Death by Lightning Series-Premiere Recap: A Man Can Be Anyone

""This is a true story about two men the world forgot. One was the 20th president of the United States. The other shot him." That's the bitter epigraph that opens this invigorating first episode of Death by Lightning, and one important aspect of the book on which this miniseries is based, Candice Millard's Destiny of the Republic, is that the 20th president didn't deserve to be forgotten."

"The Garfield of the book is, so far anyway, the Garfield of the show, carrying a humility and nobility that's frankly disconcerting coming from Michael Shannon, who's usually cast as more wayward types. (I did a double take when learning Matthew Macfadyen, not Shannon, had been tapped to play Charles Guiteau, though that decision is justified the moment Macfadyen opens his mouth.) In Millard's telling, Garfield truly was a potential successor to Lincoln, a great orator and sturdy Midwesterner who abhorred slavery and spoke to the country's highest ideals."

"The deranged, fame-seeking asshole here is Charles Guiteau, and it's a small masterstroke for Death by Lightning to open in 1969, in a warehouse at the Army Medical Museum, with his preserved brain rolling around in a box. If this were Igor in Young Frankenstein, Guiteau's jar would be the one marked "Abby Normal." There's a sense right away in this series that Garfield, a happily married congressman with a generous homestead in rural Ohio, would have been happy to be forgotten."

James A. Garfield is depicted as a humble, noble, and eloquent leader who seemed a potential successor to Lincoln and opposed slavery. Michael Shannon's casting gives Garfield a disquieting dignity, while Matthew Macfadyen embodies the deranged Charles Guiteau. Guiteau is portrayed as a fame-seeking, mentally unstable assassin whose actions ended Garfield's presidency after only 200 days, with eighty spent in agonizing pain from a gunshot wound. The miniseries opens with Guiteau's preserved brain in a museum, highlighting contrasts between a president content with obscurity and an assassin craving recognition. The narrative emphasizes how a single deranged act can derail national progress.

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