Summary
More hilarious absurdity ensues in a second episode that attempts to justify why the Nixon administration would have use of two idiots like Liddy and Hunt.
This recap of White House Plumbers Episode 2, “Please Destroy This, Huh?”, contains spoilers.
White House Plumbers is based on a true story, but it’s obviously not intended to be an accurate chronicle of the Nixon administration’s various misdeeds. It’s about those things, sure, but it’s much more concerned with the exaggerated affections of those involved.
Under particular scrutiny is G. Gordon Liddy. Last week, in the premiere, we had his penchant for playing Hitler speeches at family dinners. Here in “Please Destroy This, Huh?” he deploys another of his party tricks. Holding his palm over an open flame of a candle, he proves his commitment to a couple of prostitutes that he and Howard Hunt want to seduce prominent liberals.
Apparently, Liddy really did this. He’s the type to make a big deal out of having done so. But there’s still something hysterically over the top about the way White House Plumbers depicts it that speaks to the show’s essential satirical character.
This is a story about absolute idiots doing absolutely idiotic things, and a flailing, corrupt establishment realizing it has to stoop to the same level.
White House Plumbers Episode 2 Recap
This is what “Please Destroy This, Huh?” is keen to depict. Dean Mitchell, who, lest we forget, is the U.S. Attorney General, thinks Liddy and Hunt – though especially Liddy – are ridiculous. Liddy’s latest pitch, in the January of 1972, is to kidnap and assassinate far-left agitators to derail the Democratic campaign. Mitchell can’t believe what he’s hearing.
Who is Dita Beard?
But the administration is in so much disarray that these outside-the-box solutions become more viable. This week, we’re introduced to Dita Beard, an International Telephone and Telegraph lobbyist who, in the cold open, types up a memo revealing Mitchell had promised the ITT a favorable outcome in an antitrust lawsuit in exchange for $400,000 worth of hotel rooms for the Republican National Convention. That’s felony bribery if you’re keeping count. The memo leaks, the scandal develops, and Liddy and Hunt suddenly have another opportunity to make themselves useful in the White House.
Why does Dita Beard testify that the memo is a forgery?
Since nobody can quite decide if Jeb Magruder is being serious about having Liddy assassinate Jack Anderson, the reporter who got a hold of the memo, so Liddy and Hunt instead compel Dita to fake a medical emergency on the eve of her testimony in the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.
Since this is only a temporary measure, Hunt persuades her to question the memo’s authenticity in exchange for a “Christmas bonus” and the repairing of her and her daughter’s reputations among the RNC.
Dita, a hard-line Republic anyway, is happy to oblige.
White House Plumbers Episode 2 Ending Explained
With their success with Beard, Howard and Liddy are approved to carry out Project Opal, aka the bugging of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate Hotel, which is the only acceptable plan put forth under the umbrella of Project Gemstone, which is mostly just Liddy offering to assassinate everyone.
They’re even given a quarter-million in funding to help them put the plan into practice. We all know how it turns out, of course, but it’ll nonetheless be fun watching it go wrong.
You can stream White House Plumbers Episode 2, “Please Destroy This, Huh?”, exclusively on HBO and HBO Max.
