History Series / Roots2016

** Chicken George loved his master, Tom Lea, and [[WellDoneSonGuy wanted nothing more than to impress him--until Nat Turner's rebellion. Lea becomes paranoid that George is going to betray him and orders him to chain himself up until they make it back home. And he allows another slave, Mingo, to die of injuries inflicted by overzealous white militiamen. After this incident, [[BrokenPedestal Chicken George finally sees what a disgusting, terrible man Lea is]].

* ArchnemesisDad: Tom Lea eventually becomes this to [[spoiler:Chicken George]], for being abusive and even [[spoiler:getting him set to England for losing a bet]].

** Frederick Murray, a Confederate soldier whose father owned many of Kunta Kinte's descendants. He's so repulsive in every way that you just can't help but cheer when [[spoiler:Chicken George]] puts a bullet in him.

* AwfulWeddedLife: Tom and Patricia Lea's marriage is incredibly cold. He [[DomesticAbuse emotionally abuses]] her for being infertile and rapes [[spoiler:Kizzy]] within hearing distance of her. She eventually leaves him when his gambling habit grows out of control.

* ChildByRape: Chicken George was born as the result of Tom Lea raping [[spoiler:Kizzy]] once the latter arrived in Lea’s farm.
* ChildhoodFriend: Missy serves as this for Kizzy throughout most of Episode 2. [[spoiler:Sadly, Missy turns out to be a FalseFriend at the episode's end]].

* DisappearedDad: [[spoiler:Chicken George]], though not by choice. [[spoiler:He was sold to an Englishman and had to work for over twenty years to get his freedom so he could go home to his family. His children and grandchildren welcome him back with open arms; apart from Tom, though he eventually warms up to Chicken George too]].

* EveryoneHasStandards: Mr. Murray might be a plantation owner who bought Chicken George’s wife and children, but he asks his racist son Frederick to let [[spoiler:Chicken George (who is by now a free man)]] reunite with his wife and children upon his arrival. He also opposes secession from the Union prior to the Civil War, and he is later seen desperately pleading Frederick to change his mind when [[spoiler:he decides to kill Nancy for being a Union mole]].
* EveryoneCallsHimBarkeep: Fiddler, the... fiddler. His real name is [[spoiler:Henry]], something he only shares with Kunta Kinte.
* FalseFriend: [[spoiler:Missy]] is seemingly established as Kizzy’s closest friend from childhood, protecting the latter from racist relatives and teaching her how to read. And then, [[spoiler:when Noah was revealed to be carrying papers forged by Kizzy]], she doesn’t bother protecting Kizzy [[spoiler:from being sold to another slave owner]]. Ouch.
* FireForgedFriends: Like the novel, Kunta Kinte and Fiddler become this by the end of Episode 1. In Episode 4, Cyrus becomes close friends with [[spoiler:Chicken George]] after they failed to get on a stagecoach out of North Carolina.
* GenerationalSaga: Naturally, as it aims to tell "The Saga of an American Family", the story follows 7 generations, starting with Omoro Kinte, then his son Kunta Kinte, then ''his'' daughter Kizzy, then her son Chicken George along with his son Tom. Tom and his wife have an [[BabiesEverAfter unnamed daughter]], and a member of the next generation, Alex Haley, appears in the DistantFinale.

* HateSink: Tom Lea is crude, ruthless, and petty. He emotionally abuses his wife and rapes [[spoiler:Kizzy]], later growing irrationally possessive of her when she tries to find happiness with Marcellus. He ends up squandering the few PetTheDog moments he has with his son Chicken George by [[spoiler:holding him at gunpoint at the behest of his fellow whites and selling him off to an Englishman, keeping from his family for two decades.]] Not even the other slaveowners of the story have anything nice to say about him.

* HopeSpot: [[spoiler:George's master Tom Lea promises to set him free if he wins a $10,000 cock fight, which he does. However, Lea takes an additional bet, loses, and sells George to cover his debt]].
* IDieFree: [[spoiler:Fiddler]]'s death has shade of this, since he proudly declares his true name to the white men surrounding him as he makes his final stand.
* InternalizedCategorism: Understandably comes up often. A point the remake stresses is just how stratified society was in antebellum America: the rich white plantation owners are - generally - fairly civil to their slaves, treating them like horses at worst or sometimes even like pets. Slaves are a major investment of money, so the actual plantation owners don't physically harm them at mere whim. The ones who seem to vehemently ''hate'' African slaves are the poor whites, who serve as overseers and slave-catchers, and outright sadistically enjoy mistreating and torturing slaves. Many of these low-ranking overseers are poor Irish immigrants considered barely a step above slaves themselves, and thus have a pathological ''need'' to demonstrate that they are superior to the black slaves. The overseer who whips Kunta, Connelly, is outright ''livid'' that the slave Fiddler is considered presentable in high white society (as a skilled musician) in ways that Connelly will never be, or that Fiddler can speak to him with any hint of equal authority. Most revealing is the scene in which Fiddler openly disagrees with Connelly about how to punish Kunta, so Connelly outright tackles him to the ground, starts brawling with him, and in a SuspiciouslySpecificDenial, Connelly starts shouting "I am not a nigger! You think you're the same as me?! I'm better than you! I AM NOT A NIGGER!" In the second episode, when Kizzy plays dolls with the white girls, Kizzy directly points out that white men hold dominion over white women in a direct parallel to how whites dominate the black slaves. White women in the plantation-owning families often take joy in ordering around black men - as long as there's someone below them on the social ladder.

* MadeASlave: Kunta Kinte is enslaved along with [[spoiler:Jinna]] when African slavers gun down his horse during his attempt to warn Juffre.
* MamaBear: [[spoiler:Kizzy]] outright threatens to kill her owner, ''to his face'', if he so much as touches her grandchildren.

* TheMole: [[spoiler:Nancy and Jerusalem are spies for the Union. Nancy gets close to the Murray family so she can steal information about Confederate army. Eventually, they're both caught and executed]].
* MoodWhiplash: The joyous celebrations after the Civil War ends is quickly replaced by frustration when the freedmen have to become sharecroppers to subsist. While they're not technically slaves anymore, they're still working for their old masters, doing the exact same things. Only now many white people in the South are bitter about their loss and are targeting freedmen.
* NouveauRiche: Tom Lea is an Irishman who grew up dirt poor and is trying his damndest to become wealthy and respected. Do ''not'' [[BerserkButton look down on him for it]].
* OneSteveLimit: Averted. Chicken George's father and son are both named Tom. One of his granddaughters is named [[spoiler:Kizzy]], after his mother.

** Tom Lea horrifically rapes [[spoiler:Kizzy]] at the end of Episode 2. This led to the birth of [[ChildByRape Chicken George]], the primary protagonist of Episodes 3 and 4. And Tom Lea continued raping her for years afterwards.

** George gives a scathing one to [[spoiler:Tom Lea for going back on a promise to set him free, saying that he's just as worthless as the Southern aristocrats always said he was]].

* SexSlave: [[spoiler:Kizzy]] is repeatedly raped by her master for many years, starting the very first night she was brought to his farm.
* ShownTheirWork: One of several major reasons for producing the remake, as Levar Burton explained, is that the intervening four decades' worth of historical scholarship have greatly refined understanding of these time periods (much of this scholarship outright inspired by the original miniseries). Among these refinements:

** While there are loads of white characters who are [[{{Understatement}} not very nice]], Tom Lea is a narcissistic and self-aggrandizing slave owner who lacks any redeeming qualities. His wife's disgust while silently observing him rape [[spoiler:Kizzy]] speaks volumes to how others view him.

* TokenMinority: During the [[UsefulNotes/TheAmericanRevolution Revolutionary War,]] among the runaway slaves that join the British Army in exchange for their freedom, is a Native American who wants the colonists to stop encroaching on his land.
* WellDoneSonGuy: Chicken George is very fond of his master and seeks his approval. [[spoiler:That is, [[BrokenPedestal until his master turns on him]] during the Nat Turner Rebellion]].

** [[spoiler:Missy and Kizzy's friendship ends when Missy allows her uncle to sell Kizzy to another owner]].
** [[spoiler:Chicken George loved his master, Tom Lea, and [[WellDoneSonGuy wanted nothing more than to impress him]]. Until Nat Turner's rebellion. Lea becomes paranoid that George is going to betray him and orders him to chain himself up until they make it back home. And he allows another slave, Mingo, to die of injuries inflicted by overzealous white militiamen. After this incident, [[BrokenPedestal Chicken George finally sees what a disgusting, terrible man Lea is]]]].
* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: The audience never learns the final fates of important characters such as Kunta Kinte and Belle. This applies even more in-universe, such as when three of George and Matilda's children were sold by their second master and never reunite with their family. This is justified and an example of Administrivia/TropesAreNotBad in this case because, during slavery, people were often separated from loved ones and never saw them again or got any closure.

* WickedStepMother: Averted. Tom Lea's wife Patricia knows that George is his son, since she witnessed him raping [[spoiler:Kizzy]], but she's quite nice to George.

** In the first episode alone, the PrisonRiot Kunta Kinte leads ends in the death of Uncle Silla and many other slaves. He later tries to escape Dr. Waller's plantation, only for him to be caught and brutally whipped by Connelly. It only gets worse for Kunta at the end of Episode 2, with an escape attempt from serving as British CannonFodder leading to his recapture [[spoiler:and amputation]], his ritual of naming his new baby girl [[spoiler:ending in Fiddler getting killed by patrollers]], and his attempt to raise a family with Belle [[spoiler:ending in his daughter being sold to Tom Lea]].
** Chicken George [[spoiler:wins a $10,000 cockfight and is promised by Tom Lea to be emancipated for his win. Unfortunately, Tom's greed leads him to bet $20,000 for another cockfight, one that George quickly loses. Consequently, Tom breaks his promise and willingly sells George to the victors to pay off his debt.]]

* SlaveryIsASpecialKindOfEvil: Like [[Series/{{Roots}} the original]], this version does not shy away from showing the horrors the enslaved Africans and their children had to endure in a land where they were considered nothing more than sentient farm equipment at worst or pets in the best case scenario.