... and changed the course of the nation forever!

This phrase or a variation of it is narrated at least 25 times per episode.

Following the commercial break, the narrator recaps the previous scene in nearly identical terminology that was used in the scene itself -- it makes Netflix viewing essentially unwatchable.

Overall, the series seemed unable to decide if it was chronicling the American 'everyman' or if is was returning to the familiar 'great men' legends we've have all read about in the history books. For example, in the Gilded Age segment it rolled out the usual roster of big-name progessives and Edison. But for the Great Depression, it relied on the testimony of that single mother caught in the dust bowl and the man who directed the Hoover Dam.

Critical periods of history were simply left out: little to no mention of the French and the Dutch in the fledgling colonies (odd since New York seemed to be a crux of the show), no mention of "manifest destiny" carrying over to America's Banana Republics, nothing at all about Teddy Roosevelt and trust-busting, nothing about Barbary Pirates, impressment leading to the War of 1812; and very little about America's neighbor to the south and nothing about Canada.

Lightly treading into the geo-political, it seemed to teeter between a focus on technological advances and straight-up human interest stories.






"I can't help but notice that there are skulls all over everything. Are we the baddies?"