Went too fast and there were too many characters to cover so that it was hard to follow. Given a 10-episode series which was about 37 or so minutes of show each, so you were lucky to get 15-20 minutes of character development for each wife, excluding the interaction with the husbands (and not even counting the post-Mercury 7 wives, of whom probably got only 5 minutes or less each and some not even that). I was, like you, familiar with the material because of “The Right Stuff.”
It also was ridiculous in that for a decade-long arc, the wives looked as fresh (if not younger due to the more modern styles as it progressed) at the end when a decade should’ve worn them down (and the marriages that ended in divorce). You’d need a soap-opera saga to do it all justice.
Yeah, I’d have liked them to do one year maybe two per season. Think of the much greater emotional impact if we’ve been with the group for a couple of seasons before the Gemini 9 get introduced. Ah well, it’s an imperfect world.