By Stacey Harrison
The epigrams that open each episode of The Kennedys have varied in their relevance and resonance. 
Sometimes they just obliquely apply to what you’re about to see, with some vague notion pertaining to fathers and sons, the quest for power, etc. But the one that opens Episode 6 is meant to stay with you. Ovid’s “Love is a kind of warfare” is displayed over a mushroom cloud, after which we immediately see Jack delivering a speech about the heightening Cuban Missile Crisis.
To that end, this comes across as the most focused hour of The Kennedys, crosscutting between Jack’s handling of the crisis and his relationship with Jackie. It might seem a rough transition, but they meld together pretty well, putting major brushstrokes to the portrait of JFK as a great man and flawed person. And might I say I find a bit of hope in the fact that Joel Surnow, the noted conservative producer who was the focal point of much of the Kennedys-as-smear talk, wrote an episode painting a Democrat as the hero during one of the world’s scariest moments. Perhaps empathy will grow across the aisle, eh? Then again, it didn’t work so well with Oliver Stone and Dubya. Dramatically speaking, Surnow definitely brings some 24-style suspense to his depiction of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and it’s tough to look away.
(Note: Major spoilers ahead for Episode 6 of The Kennedys.)
— Jackie starts the episode free and clear off Dr. Feelgood, and she encourages Jack to get rid of him as well. He doesn’t think it’s such a good idea, even if what is being shot into him isn’t healthy. “I don’t care if it’s horse piss. It works.”
— Jack weasels out of a classical piano performance that Jackie had been all excited for, saying he’s needed “downstairs,” which she and we take to mean a matter of international performance. In actuality, he’s going to the White House movie theater to watch Spartacus again (he had a thing for the Kirk Douglas-Stanley Kubrick epic) and make time with Mary Meyer, one of the president’s more notorious mistresses.
— Jackie and Ethel have a grass-is-greener conversation (while standing in a beautiful verdant pasture, no less), where Ethel tells Jackie she’s been intimidated by her beauty and independence, while Jackie says she envies Ethel’s aptitude at raising a family and having a successful marriage. It was nice to see Ethel do a little something besides smile incessantly and act cheery around Bobby.
— The Cuban Missile Crisis is a tense, richly rewarding set piece, which manages to make you sweat even though — by your very existence — you know things turned out OK. It pays off after having seen the new president humiliated by his Bay of Pigs experience to stick to his guns, literally, in this situation where the stakes were nothing short of apocalyptic. The way he handles his advisers while trying to figure out Krushchev’s next move is admirable, and he seems to have turned out to be exactly the right man to handle the job.
— After bringing the world back from the brink, Jack wants to do the same with his marriage. Jackie figured out what was going on that night at the concert and took off with the kids. She returns, after the Soviet submarines have headed back to Moscow, and the missiles are being taken down in Cuba, and falls back in with her husband. Saving the world does merit a bit more marital leeway, I suppose.
— One night in front of the television, as she’s brushing her daughter’s hair, Jackie says to Caroline, “Your daddy just saved the world.” If indeed Caroline Kennedy heard that as a child, it makes her desire to scrap a television series she thought would be damaging to her father a lot more understandable.
If you’ve missed any of The Kennedys, ReelzChannel is running a marathon of the first six episodes this weekend. Check back here Monday night for my rundown of Episode 7.
Photo: Credit: History Television
