#Netflix aftermath reviews trial#
#Netflix aftermath reviews series#

However, it still feels like the show is letting itself off the hook and providing cover to what remains hamfisted dialogue that just falls flat even with the cast doing their darndest to give it life. A scene where he delivers a short monologue about how his clients aren’t guilty of the crimes they are being accused of yet aren’t wholly innocent either is the closest we come to him getting something a bit more substantive to work with. He is mostly confined to the courtroom or the same booth at the same bar with his lawyer pals as they try to tackle the case. It paints with the broadest of brushes, and the legal procedural element of the story becomes downright goofy the longer the show insists on spending time with it.Īlthough Ribisi is always a joy to see in action, his character seems mostly one-note when given so little actual room to breathe. Waco: The Aftermath, in addition to just being poorly constructed, is woefully out of its depth. It didn’t provide easy answers to what were and remain complicated questions about the capacity for violence to take hold of a country that is teetering on the brink. By comparison, Under the Banner of Heaven managed to strike a delicate balance in the portrait it painted.

#Netflix aftermath reviews series#

There is a version of this series that comprehensively confronts the legacy of Waco as being a catastrophic failure by a government that emboldened the very forces they were trying to stop while not valorizing those like Koresh at the same time. The longer it goes on, the more it blinks in the face of grappling with what remains a country defined by violent right-wing extremism. No matter how much he tries to bring a greater nuance to exploring why people can become swept up in a group like this, the show provides oversimplified answers time and time again. While he does all he can to make something out of the generally inert story, it is just another perplexing narrative decision that never settles in. Now, the budding cult leader is being played by Keean Johnson.

In the original miniseries, Koresh was played by Taylor Kitsch who was eerily charismatic even as the writing itself remained far too enamored with him and repeatedly glossed over the more distasteful aspects of the real man.

He can’t really influence the narrative in any substantive way, yet the show seems unwilling to leave him behind and suffers as a result - and that's even before getting to the fact that the character has been recast.

The fact that Koresh looms large over all of this, despite being dead, is a miscalculation as there is little reason to spend so much time trying to explore who he was before it all went down. RELATED: 'Waco: The Aftermath' Trailer: Mount Carmel Was Just the Beginning

While all of this is technically connected, the show becomes completely scattered and uncertain about what it wants to aim at in terms of priority. At the same time, making this almost into a pseudo prequel, there are extended flashbacks of how David Koresh came to form his doomsday cult.

#Netflix aftermath reviews trial#

While this is going on, a trial is playing out as scrappy lawyer Dan Cogdell ( Giovanni Ribisi) tries to defend surviving members of the Branch Davidians who are being accused of murder and conspiracy. The tension comes from how the government is overlooking Noesner’s concerns, instead looking to foreign terror as the most pressing threat. It isn’t a spoiler to say that these fears will prove to be prescient when the series gives us glimpses of Timothy McVeigh ( Alex Breaux) as he prepares to blow up a building in what he sees as retaliation for the federal response to Waco. He is now carrying around the guilt of how terribly things went wrong at Waco while also growing concerned that it could lead to a rise in right-wing and white supremacist violence in the country. Waco: The Aftermath picks back up with Shannon's FBI hostage negotiator Gary Noesner, still conspicuously remaining the voice of reason considering the first part was based on his book.