YMMV / Amerika

• Anvilicious: 14 hours of "Communism is bad, freedom is precious and fragile, modern Americans are too complacent."
• Awesome Music: One thing that even the series' detractors can agree on is that the soundtrack is pretty damn epic. It is by Basil Poledouris, after all. Doubles as a Moment of Awesome for Poledouris, as he composed and recorded the equivalent of four entire film scores in the course of scoring the series. It also stands in counterpoint to his more somber score to another similarly-themed production he scored few years before.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The whole concept of a Russian takeover of the U.S., after allegations that Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, as this Politico article points out.
  • In the wake of the 2021 riot at the US Capitol, the subplot of Congress getting violently attacked for failing to submit to an outside group's political will is a bit uncomfortable.
• Memetic Mutation: A clip of a "Lincoln Brigade" child reading a speech about the crimes of the past and the new socialist future at the Heartland founding convention frequently makes the rounds during US elections, especially around the time of the Democratic National Convention.
• Narm: When the writer-director (Donald Wrye) of the classic weepy figure skating Melodrama Ice Castles tries his hand at an epic politically-charged Dystopia tale, this is unsurprisingly the result.
  • Devin Milford's speeches are either bland platitudes, silence, or cliches that are treated as major dramatic moments. Word of God is that, due to Kris Kristofferson's influence and the political furor around the mini series, the politics of his character were severely toned down by the creative team.
• Signature Scene: The Milford, Nebraska Lincoln Day celebration, centering on a joyless parade where marchers carry banners with pictures of Abraham Lincoln and Vladimir Lenin side-by-side, culminating with some civil disobedience against the Soviets (an upside-down American flag and an impromptu rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner"). Even critics who didn't care for the series as a whole cited it as a powerful sequence.
• Strawman Has a Point: As referenced in Take That!, this was conceived as a response to The Day After, arguing against what was perceived as the earlier film's subtext that abject surrender was a better alternative to nuclear holocaust. But the horrors of atomic war depicted in The Day After were an order of magnitude worse than the Communist domination depicted in this film. Better red than dead indeed.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Coming after Red Dawn (1984), a film often likened to a Live-Action Cartoon, there was still a space for a serious, sober treatment of the basic premise, especially given the series' large budget and inherent Worldbuilding possibilities of a Soviet America. The end product, however, just hinted at the most interesting questions, like how the takeover occurred or how the occupation actually functioned, and instead focussed on Prime Time Soap shenanigans and family drama.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: The major reason why it ended up as a ratings bust. Soviet America is a boring, horrid Dystopia, it doesn't seem like there's any serious threat to the Soviet leadership despite their obvious mismanagement of things, and the nominal hero Milford lacks any real charisma. Obviously, the whole point is "A communist America would really suck", but it doesn't give viewers much of a reason to watch beyond that.
• Unintentional Period Piece: Not only does it come across this way now because of the end of the Cold War, the portrayal of the USSR as a ruthless totalitarian regime had become outdated between 1983 (when it was conceived, and also the year Ronald Reagan gave his "Evil Empire" speech) and its 1987 airdate, with Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms paving the way for friendlier relations between the superpowers. Also, knowing that the Real Life Soviets were slowly losing their grip on the Eastern Bloc at the same time this miniseries had them successfully overthrowing the entire US government adds a weird layer to any modern viewing of it.

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