A Common Enemy

Some wonder why the series is going back to the early years of David Koresh's involvement with the Branch Davidians. This episode explains it via what Gary Coleman's character says: it's about failure of leadership on both sides. The first series was pretty hard on the ATF and FBI for their tactics and unusually sympathetic to the Davidians, depicting Koresh as an embattled leader who was maybe a little too stubborn on some things. This series shows Koresh's emergence as a manipulator, slowly building a following and eventually taking over the Davidians. Paralleling his origin story is that of Timothy McVeigh preparing for the Oklahoma bombing. Admittedly so far we are not given much insight into his character. Simultaneously we are following the trial of 5 surviving Davidians as well as Gary Knoesser's investigating the growing coalesce of domestic terrorist groups looking to pay the government back for Waco. If a viewer can't follow more than one timeline or is interested only in 1 plot thread, they will find this tough going. Those seeking to understand the events leading up to Waco and the Oklahoma bombing will find much to think about. Unfortunately relaying all these facts makes this series exposition heavy and hurts the drama.