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This is another retelling of the Watergate scandal from a different perspective; Martha Mitchell's . Martha Mitchell was the wife of John Mitchell, the Attorney General for Richard Nixon. This eight episode series does tell the story of a few other key players in the Watergate story, John Dean and his girlfriend, Mo Kane, who later became his wife, and Frank Willis, the security guard that discovered the break-in at the Democratic Headquarters.
Martha Mitchell was a gregarious, Southern Belle from Arkansas that had an opinion about everything who loved talking to reporters. She was famous for making late-night phone calls to reporters and never apologized about the hour in which she called nor what she said when she made these calls. Martha herself was significant because her husband John Mitchell was personally tasked by Nixon to come up with a covert intelligence operation against the democrats for his re-election campaign and she was able to easily notice documents her husband had regarding bugging and other secretive things. James McCord, one of the burglars caught, was former CIA and was part of Martha's protective detail.
What is more to learn from this story? Watergate, for crying out loud? Hasn't it been milked to death enough? I particularly enjoyed those we haven't heard from that much (or at least, I haven't); Martha Mitchell, of course, G. Gordon Liddy(what a character), John Mitchell himself, and John Dean on certain aspects, was kinda surprising to hear about. I'm on the fence if Dean is as guilty as the rest of the guilty parties of Watergate. During his testimony for Congress, he seemed so surrounded and practically bullied into everything he did that he was guilty for, but after this telling of the Watergate tale, he also seemed very eager to please Richard Nixon in anything he could do and based on that alone, how could he be innocent? To answer my own question, actually, John Dean was so eager to prove himself to the President that they gave him the task of hiring the burglars of Watergate including Liddy and he couldn't refuse because at that particular meeting he thought he was going to be fired and instead he was given this job and at first started to refuse when he realized how covert and potentially illegal it was, but then he quickly spoke up,'I know the perfect guy for the job'. Sooo many different things to learn, and John Mitchell's cheating on Martha.
I know, I know, its just one side of the story. It's just a short series. Who's saying this is even true? It's entertainment, for crying out loud! But it's the fact that so much of what Martha was saying back then turned out to be true that makes us wonder just how much more of this story is true from the other people's stories?
Probably the crescendo of the drama of the series comes in the third episode,King George, in which the break in has happened while John and Martha are in California for some campaign events and of course, as the story goes, everything gets messed up, as McCord is arrested. In order to keep Martha Mitchell from noticing McCord's picture on television or in the newspapers, John Michell restricts Martha from leaving her hotel room with some very abrasive security guards that physically kept her from leaving her room and drugged her for days while her husband left for Washington to help with the coverup. For a while afterwards, Martha then becomes addicted to her drugs even though they are prescribed to her from a doctor and she becomes a bit of a drinker as well. Until she find out about John's cheating with his secretary from CREEP, and Martha sobers up quickly and goes on the offensive with the press, even though she was mostly defending her husband.
The rest of the story, is unfortunately sad for Martha yet predictable. She divorces John Mitchell and dies a few years later due to cancer. At her funeral, an anonymous fan donates a huge spray of flowers that spells out 'Martha Was Right'.
