'JFK, American Experience' review: What might have been

"JFK" provides exactly that, but also offers a convenient boundary, so viewers can decide which night they want to watch. The best is Tuesday's, which covers the presidency. Monday night's is fast and perfunctory -- a portrait of callow, privileged youth through the 1960 run for the White House. Tuesday covers not quite three years -- January 1961 to November 1963. "JFK" indicates Kennedy's entire legacy rests on just one 13-month period, from October 1962 until his death.

That was when civil rights legislation began, a nuclear test ban treaty was forged and (of course) the Cuban missile crisis was resolved. It's all cleanly, crisply told, while the assessments seem exactly right. But Tuesday's episode also reveals a president getting a second wind, learning from his mistakes, and finally realizing his full potential. As one commentator says, that's the vital image "fixed" forever in our minds -- and one that still stokes a measure of melancholy over what might have been.

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