Historical accuracy: 6
Acting: 4
Camera work: 7
Editing: 7
Budget: 7
Story: 6
Theme: 6
Pure entertainment factor: 6
Video quality: 8
Special effects: NA
Pacing: 7
Suspension of disbelief: 4
Non-cringe factor: 6
Lack of flashbacks: 4
I loved the acting in season 1. It was so spectacular that I overlooked the extreme propaganda. We all know FBI and ATF messed up big time. It's one of the main government errors of the 20th century USA. But they didn't just mess up by themselves as shown in the season. Not even close. It was an extreme cult where the cult leader openly took lovers who had husbands and even got kids with underage girls. And then instead of making sure to keep the situation and his cult safe he locked them in a room to let the fire take them as he himself knew it was the end for him and therefore didn't care about anyone else. His own wives and children. The whole cult followed him blindly and let their young wives or underage daughters sleep with the cult leader and then claim he only did it because it's God's command. This season loosely mentions this controversial stuff at least, but yet again doesn't explore it which is a shame. In season 1 they didn't even mention the child brides stuff and showed him as uninterested in sex - a laughable depiction.
Who shot first? Again, from all the knowledge we have the cult did shoot first. Not that it matters much as anything can set this stuff off in a stand-off and maybe some evidence is not clear. FBI and ATF may be amateurish, but shooting at women and children is not something they would ever do eagerly. This TV show shows the government shooting first for some reason. And the agents overall are evil and mean. Which is a choice made for season 1 as we follow the cult leader and therefore have to see some good in him. In real life there was more to the story. A deeper theme, more mistakes happening on both sides, basically season 1 dumbed it down for a modern audience with a good and bad side. But how can you possibly depict a real life trial when you just made up a bunch of stuff about the event? You can't. You have written yourself into a corner and have to focus on the flashbacks as those you can be creative with yet again because there were fewer witnesses. One thing I think filmmakers miss is that you can actually make a side look WORSE when showing the true story. Because when you make up stuff viewers pick up on it and your political biases just make you look silly instead of creating powerful propaganda spreading your message. The real story is anti-government anyhow. All agree on this.
The second season follows the trial, a White power terrorist group, and is also a prequel. Which can be extremely fascinating if done right. I adore trial movies and TV shows. Unfortunately the flashbacks make it so that you never really get to follow any storyline or point. We just jump around all over the place also making the acting pointless as we never really deep dive into a scene or setting. Which is what made season 1 amazing.
Here they jump from person to person. Flashbacks are used to show people and what they did, still focusing on a somewhat fictive retelling of the cult avoiding much of the extremely controversial stuff for good reason. But the storytelling becomes disjointed. The story is "there are bad groups and people in the US agencies". Which is fine as a gist, but viewers will require a stronger focus on character arcs. Replacing Taylor Kitsch with an unknown actor shows that the show is indeed not focusing on character arcs or actor focus. Taylor Kitsch agreed to the first season because they built a full compound for him to be the cult leader in and the main focus. Plus they removed all the controversial stuff about the cult leader. So he could live there and act out scenes by himself for a long time before the cameras even arrived. Big actors require this and a cut together storyline is lower quality with actors not really performing. This could still work with perfect filmmaking. Yet the acting is subpar because the script is not that great. So the actors try to make up for the lack of storyline by overacting with emotional outbursts. Which doesn't cover up the story hole. It just makes it more obvious.
The prequel and sequel in one is also a weird choice that they wrote themselves into because season 1 overlooked all the controversial stuff about how the cult started and what it was to instead show the cult as a peaceful hippie gathering. So they obviously had 2 stories left to tell. They were required to depict the cult in a truer way to make sure the trial made any sense. But the prequel stuff should have been done as the first 2-3 episodes of season 1 instead of messing up season 2 with flashbacks. Though I appreciate how they now finally go into the messy stuff of the cult. Yet they still try to make it look more honorable than it really was overlooking some spicy controversial stuff. I liked the concept of adding a right-wing Christian cult to this as they expanded the story into the Oklahoma City Bombing that indeed was caused by the cultural aftershocks from Waco that made the fringe right-wing extra popular in USA. This cult is clearly evil here with members being openly neo-Nazis. It's just a shame the show didn't lean into this theme. Maybe even showing the flashback cult church scenes right before showing a similar right-wing cult in a similar private Christian church. It would show a maturity by the writers in that they finally see why the cult was not just full of great people only and how it could have become more destructive over time. Even though some cult members were largely victims even letting themselves burn alive instead of surrendering to the agents. The TV show acts like season 1 was the truth. That they didn't want to end themselves after their leader died. But this is just not what the evidence shows. I know it sounds like a "pro FBI" point, but I actually think this complexity would reveal more errors because you can see how it's not just evilness causing errors, but illogical fallacies too making them look extra incompetent as you can't just fire people to improve the situation in such a case. You have to work hard on info gathering and education. And this is impossible to do over a few decades. While if you assume a few meanies caused this then firing them indeed would solve the problem fully.
You could watch it without watching season 1 and enjoy it for what it is in a greater way. Overall it's quite decent and worth a watch as it never gets dull and also focuses on part of US history that is quite obscure. Since season 1 was very much ahistorical in many ways I just assume this is too. But I don't know much about this trial so I can't say. I can only judge the cult stuff and that part is iffy here for sure. But vastly improved over season 1 and frankly I would accept this as historically accurate to a larger degree if they showed even more bad stuff done by the cult to make up for season 1. Plus they added more real life characters like the attractive neo-Nazi blonde who was an actual informant.
