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Sophievirus — 4 months ago(November 16, 2025 02:51 PM)
i really liked Burns' documentaries
The Civil War
,
The War
,
The American Buffalo
&
Leonardo Da Vinci
but his 'centrist dad' take on
The Vietnam War
really made me mad. it's sort of critical of America but not NEARLY critical enough - not once does it name JFK, LBJ or Nixon as war criminals, which they all were. it reluctantly seems sympathetic towards the Vietnamese before harping on and on and on about re-education camps and reprisal attacks. like, how much ****ing longer is it going to take for this conflict to get the coverage that truly reflects what happened instead of offering up some half-arsed American apologism?
anyways, i think i'll still give this new one a shot nevertheless.
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sheetsadam1 — 4 months ago(November 16, 2025 03:00 PM)
I don't disagree and that is far and away his worst, but I think what happened there is that PBS is a public broadcaster who are constantly in the crosshairs of the Republican Party and there are tons and tons of Vietnam veterans still with us. It would have been super risky for them to air something like that, which means it was probably a bad pick of a subject for that platform to begin with. I would love to see a director's cut if it exists, but otherwise I'd say it will be a few more decades. As I've mentioned before, read
The Things They Carried
. It's so ****ing devastating.
The others you mentioned were great. I also really enjoyed
The National Parks
and
Prohibition
.
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sheetsadam1 — 4 months ago(November 17, 2025 04:50 AM)
I didn't see the Hemingway one. I still had some major Hemingway novels to read when it came out and didn't want to risk spoilers
I did see the one he did on Mark Twain years ago and I remember enjoying it. I've seen most of them and they're very consistently high quality… but is he good enough to get me to watch an 18 hour series about baseball?
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sheetsadam1 — 4 months ago(November 17, 2025 04:45 AM)
First episode: Starting the entire series with a Thomas Paine quote, huh? Yeah, that'll get my attention. The best Founding Father, hands down!
The episode mostly focused on the lead-up to the war, with a lot of time spent on the French and Indian War/Seven Years' War and looking at the role of the 13 colonies at the time within the larger British Empire. Kudos for the attention paid to the role of the Indian tribes and the decision to neither romanticize the Founding Fathers or casually dismiss them with modern buzzwords… The events covered here weren't black and white. Everybody had their own motivations going into the decision to break with Great Britain, some more above board than others and Burns does a nice job of presenting those many complexities in an easy to digest form.
Rick Atkinson has showed up here quite a bit so far… I've been meaning to read his books on the Revolutionary War. I should get on that soon.
It was nice to hear Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney reprise their roles from HBO's John Adams miniseries.
A great start and I've discovered that the entire series is already streaming on the PBS app, so no need to be in front of the TV at 8 every evening this week! I'm tempted to watch the second episode now, but it's like three hours long
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MovieManCin2 — 4 months ago(November 17, 2025 07:13 AM)
This, like all his other projects, is going to be
a masterpiece!
I set my DVR to record it, and watched part 1 tonight, and can't wait for part 2 tomorrow night!
MAGA! FAFO!
Schrodinger's Cat walks into a bar, and doesn't. Dumbocraps: evil people who celebrate murder. 
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MovieManCin2 — 4 months ago(November 18, 2025 07:36 AM)
No, it did not, and I feel confidant that it will only get better from here. Ken Burns is absolutely
brilliant!
MAGA! FAFO! Schrodinger's Cat walks into a bar, and doesn't. Dumbocraps: evil people who celebrate murder. -
sheetsadam1 — 4 months ago(November 18, 2025 06:19 AM)
Episode two:
Things are really beginning to heat up. The section on Bunker Hill near the beginning of the episode is spectacular, among the best things Burns has ever done!
Especially fascinating to me was some of the history I wasn't aware of inside of England at the time and, while I was familiar with Lord Dunmore (and have even visited a battle site from the war named after him), I wasn't aware of his plot to get enslaved people to abandon their masters in exchange for their freedom. The southerner Washington's reaction to this strategy, as well as his initial attitude towards New England's black troop seems to foreshadow another conflict which would happen approximately four score and seven years later. Not that Dunmore can be considered an emancipator, as shown later in the episode.
Thomas Paine gets his proper due here, as the man whose writings brought widespread working class support to the Patriot cause and whose unabashed radicalism helped define what the idea of America would ultimately become.
The episode ends with the Continental Congress's passage of the Declaration of Independence and the immediate reactions to it both here and abroad.
Benedict Arnold's failed attack on Quebec is covered in this episode. My favorite history YouTuber recently retraced Arnold's route, for anyone who is interested:
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sheetsadam1 — 4 months ago(November 19, 2025 06:02 AM)
Episode 3: This episode mostly covers some of the darkest days of the Continental Army, before closing with the victory at Trenton.
There were a few things touched on briefly here that I hope Burns will return to in later episodes. He mentioned the Native American tribes of the Ohio Valley and their role in the war. This is a fascinating topic that I've read up on quite a bit. The dynamic also remained at play through the War of 1812… I would love to see him one day make a documentary on that war and the early history of the Northwest Territory.
He also says quite a bit, of course, on the role of Hessians, especially at the Battle of Trenton, but mentions how many of them who were captured ultimately opted to remain in the US or to bring their families back here. I'm hopeful that he won't neglect the role that Germans played on the Patriot side and that Baron von Steuben will get his proper due.
On the domestic governance side, he covers the initial attempts to craft the Articles of Confederation and notes how that many of the egalitarian ideas later associated with the American Revolution in the popular consciousness actually arose from early state constitutions rather than the more well-known Founding Fathers. As with the segment on Paine in the last episode (he shows up again briefly here), it's a nice example of how during the course of the conflict the idea of America began to represent something a bit different to the general public than some of the leaders had initially intended.
The episode, and particularly the segment on Nathan Hale, also reminded me that I'm due for a rewatch of
Turn: Washington's Spies
.
No complaints here so far.
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