Set in the early 1940s in Newark, New Jersey, The Plot Against America is an alternate history tale that supposes the United States had not entered World War II... and instead had come under the thrall of a charismatic, xenophobic president whose tacit endorsement of Hitler's campaign against the Jewish people steadily inflames white supremacist sentiments.
From that brief synopsis, it's not hard to see why Simon and Burns would want to adapt that book to air on television in 2020. The novel might have seemed like a "what if?" look back to many readers when it was published in 2004, but seems more like a prophetic, cautionary tale these days. I've never read that book myself, but I would say the adaptation at least is good, more or less, if a bit on the nose.
Mainly, I couldn't help but wonder if The Plot Against America was doing a few disservices in the telling of its story. First, the extreme prejudice depicted against American Jews in World War II arguably minimizes actual extreme prejudice against Japanese Americans that really happened. When a plot point arrives that sounds suspiciously like plans to put American Jews in camps... well, it's alternate history, so there really isn't a way to mention that this really happened to Japanese Americans. And I feel like that bit of history isn't really known widely enough for me to be fully comfortable with the way this story is arguably "appropriating" it.
I also felt a little uncomfortable with the inflection point the narrative uses to spawn this alternate reality. Of course, alternate history fiction is always premised on the tiniest change leading to massive results: turn right somewhere instead of left, and soon you're on an entirely different road. Here, the departure point is that Charles Lindbergh decides to run for president. And if I felt that the underlying "moral" pushed by the mini-series was "we're always just one step away from a frightening swerve toward authoritarianism," I think I'd be more on board. Instead, I feel like the point the mini-series is making is that "at the right place and time, one charismatic bad actor can alter the course of history." Put simply, I worry the mini-series gives Lindbergh (and a certain inept, Cheeto-hued Mussolini who is clearly being framed as a one-for-one analogy) too much credit as being the sole cause of all America's moral failings (then and now).
In the moments where I could set those concerns aside, The Plot Against America is an engaging tale. It's focused on one family, the Levins, but really paints a complete picture through their eyes. The father, Herman, thinks he sees the worst coming, but has a little too much faith in the goodness and intelligence of the masses. The mother, Bess, embraces the role of dutiful wife for too long, until it's too late. Their two boys Philip and Sandy each have their own experiences with prejudice that split their views. Herman's nephew Alvin sneaks off to Canada so he can fight in the war. Bess' sister Evelyn falls in with a rabbi whose strategy of appeasement with the Powers That Be splinters the family unity. It's a good cast, with particular standouts being Winona Ryder as Evelyn, Zoe Kazan as Bess, and John Turturro as Rabbi Bengelsdorf.
The characters and the cast would pull me back in whenever my doubts had me pulling away... but then the mini-series as a whole ended in an odd way that ultimately pushed me away again. The final episode is a bit too neat in ticking all the boxes: this character getting a come-uppance, that character admitting they were wrong, and so on. Plus, without giving away specifics, it ends on an ambiguous note about just which way history will turn next. It felt like such an odd choice that I had to research whether that was, in fact, the ending of the original book. No, it was not; the book concretely answers the question that the mini-series chooses to leave open.
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