Abraham Lincoln Evaded Assassination Threats While Rocking A Moustache?!

As someone who has watched every episode of Drunk History, I feel I don't have to prove to you that I like fun. And like everyone else who loves the show, I understand that most of the fun lies in seeing which luminaries of the increasingly mainstream hipster comedy scene Derek Waters and company will get to play the historical figures in the stories our beloved drunks tell. A lot of the time, producers have some leeway with regard to the people they cast, because the average/Canadian viewer doesn't know what the stories' stars actually looked like. A lot of the time...but not always.

I am not a crackpot. I just think that if Martin Starr was going to play Abraham Lincoln, he should have shaved his moustache.

Am I a stickler? Yes. I am a stickler about every fucking thing: game rules, the social contract, the appropriate number of episodes a primetime show should air in a week (which by the way is one, BIG BROTHER). So I grant that other viewers might have been more delighted by the sight of Starr than they were annoyed by his extraneous facial hair.

The other three stars of the story? Cast whoever you want! Style them however you want! Was the real Kate Warne as foxy as Adrianne Palicki? No. But I didn't know that until I looked her up, and you probably didn't until you clicked that link unless you're a true crime nerd (hi Sarah!).

But Abraham Lincoln lived in the time after daguerrotype, so his actual likeness was captured kind of a lot. And even a Canadian like me knows that he's generally ranked among the top three presidents this country has ever had, so unlike a Wilson or a Hoover, most people know what he looked like. And: he pretty much decided on a signature facial-hair look and stuck with it. You know what that look did NOT include? A moustache. And when this particular story calls for him to ditch his "pop-tart hat" and spend a significant amount of it wrapped up in a blanket with nothing but his face peeking out, it takes you out when full half that face is covered in hair, as opposed to the third we should be seeing.

"Maybe Martin Starr had booked another job that required him to keep both the moustache and the beard?" Yeah, probably. And since I imagine that Starr did Drunk History as a lark, and that it didn't take him more than a couple of days I'm sure whatever that other thing was (Silicon Valley) took tonsorial precedence over Drunk History. But if your Lincoln, for professional reasons, can't shave off his moustache, then YOU NEED A NEW LINCOLN.

Abraham Lincoln is undeniably comedy's favourite president, and as such deserves the respect of being portrayed by someone who's willing either to go full Lincoln for real, or else shave his whole face and rock one of the Joseph Pulitzer beards still hanging around from Episode 2 so that in or out of his stovepipe hat, we know who the hell he is. I AM NOT A CRACKPOT.