Some wonder why the series is going back to the early years of David Koresh's involvement with the Branch Davidians. This episode explains it via what Gary Coleman's character says: it's about failure of leadership on both sides. The first series was pretty hard on the ATF and FBI for their tactics and unusually sympathetic to the Davidians, depicting Koresh as an embattled leader who was maybe a little too stubborn on some things. This series shows Koresh's emergence as a manipulator, slowly building a following and eventually taking over the Davidians. Paralleling his origin story is that of Timothy McVeigh preparing for the Oklahoma bombing. Admittedly so far we are not given much insight into his character. Simultaneously we are following the trial of 5 surviving Davidians as well as Gary Knoesser's investigating the growing coalesce of domestic terrorist groups looking to pay the government back for Waco. If a viewer can't follow more than one timeline or is interested only in 1 plot thread, they will find this tough going. Those seeking to understand the events leading up to Waco and the Oklahoma bombing will find much to think about. Unfortunately relaying all these facts makes this series exposition heavy and hurts the drama.
2 Reviews
Story is already sloppy and going everywhere, even though it is only E2 of 6
michiganave_p23 April 2023
A real strong point of the series so far is the ramp-up story to the Oklahoma City bombing and Timothy McVey's radicalization, with a second being the Waco trial of the remaining church members, but there is so much time being wasted each episode so far going over the past.
I don't know why the writers insisted on going back into Koresh's story and replaying the raid over and over again taking up valuable story time that could have been dedicated to the OKC bombing, the investigation of far right neo Nazi groups, and the trial itself.
The viewers have already seen the Waco series. We don't need to see it over and over again, to the point it feels like they are talking all of the B-roll from the Waco series, putting into this series, and calling it something "new". It's not; it's recycled content.
I don't know why the writers insisted on going back into Koresh's story and replaying the raid over and over again taking up valuable story time that could have been dedicated to the OKC bombing, the investigation of far right neo Nazi groups, and the trial itself.
The viewers have already seen the Waco series. We don't need to see it over and over again, to the point it feels like they are talking all of the B-roll from the Waco series, putting into this series, and calling it something "new". It's not; it's recycled content.
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