Death by Lightning
Party Faithful
TV Flash files “Party Faithful” as a desk essential hour — Death by Lightning (2025) on Netflix, season 1, episode 2, aired 2025-11-06, 47 min.
From the desk
How this hour is filed
This leaf is S01E02: listed hour 2 of 4 in the Death by Lightning guide, hour 2 of 4 in season 1. It aired 2025-11-06 (47 min). The listed hour before it is “The Man from Ohio” (S01E01). Next is “Casus Belli” (S01E03).
Essential hour: “Party Faithful”. Party Faithful as the machine hour: patronage as plot, still Shannon and Macfadyen, still presidential history treated as tragedy rather than a marble special.
Catalog log
Broadcast listing — not a TV Flash recap.
In the runup to Election Day, Garfield welcomes the nation to his front porch, while Guiteau struggles to ingratiate himself with Party leadership.
Viewer FAQ
Where does Party Faithful sit in the Death by Lightning guide?
S01E02 is listed hour 2 of 4 — hour 2 of 4 in season 1, season 1 episode 2.
When did Death by Lightning S01E02 air?
Party Faithful aired 2025-11-06 and is listed at 47 minutes.
Do I need to know Garfield first?
No. Obscure presidential history made bingeable: rise, office-seeker, assassination as standom tragedy. The series is the primer and the poem.
In the series
Why this series still plays
Garfield's assassination as standom tragedy: Michael Shannon and Matthew Macfadyen bearded, obscure presidential history made bingeable. Watch for Macfadyen's post-Succession pivot into an office-seeker who loves too hard, and for a Netflix limited series that treats 1881 politics like a fandom with a gun and a terrible poem.
The first look is beard as costume and 1881 as a fitting — *period wool, terrible sincerity, a poem nobody asked to hear*. Mike Makowsky's Death by Lightning, 2025 on Netflix, puts Michael Shannon as James A. Garfield against Matthew Macfadyen's Charles Guiteau, Nick Offerman as Chester A. Arthur waiting in the wings. President Garfield's rise collides with an obsessive office-seeker. Assassination as standom tragedy. Obscure presidential history made bingeable. Four episodes, one limited series. **This was not a…
Filed against
- Michael Shannon as James A. Garfield
Michael Shannon’s Nelson Van Alden turned Boardwalk Empire’s Prohibition piety into a sweating moral problem — Scorsese sheen, sequins and mud — then bearded up for Death by Lightning’s assassination-as-standom tragedy. Early-HBO gangster…
- Matthew Macfadyen as Charles Guiteau
Matthew Macfadyen’s Tom Wambsgans is Succession’s midwestern climber in a borrowed coat — insult-comedy courtier inside Jesse Armstrong’s media-dynasty knife fight. HBO kept the Sundays scarce on purpose; Tom made hunger look like manners…
- Nick Offerman as Chester A. Arthur
Nick Offerman’s Ron Swanson turned libertarian woodcraft and breakfast meats into Parks and Recreation mythology, then broke hearts as Bill on The Last of Us. Deadpan masculinity as affection became a cottage industry. TV Flash still…