The Hot Zone

It is ridiculous that they don't where general personal protective equipment in the BL1 lab! Also real scientists would open unknown animal samples in a biosafety cabinet to ensure that neither they or the sample get contaminated. Contact me if you need a technical consultant that knows about lab safety!

Season 1 about Ebola was great.

Good actors, nice settings and a contagious disease. Exciting and scary.

I was hoping that season 2 would continue the story especially since the end of season 1 mentioned "Island of the plagues" and the idea that there was a place where multiple viruses were mixing had me intrigued.

Instead we got season 2 about Anthrax and it feels like every other episode from CSI.

Season 1 gets an 8/10.

Season 2 ... ugh, snooze.

Hot Zone: Anthrax explores aspects of the 2001 anthrax scares in ways I never heard at the time. I felt they gave away the conclusion a tad too early, and the timing feels weird (it apoears the investigation is happening weeks or months after 9/11, but in reality the investigation didn't conclude for 7 years). However, most of the acting is wonderful! A few anachronisms were distracting, like a Keurig, wall-mounted flat screen, and center-parted hairstyles were big misses for a 2001 setting, whereas Hot Zone series 1 was better about time period accuracy.

The cast is excellent, but they can't save the bad writing and worse pacing. I read the Richard Preston book back in 1994, and again last month when I heard about this miniseries. The book is an accurate accounting of the real events of 1989, and it's an edge-of-your-seat exciting read. This miniseries takes the same event and manages to drag it out with unnecessary backstories, wooden dialogue, and a dozen cliches. Then there are the blatantly incorrect representations of protocol in a lab environment. (I was in the medical field in 1989, and we did have strict ppe protocols.) My advice is to treat this as pure fiction, loosely based on the facts of the actual events. Get the true story from the book.

Folks, c'mon. What happened to watching a show for entertainment value? It's "based on," not a documentary.

Stop getting bent out of shape and just watch it. Or don't. I liked it. Especially coming from a book, there is always going to be a high level creative license involved to create the drama, suspense and fear.