As I was watching this episode of what normally is a series of great documentaries I wondered if it was going to be 2 parts but unfortunately it wasn't. After about 30 minutes of this 1 hour episode very little of the feud had been talked about. Most of this episode was about land grabbing which went on during that time and while that was informative I was much more interested in what this was advertised to be, the story of the feud. The feud itself seems to be a very minor backstory here and not the central one, in fact the McCoys were hardly mentioned at all.
What's so ironic is at the beginning someone says that what he knew about the Harfield and McCoy feud he learned from a Bugs Bunny cartoon which was not at all accurate but watching this documentary sheds no more light on the subject than the cartoon did. This was a very poorly done documentary focusing much more on the development of Appalachia than with the infamous decades long feud. They made a point of saying the people weren't the stereotypical toothless violent hillbillies but never went into detail. While I usually enjoy The American Experience thoroughly this was the only episode I've seen which was not at all enjoyable. There are plenty of myths about the feud and the families but this doesn't do anything to dispel any of them.