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I was pleased to see the second episode of this mini series. It’s well done and feels authentic for the most part. I’m also very happy to see that the relationship of John and Abigail is rendered in such a way that one senses the very strong attachment of these two. In terms of the six archetypes (to which I cannot help referring) this is definitely a Warrior-Lover pairing. They work together even when far apart, and her practical wisdom matches his theorizing, balances it, and each fuels the other.

Particularly sensitive, I felt, were the scenes in which the Continental Congress at Philadelphia agonized over their situation as rebels against the crown. There is a real sense that they do not have the wherewithall to make the break possible, and that resistance is going to be very unpleasant in its consequences.

So what is it I feel to be lacking, because something is. Perhaps it is in the very nature of a mini series that it needs each segment to have a narrative arc that will enthrall us, so that all seven mini dramas get stitched together like the original 13 colonies. Inevitably politics has to be simplified, reduced to a few memorable incidents and a few great men. But does this not play into the hands of ‘accepted’ historical thinking that went so spectacularly out of favor some fifty years ago? Is this why I reach the end of each section feeling very little wiser about history?

Howard Zinn comes to mind with his ‘People’s History of The United States’ and how he seeks to counter that imbalance.

I will continue to watch because I hope I will gain some insight into how John Adams became who he was, and because I hope to find out what it was that caused the citizens of the Americas to slip so out of step with their British rulers. I doubt I will see either. The roots of the Revolution are, one suspects, at least as deep as the roots of the Puritans and the Pilgrims, dissenting voices who acknowledged nothing much outside of themselves and their relationship to God. They never saw themselves as ‘colonists’ - a section of the mother country that strove to be like the mother country, and wished for nothing more than to replicate its values. They always saw themselves as ’sons of liberty’ which we could translate by the metaphor of the child who acknowledges its birth parents but has no intention of living by their dictates after reaching the late teen years. King George treated them as ‘colonists’, and by the rules of what he understood that word to mean. But language, like so much else, got distorted somewhere in mid-Atlantic.

So much of who we are as Americans is enshrined in the stories we tell ourselves about our history, so it’s not a casual observation. People will see this series and shape their sense of themselves and of this country as a direct result. And I’m very afraid that this series may simply re-tell the same old cliches.

For all its marvelous production values and skillful film-making I feel we are being sold a seventh grade intellectual product.