Waco: The Aftermath

Short answer would be, it's a great story. The actors were good, i believe the story was fair, and I can't wait for more shows like this one.

As someone who is neither American nor Christian, and I'm not even white! :p so i can honestly say I have no horse in this race, and yet i watched this series and the prequel twice! That's how good this is

As for the story, it was really deep, and it made me ask myself lots of questions! Questions that I perhaps wouldn't have thought of, had it not been for this show. For example, even though koresh was a false prophet, was it really OK to judge,punish and/or kill his followers, for believing his false prophecies? His prophecies about the events at waco weren't even wrong! It's just that he was lying about being the messiah,I believe. Is it wrong to lie to people about god? Yes, but then again, there were hundreds of religions throughout our history, and many of those religions are proven to be false and/or wrong! Which means there were people who lied to their followers about talking to some god, long before koresh thought of the idea! Do we treat all those believers, some of them still living among us today, and believing in their ancestor's mythologies, as cultist or terrorists? No we don't. How many of today's religions and branches of religions or ideologies, are going to be remembered as BS in tomorrow's history books? Does that mean we should prosecute the people who bought them? I believe not. So with that piece of advice, I invite you to watch/rewatch this mini series,and judge for yourself, who was right? Guns or no guns, the ATF had no rights to invade and kill all those people in their home, without any provocations.

There's certain things that I like and quite a few that I don't about this production. I've never been a big fan of chronological mayhem, when the timeline is bouncing erratically all over the place just like this was. It is a trick used by many of these miniseries to help stretch a two hour movie story into 20 hours of streaming service boredom.

Although this was actually a good script if it was presented chronologically consistent, the use of Giovanni Ribisi in a main role was the huge mistake. I have commented about his acting... or should I say lack of acting ability on other productions. But this one... he was so miscast it was just annoying. His thin voice and mumbling just makes it too hard to watch.

Once again, thank VLC for the ability to watch this in a player that allows 2.0 times the speed which definitely sped up not only the time to watch it, but the story pace reducing this to what it should've been.... a two hour movie.

Seeing reviews that this shows the Branch Davidians as "innocent anti-heroes" and that the FBI/ATF and the authorities in general are being shown negatively. Not only is this not true (the show frequently criticizes the surviving Branch Davidians, for one), but even if it were true that would only be testament to how evil the government acted. What this show does not do is what many, including the government, tried to do which is blanket label them all crazy suicidal murderers and unfairly (an unfairness that was proven in court) convict them on this basis.

I highly recommend you give this show a watch only after finishing the first series as it will provide much context that I'm not certain many people have if they never watched it/forgot important details.

Overall the acting and the storytelling is great. But I've read a good deal about Waco and the writing is very one sided. While the writers are painting the FBI/ATF and the authorities in general in an accurate negative light, they certainly are making the Branch Davidians look like innocent anti-heros. They are glossing over a great deal of the insanity that was taking place there.

I will be honest, if it wasn't for the actors I would have stopped watching by now. But they really do a great job. And the writing style and storytelling is very intriguing and keeps you interested. I just wish they were taking a more equal stance.

I didn't realize this series was in connection with 2018's mostly forgettable "Waco". I found "Aftermath" much more intriguing.

Serving as both a prequel and sequel to "Waco", it tells parts of the story that are less known and which might raise more difficult (and sadly relevant) questions than the story of the actual raid and stand-off can, at least for anyone who's already familiar with the story. Unfortunately, the creators don't want to get messy enough to fully wrestle with the bigger questions it almost raises.

The strongest part of the series is the courtroom drama conspiracy trial of surviving Koresh followers. Ribisi, a perennially underappreciated actor, offers the most compelling portrayal in the series as the survivors' defense attorney. As a reported scientologist in real life, it's a little ironic that Ribisi's character is at times both defensive and accusatory of his clients regarding their blind devotion to Koresh as a cult leader.

The prequel portion of the series, the Koresh origin story, is pretty hokey. Brief snippets from "Waco" and Taylor Kitsch's portrayal of Koresh (whose performance was one of that series's strengths) only further expose the weaknesses of Keean Johnson's immature performance. And asking the audience to believe that Johnson somehow physically transformed into Kitsch in only a few short years is a pretty big ask.

But Michael Shannon, reprising his role as FBI agent Gary Noesner, is surprisingly one of the weakest links of the series. He seems to be mostly sleepwalking through this one. Maybe his character is tired from all the sleepless nights after his involvement at Waco? Whatever the case, it doesn't really work here and his scenes tend to drag the story down.

As for the McVeigh/Nichols interjections, they're thematically and historically important as far as the fallout of Waco is concerned, but they often feel like afterthoughts instead of aftermath.

The series tries its hardest to humanize everyone involved-perhaps even those who arguably don't deserve to be humanized-in order to show that labeling enemies as "evil" only leads to more violence and destruction. Fair enough. But it's a little too neat to reduce the lessons of Waco to "can't we all just get along?"