John Adams

I expected this miniseries to be a lot worse, because, you know, it's about John Adams. But then I saw Paul Giamatti, the guy from Sideways, and I thought, "hey, isn't that Miles, from Sideways?" So every time the esteemed Mr. Adams rose to deliver a rousing speech on liberty, or with his powerful legal mind came to the assistance of falsely charged British soldiers, or ineffectually comforted his wife Abigail/Laura Linney by making grumpy faces and hmphing a lot (see below)
I really saw this:
It's Miles, from Sideways! And he's checking for color density in this robust California vintage! Oh, every now and then he may pretend to be a president or a mermaid-abetting apartment manager (what movie was that, with the pool and the mysterious beast? God, it was terrible), but in the end he will always be the failed novelist teaching eighth grade English in between mother-robbing jaunts to Santa Barbara. He only appears to be riding a horse through the bitter Massachusetts cold:
Actually, he ponders le mot juste for his failure to get laid as fellow degenerate Thomas Haden Church explores the implications of their earlier conversation at the golf course, where he had posed a particularly urgent question: "don't you want to feel that cozy little box grip down on your johnson?"
Miles does not look pleased with his prospects.