1x04 Reunion

[8.4/10] This episode is more a collection of scenes than a unified and cohesive episode, but they’re damn good scenes! I love the Adamses enjoying their salad days in France after a long absence. I love John’s, shall we say, uncomfortable reception in England. I quite like the awkwardness of his return home and the much-changed family that awaits him. And I like the final tribute to his vanity, in his begrudging, faux-gracious, dripping-with-slightedness ascendance to the Vice Presidency.

There’s not much of a throughline between these stories beyond that vanity. There’s the vague sense that he’s affronted by Abigail’s praise for Thomas Jefferson, feels awkward about bowing to the king he and his countrymen swore off, and bristles at being passed over for the presidency, even by the man he dubs “the logical choice.” There’s also the sense that the Adamses have been away too long, that America and their family have undergone great change while he was gone, and that returning to New England means picking up the pieces of both. But for the most part, “Reunion” is a pack of vignettes -- great vignettes.

Honestly, I could have spent the whole episode with the Adamses, Thomas Jeffferson, and Benjamin Franklin in France. There’s so much meat there, despite the fact that nothing really happens. It’s a personal, almost hang out type outing. There is the intimacy and relatable camaraderie between John and Abigail, reunited once more. There’s the weird, almost flirty concordance with Abigail and Thomas Jefferson. There’s the whole lot of them debating the nature of man and optimism vs. pessimism and the direction of their young country. It has almost no narrative momentum, but it is nevertheless inviting, an opulent, philosophical, and above all personal post-victory exercise that’s a welcome shift after so much hardship in the last installment.

That cuts an immediate contrast between the luxurious beauty of France and the deliberately ruddier looking confines of London. My favorite scene in the whole damn episode comes when John has his audience with King George. There’s so many glorious little touches there. Tom Hollander is only in this mini-series for the one scene, but holy hell, the small expressions and layered performance he gave just astounded me. Giamatti does a great job at showing Adams’s discomfort at bowing and trying to mend this newly broken relationship. But Hollander does him one better with the intensity, restrained resentment, and even hurt in King George as the two go through this carefully choreographed routine together. It’s a knockout of a sequence to show the personalities of the two men and the fraught state of relations between their two countries.

The return to America is less intense, but still interesting. Recasting all of the children helps signify how much time has passed and how much John has missed. You can feel the mini-series cramming years worth of notable events in the Adams family [snap snap] while John was away, but it’s still intriguing to see John and Abigail dealing with their eldest’s courtship of a much younger girl, Charles’s streaking at Harvard, and Nabby’s quick flirtation with John’s secretary. It’s a lot very quickly, but it likely hits the audience a a lot very suddenly in the same way it does for John.

While so much of this episode is personal, we do get some politics. John claims to retire, but despite protestations that he no longer has any ambition, he graciously accepts being put forward as a Presidential candidate, only to blanche when Washington outgains him by a considerable margin. Abigail soothes his ego, and he accepts the secondary position, but there’s still an awkwardness to him feeling like he should be leading the charge of the nation he helped make independent, not vice-leading it. Still, there’s genuine warmth from Washington when he receives his new second, and the closing inauguration is uplifting as the first elective exercise of the young republic.

More than anything, I like this episode as a time to get to spend with the mini-series figures on a more unhurried, experiential level. More than the march of events, this episode is moved by the time we get to just spend with Adamses as a couple and confidantes, with Franklin and Jefferson as snippy buddies than as statesmen, with the diplomatic and campaign-related happenings feeling more like small stakes high school drama than the work of nations. It’s low key and introspective, an approach I love, and I hope we get more of it.