On Easter Sunday, Showtime aired its first episode of The First Lady, which is appropriate because it both nearly killed me and filled me with life anew. With heavyweights like Viola Davis, Michelle Pfeiffer, Gillian Anderson, Kiefer Sutherland, Ellyn Burstyn, and Aaron Eckhart in the cast, the production could have been extraordinary. Explosive, even. But instead, it was more like the Fourth of July, and by that, I mean the Fourth of July my dad almost set our house on fire after turning over a block of fireworks. The based-on-true events series follows the lives of Michelle Obama, Betty Ford, and Eleanor Roosevelt (played by Davis, Pfeiffer, and Anderson, respectively) before and during their time as public servants. There appears, at least in the first two episodes, to be no real structure to the episodes. You just bop around an 80 year range, jumping from one random point in Michelle Obama’s life to an equally out-of-nowhere vignette from Eleanor Roosevelt’s. At first, I thought that these Time Traveler’s Wife-style shenanigans would be a hindrance to the viewing experience, but they soon become a gift; remain in one storyl… Click below to read the full story from Esquire
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The First Lady Did The First Ladies Very, Very Dirty
