In the second episode of the ambitious and sprawling but disappointingly flat and rote Showtime limited series “The First Lady,” Michelle Pfeiffer’s Betty Ford watches television in August of 1974 as we see news footage of President Richard Nixon announcing, “I shall resign the presidency, effective at noon tomorrow.”
To be clear: the fictional Betty Ford is watching the real-life Richard Nixon on the TV in this scene. A moment later, though, when Betty and her husband Gerald Ford (Aaron Eckhart) are in attendance as Nixon exits the White House, actor Paul Wilson is portraying the outgoing president. It’s a small glitch but nonetheless jarring; why didn’t they just film a scene with Wilson as Nixon addressing the nation, for the sake of dramatic consistency and continuity?
