanton Charles Guiteau is the slice. Granted there is some dramatic license taken but the tone that is taken makes certain perceptions that could be brought to bear here (save the medical barbarity). Certain changes could have altered the trajectory but as the powerful Betty Gilpin as Lucretia Garfield says, no one will remember anything. It will be a footnote and hopefully a nice one. It is an intriguing irony since everything in the moment that we experience tends to seem immediate...and yet what happened in many ways in the late 1800s might have seemed just as dire if not more.
Garfield as Shannon plays him is unwanted hero who would like to do something but also is practical enough to know what he is up against (i.e. corruption and special interests). The way he works against Offerman as Arthur in later scenes strengthens this point. Bradley Whitford plays a defeated Senator James Blaine but even his perspectives allow for a separation of choices. The series never feels slow and at four episodes is very brisk but tells the story effectively. MacFayden is the quiet catalyst. His desperation turns into mania which could bely a dark psyche that was obviously below but it was not something put in check in those days. Also in those days, a regular man could get very close to the President.
In one of the smaller sequences, Garfield welcomes the regular men coming to speak to him considering only telegram was really possible at that time beyond mail. The outcome of the proceedings are both a result of their own countenance but also the whim of fate. Interestingly enough the act structure floats in a way like "Task" did with the final episode serving as a coda in many aspects, speaking to the fact that everything is not instantaneous. Reflection for Garfield and Guiteau came afterwards in watching those around them while the others that survived mostly just vanished into the mist. Such ironically is the case of history. But "Death By Lightning" creates a compelling story with human characters, not trying to be cinematic or grand but simply people who were elevated for a short time with a story that is universal in certain ways all throughout history. A-
By Tim Wassberg
