Wow... more glad than ever that I don't read reviews!

Here's why you should watch it: Not since West Wing has there been a show with such a large cast of characters who are also incredibly deep, have their own stories, and are not cardboard cutouts.

Every episode of MitHC is as dense as a full-length feature film, with multiple intertwining storylines, deep characters with actually consequential decisions to make that are non-obvious and have surprising repercussions down the line...

That particular review is the only one I read of MitHC, and I just can't imagine how they didn't see the depth and complexity of the story.

The weakest character, to me, is the lead, Julianna Crane. Life kinda throws her around, and she adapts, but ... there is something flat about her. Fortunately, there is no actual "lead" character, because EVERY character has a fascinating story and set of triggers/goals that they pursue in logical ways.

Trade Minister Tagomi is such a brilliant character, brilliantly played, that he could support an entire spinoff series. He is born and raised in the Japan of empire, not the Japan that was beaten and humiliated by the US, and then outsourced to as cheap labor. He is proud, almost Edo-era Samurai, and stiff, and formal, and constricted to Japanese expectations and decorum. But he is a Buddhist. Who meditates. And finds a way to teleport to OUR timeline, and out of his own... a timeline where his family survives, and he has been a bad father, angry with his son's marriage to a gaijin and disowning his grandson for being a half-breed.

But the Tagomi WE know - from the Nazi timeline - is a tragic figure, whose son died in battle and his wife died in the war. He mourns their passing and misses them deeply, praying to their altar every night at home.

When he finds the way to teleport back to his family, he is elated - he gets to see his beloved family again!!

Who can't stand him... the Tagomi they know from THEIR timeline.

So we see him wrestle with rebuilding his family in the alternate timeline, while also being one of the key people in his natural timeline capable of stopping WWIII. And he has to make the choice between being with his family in post-WWII San Francisco, or stopping WWIII in his timeline.

The role is acted masterfully, the story is deep and compelling, and BOTH decisions are the "right" one to make. So when he choses one over the other, it is a truly powerful moment, and completely surprising and completely right.

And the characters who go through similar journeys are John Smith, his wife, the Kempetai Chief Inspector Kido, the weasel antique store owner Childen, and even tertiary-level characters like the lebensborn of the Reich who are the parallels of a Germanic version of the Andy Warhol crowd of experimental young ones...

Really, I think the series is worth it. Yeah, I started watching it when I was sick, so I binged on like the first three episodes and then got into the fourth and fifth tentatively, but it definitely rewarded my initial patience.

Hence this thread. I wanna talk about this more... and that hasn't happened since Battlestar Galactica.