Manhunt’s greatest strength is letting Abraham Lincoln just be a bro
There is a moment that looms large over everything else in the pilot of Apple TV’s post-Civil War drama, Manhunt, a conversation that will haunt Edwin Stanton (Tobias Menzies) for the rest of his life. He’s hard at work in his office, putting together the plans for Reconstruction, when Abraham Lincoln (Midnight Mass’ Hamish Linklater) comes in tossing a baseball and invites him to the theater tonight (Ulysses S. Grant flaked to hang with his wife). Stanton is intrigued, drawn in by his friend’s easy charm, but ultimately backs out — he also owes his wife a night together. And so Lincoln strolls out, bemoaning that he’ll just be hanging out with Mary’s friends as he sees Our American Cousin.
The rest is history: That night, Lincoln would be assassinated at the theater. Andrew Johnson would take the oath of office the following day. And Stanton — as Manhunt depicts — would spend the next 12 days hunting down Lincoln’s killer, John Wilkes Booth, and the rest of his life wondering what would’ve happened if he said yes to an evening at the theater.
It’s no surprise that Stanton might forever ponder the road not taken, even though he made sure someone was guarding Lincoln that night. It’s a thought that’s incredibly compelling as Manhunt turns Stanton’s survivor’s guilt over and over. His connection to Lincoln makes it all the more provocative: Losing a friend like this is a tragedy. But when you’re also secretary of war to one of the most important presidents in United States history, trusted with his security and that of the nation, your actions have larger consequences. Every choice Johnson makes (or doesn’t make) in the postwar panic, every new vector point for the country, hangs on Stanton’s soul, a constant reminder of his failures and what we could’ve had.
As a period drama, Manhunt is tasked with reading viewers in on a lot of vernacular and specific historical context. Too often its script cuts corners, making things as simple as possible, eschewing ambiguity in
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