by Eric Blume

Showtime's limited series The First Lady kicked off its premiere episode last week. It's a bit of a mixed bag out of the gate. The episode consists of several 10-minute-ish scenes covering each of our protagonists:  Michelle Obama (Viola Davis); Betty Ford (Michelle Pfeiffer); and Eleanor Roosevelt (Gillian Anderson).  A ticker on the bottom of the screen whisks us backward and forward between these women whose stories are about forty years apart from each other. 

There's not a great deal of grace in this back-and-forth execution, feeding us small glimpses of each lady in semi-satisfying increments that don't seem to have a meaningful connection between them outside of generic "I'm my own person" theme.  It's probably easiest to tackle these three stories independently, because episode one doesn't give us much of a linking thread or powerful throughline yet, and because there are pleasures to be had within the confines of this awkward setup...