Just As Refreshing as His Cousin Sam's Beer

Most of the early presidents are known for something big: Washington, the great general, was the man for whom the office of Chief Executive was designed. Jefferson was the author of the Declaration of Independence and the president who purchased the Louisiana Territory. Madison was the “father of the Constitution.” Monroe even had his own doctrine. But who the hell was John Adams?

Based on the biography by David McCullough, HBO’s new eight-part miniseries John Adams seeks to answer this question. Beginning with the Boston Massacre and going all the way to the retirement of the first incumbent ever to lose an election, the series seeks to introduce us not only to Adams (Paul Giamatti), his wife Abigail (Laura Linney), and his family, but also to all of the founders of United States, including Ben Franklin (Tom Wilkinson), George Washington (David Morse), Thomas Jefferson (Stephen Dillane), and Columbia’s own Alexander Hamilton (Rufus Sewell). We witness some of the most famous events—including the Boston Massacre and Tea Party—and are taken to key settings of the revolutionary era—like Lexington and Concord and the Court of Louis XVI.

Unlike the middle school textbooks that present the founders as the greatest, most enlightened men in our history or the modern historians who angrily condemn the men who declared independence as self-interested, racist pigs, the series actually deals with the true complexity of these important figures. In one telling instance, Abigail, played convincingly by Linney, not only chides her husband for working with slave-owners like Washington and Jefferson but even confronts the former for his ownership of unpaid laborers. Nevertheless, the series also presents Adams’ surprising conviction that compromising one’s ethics is sometimes necessary to arrive at a desirable end.

John Adams also seeks to reexamine events that have long been accepted as highlights of our founding. The first episode, which deals with the Boston Massacre and Tea Party, doesn’t shy away from showing the vile antics of early American patriots—they torment a group of innocent, feeble redcoats and go on to tar and feather a man who is just serving the monarchy as he has been ordered to do. The series also spends a decent amount of time on the intense debates and political pandering that characterized the sessions of the Continental Congress before the agreement to declare independence as well as some of the diplomatic challenges faced by America’s first international representatives.

The series splits its time more or less between Adams’ political dealings and his family life. The relationship between John and Abigail is very interestingly portrayed. The latter is presented as incredibly knowledgeable, and John seems to be ahead of his time in accepting the wisdom of a woman. Moreover, the two seem to have a real, loving relationship, which is refreshing amid the seemingly unending number of sex scandals that have come out of Washington (or Albany) in the past decade. There is, however, too much melodrama attached to John’s family life—not necessarily by the narrative, but by the very obtrusive score and cinematic style. These two elements overreach in trying to emotionalize the subject, so viewers end up just seeing Hollywood instead. Nevertheless, the juxtaposition of the familial and the political dealings of Adams cleverly allows viewers to witness simultaneously the history of the famous figures and everyday people of the era.

Considering the intense politics of our day, John Adams is certainly an interesting look back at the politics of America’s founding.