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There’s a moment about five minutes into Point of Honor that illustrates what precious little thought the producers actually put into this show. An aging plantation owner in 1861 Lynchberg, Virginia tells his fussy daughter Lorelai that she reminds him most of her dead mother. He then brazenly tells a pianist to get up by gruffly barking, “Move boy!” so he can park Lorelai down at the keys. He asks her to play a song that her mother used to play. The song is Claude Debussy’s “Clair de Lune.”

Now, I get why that might seem innocuous. It’s a famous piano solo that’s so well-known that it appears in Twilight. However, while many antebellum plantation owners were fond of French culture, none of them — as far as I know — were time travelers. Debussy started work on “Clair de Lune” in 1890 and he didn’t publish it until 1902. The song takes its title from a Paul Verlaine poem that was written in 1869. So, you’ll understand why I was so jarred by this musical selection. It’s the same as if Peggy Olsen turned on the radio on Mad Men, and Daft Punk started playing. Sure, not everyone in Point of Honor‘s audience is going to be a history snob, but everyone has google.

All historic drama show runners face a problem: how historically accurate do you make the show? It takes a staggering amount of research to get every detail right. That research not only takes up time needed to write and produce a show, but can often turn up nagging facts that can ruin a character’s arc or spell trouble for the show’s plot. But historic dramas only work if the show runners go big or go home. You can either be a slave to detail and immerse your viewers in as accurate a world as possible, or you can eschew the confines of reality and play a lot of Mumford & Sons in the 16th Century French Court like they do on Reign. Either choice works, but you have to commit because otherwise you risk ruining your audience’s ability to suspend their disbelief.

Point of Honor clearly wants to commit to the real drama of the American Civil War, but it lacks the budget and the attention to detail necessary. Sure, I’m being a fussy snob in calling out their historically inaccurate musical choice, but they also make the mistake of having two characters blatantly discuss how the Civil War was all about slavery. It wasn’t. It was in part about slavery, but slavery was a moral concern for abolitionists. The American Civil War was about how centralized government should be and it’s a dispute that still rages on Capitol Hill.

There’s also a hideously offensive moment when the Southern family we’re following and meant to root for gets props for being anti-slavery. Our young Virginian hero makes a speech against slavery at West Point just as he’s making a stand against the Union. Later, we watch the family free their slaves as “Amazing Grace” is sung. It’s a terribly schmaltzy moment and it’s cowardly to absolve your white heroes of the sin of slavery so easily. Yes, many Southern plantation owners freed their slaves, but the vast majority did not. Point of Honor is sidestepping the fact that many people who considered themselves “good” actually owned other human beings and abused them. That’s complex, that’s interesting, and that’s something honest.

Of course, freeing their slaves also means that they’re left to the nefarious devices of other “bad” white people. We learn that one of the overseers sold a house slave named Phoebe to another master the week before, so she’s not free. And that’s upsetting.

There are a myriad of other concerns I have with the show. They have to do with the acting, the terrible-looking costumes, and how the three sisters at the Point of Honor Plantation have different accents.

Was there anything I liked? I liked the battle scenes. I’m a avowed fan of the epic miniseries Gettysburg, so I like watching the Yanks and Rebs fire muskets and canons at each other. Point of Honor does a decent job at staging all these early skirmishes and that’s probably because the East Coast is full of Civil War re-enactors who know what they’re doing and can be called upon for these sorts of projects.

Anyway, I didn’t really care for Point of Honor, but that doesn’t really matter. After all, I was morally offended by Hand of God and Amazon has already ordered a full season of that mess. [Watch Point of Honor on Amazon Instant]

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[Photos: Amazon]