The commercials started in February.

February.

For a mini-series that wouldn't start until June. And they never let up, all the way through March, April and May.

With this much hype, you just knew it would be disappointing. Even if they claimed it would tell the true story of the West. But you could hardly wait for June to get here, just to shut the commercials up!

So, it's here.

It's disappointing.

Now, I say that with some conceit, since I have yet to sit down and watch any full hour episode. I just can't do it. The wife is even getting cynical.

For those of you living happily in ignorance, the story basically follows a family of Virginia wheelwrights (I did learn a new word, although the wife already knew it.) and a family of Lakhota Sioux in the 1800s.

Naturally their two story lines become intertwined.

But jeez, what story lines. Basically an unintended parody of Little Big Man, where every significant or tragic event of that century happens to these two families. With a new hardship or death arriving every week. (Their time, not ours. In our time, you get like 8-10 tragedies an hour.)

Probably what really got me set off the first week (and out of the room) was having the Sioux be responsible for building a medicine wheel remarkably like the one I have mentioned in this journal.

Ummm, the wheel was built centuries before the Lakhota got here, Spielberg. Some are thousands of years old. The Sioux are a displaced Eastern tribe. They fought with the English in the American Revolution and the War of 1812. They probably didn't stumble across the ancient medicine wheel more than a few decades before the whites.

Okay, but I can overlook that. Artistic license. And tried once again to watch an episode tonight.

Ummm, no. Predictable, unrealistic, just as hokey Hollywood as the Lone Ranger.

Well, not really, but not real, either.

But what really got me upset, and again out of the room? Even ignoring the beautiful spruce and aspen woodlands that were supposed to be somewhere on the Great Plains?

The narrator mentions their wagon train followed the same path as all the other travelers.

The river.

And we see the wagon train trudging along the river bank.

First thing I notice is they're riding awfully close to the bank. Most wagon trails stayed a good distance off from the water, cause, hey, getting wagons out of mud is no fun.

But okay, that's just poetic license. It looked prettier that way.

But then I looked at the river.

They were going down stream!

Spielberg, if you go down stream anywhere on the rivers on the Great Plains, you're going East, not West.