It did get annoying. How many ways can one say "things in 1628 were much more harsh and strict than 21st century Americans are used to"?
I do think the people told a very good, if subtle, story last night.
When the governor was complaining that many didn't want to follow the laws and were acting like children, a little flag started waving in the back of mind.
These are the types of attitudes and laws that eventually led to the founding of our nation. People that were like "the heck with this, I'm not going to live under such an oppressive government". As more and more had children in the colonies, and their children had children, you had more and more people that had no connection with England and were wondering why they should have to follow some of the harsh laws that were around.
You also got a slight glimpse of why those drawing up the Constitution were very adamant about the seperation of Church and State. Back then, the Church was used to keep people in line and was basically an extension of the monarchy, to an extent. The atheist and her family showed their liberal leanings when they caved into authority and went to church, even though they didn't believe in it.
As an experiment, it's not a very good one. In the 1620s, they would have considered themselves subjects, and were born under the rule of a king/queen, and were used to having much of their behavior dictated. It took generations before things reached a point where action was taken. The "rebellion" your seeing on the show is basically an accelerated version of this, because it's coming from people who were used to being free and then having harsh laws imposed upon them, rather than the other way around.
They made the governor look like a jerk in that it looked like he was the one making the laws (although the voiceover did remind you that the laws he was coming up with were in place in 1628). By extension, because he's a Baptist preacher, it painted a somewhat grim picture of of Christians, even though he wasn't actually making the laws, but was reading documents that the producers gave him, and was just roleplaying.
There are people in this country that think many Christians would love nothing better than to return to the kinds of laws and lifestyle of the 17th century.
I think that very much needed to be said on this thread.