John Adams is HBO's newest flawed hero

Acacia O'Connor Editor in Chief

It’s not easy being a founding father. You have to work all the time and be away from your wife and kids, everyone mistakes you for your cooler cousin Samuel, and the French dislike you for trying to mix business with pleasure.

In an ever-so-slightly exaggerated way, this is the story of John Adams as played by Paul Giamatti in the new HBO miniseries, adapted from David McCullough’s popular book by the same title.
As a revolutionary and the second U.S. president, Adams makes an unlikely dramatic hero. He was abroad as a diplomat for much of the Revolutionary War and was ignored by virtually every European ensign he tried to court. In terms of historical flash and action, the lives of George Washington and even Benjamin Franklin would make for better fabric for a great American epic.

But thankfully, the miniseries’ aim is not to wave the red, white and blue until patriotism seeps thickly into our veins. John Adams, like many other HBO shows, takes a character and delves into dramatic complexities.

In John Adams, the drama of the show serves to heighten the lack of clarity between wrong and right—just as with other HBO shows featuring flawed characters, The Sopranos being a prime example.

In the first episode, when viewers see Sam Adams (John’s cooler cousin) incite the crowd to pour scalding tar on an unsuspecting East India Trading Company merchant and literally ride him out on a rail, there’s a moment of revulsion. Sure, you’ve heard of tar and feathering, but seeing the American forefathers perpetrate it in high definition is slightly more perverse.

Those who haven’t read the book beforehand or taken a class in colonial American history may also be shocked to learn that not only were the British soldiers responsible for the Boston Massacre acquitted, but Adams defended them in trial (and in an amazing wig). Even executive producer Tom Hanks admitted to not having realized this in his interview in the “making of”
documentary. This and other moments in the show demonstrate that the truth in history isn’t as clear-cut as fourth-grade social studies text books lead us to believe.

However, since there are a lot of blanks that even Abigail and John Adam’s copious letters cannot fill, why not be a little more imaginative? Adams may have shed a tear or two in bed before he leaves his family for France (as he does in the third episode). Whether this actually happened is debatable, but it makes for good TV either way.

As for that, while Abigail Adams was clearly a remarkably strong and intelligent woman (case in point: in the second episode she makes her entire family get a primitive small pox vaccine while her husband is missing in action), you have to wonder if her independence isn’t slightly overblown, considering the context.

Still, Laura Linney’s Abigail makes it hard to believe that she could have been otherwise. When she distractedly expresses her jealousy of men in battle, viewers get the feeling that she wishes she were her husband even more than she wishes she could be with him.

Some of the most amazing aspects of the series are the computer-generated special effects, which are explained in the “making of” documentary. In reality, none of the buildings depicted on screen were taller than two stories. Every building taller than that, along with most of the people in crowd scenes and majestic imperial ships in the Boston harbor (and, oh yeah, the harbor itself) are computer-generated.

All taken, the series succeeds in creating a reality of Adams’ life without being overly laudatory or nostalgic. With the tagline “Join or Die,” there’s the looming risk of waxing too patriotic, but the show does a pretty good job of avoiding “America rah!” revolutionary fervor to focus on the Adamses and on the other flawed men who decided to start a new nation.

And while it is, by nature, a show that history nerds have to love, the series does what McCullough does through his books: turns history into entertainment.