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Posted a little about it in the Apple TV thread, but yeah the first episode didn't really grab me and I think it's down to us coming to these characters supposedly already fully formed and competent in their roles (sans actual combat situations) without seeing how they got there. There has been no chance to really build up the character dynamics, relationships, become familiar with personalities etc like was done so effectively in Band of Brothers through their basic training leading into D-Day. I'll keep watching because I imagine familiarity will help out and the pedigree of the show is too strong not to give it a chance, but I perhaps went in with far too high expectations.
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Jan 27, 2024 05:46
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It's a pedantic thing, but the "fights" (punching, not flying!) so far have felt weirdly shot, like it doesn't remotely look like the other person is being hit, and it made the RAF pilot having to be carried away by his mates feel really weird because there was no sense at all that the American guy had really drilled him. I think the earlier scene showing him punching Bucky in the face was meant to showcase what a good/dangerous boxer he was but that punch looked about a foot away from hitting anybody as well. Again, an oddly pedantic thing, obviously I'm not expecting the actors to actually punch each other but you'd think a production this high budget would be able to shoot and edit a fight to actually look like the punches were connecting. On the positive side of things, I love the interior sets for the airplanes, and I would absolutely eat up them spending more time showing how the navigators operate, the use of charts vs. "eyeballing" it like Crosby had to do to find their initial target, the difference between a training flight and a combat flight when it comes to handling the pressure etc. Love learning things like the use of the flare gun to signal planes back into formation, the little kids who hero worship the 19-year-old crew chief, the way the "treat" of a big meal before a flight has come to be viewed with somewhat dread by the crews who call it "the Last Supper", the arguments between the RAF and the USAF about the benefits of precision daytime bombings vs. blanket night bombing, Buck admitting he agrees with the RAF but sided with his guys because "I didn't like the delivery" etc. There is definitely potential in this series and I hope they can pull it off.
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Jan 27, 2024 06:21
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XYZAB posted:He did say that he noticed some “fooey” in some parts, but when I asked him to elaborate, he went off on a tangent about how he and his friends used to throw rocks on the roof of his officer’s quarters, which were those semi-circular corrugated metal things so it’d make a hell of a racket, and the officers used to come running after them screaming at them to gently caress off as he ran as fast as he could. I don’t know if this was in Greenland or if he was remembering this from somewhere else he was stationed. He tells me this and starts laughing hysterically, all the while my grandma is right beside him, giving him the meanest stink eye. They’ve been married 64 years and met in the air force. She was a signals officer and still can’t tell us exactly what she did on account of it being classified or something. All we know is she intercepted radio signals from Russia. Haha, your grandpa (and grandma!) rule.
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Jan 29, 2024 08:21
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Cojawfee posted:The other two shows didn't feature much of the enemy either. Hey, this guy was all over an episode! 
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Jan 31, 2024 01:52
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It took me way too long to figure out what (of several things) was bothering me about Buck and I finally grasped that it's because he reminds me of Val Kilmer in Top Secret, and it makes it near impossible for me to take any of his scenes seriously. Latest episode was better than the first two, but I am kind of bewildered by the dissonance between the examples of how you can't always save everybody (the one dude having to abandon the trapped gunner and living vs. The pilot refusing to leave his mortally wounded copilot and trying to land his badly damaged plane resulting in killing them both) accompanied by Buck being the cool and calm super pilot who shouts down his copilot giving sensible solutions and proceeds to fly them to Africa successfully despite all the problems. I mean I assume something akin to this happened in real life but in terms of a television episode I'm not sure what the intended takeaway is for the audience? That anybody who didn't achieve this miracle was just not good enough? Somebody said Buck reminds them of some dude from a propaganda film and yeah it really feels like it at times. I am very, very interested in the downed guy in Belgium trying to make his way back to England though, hope that gets some time.
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Feb 5, 2024 07:55
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Roughly around the same time we also see other pilots doing water landings but we have no idea what their situation is, if their planes are in worse condition than Buck's etc, but my presumption is none of them thought to lighten the load to keep going? I think in the effort to show how competent and controlled Buck is, it has had a negative effect of making others look lesser than by comparison while also making Buck himself kinda annoying (not as annoying as Bucky though) - it would be nice to see the guy have a moment of doubt or concern or gently caress up, and "you made it all the way to Africa but couldn't make the runway?  " doesn't count!On the flip side, I think Crosby is starting to work more as a character for me now. I did like that moment where he almost snaps saying he wants to make sure the log accurately reflects when one of the other planes went down, because he wants to acknowledge that death/pay his respects in the only way he can while also making sure those people have SOME final marker. Him forgoing all the playfulness and teasing with the fork in the road riddle by just grunting,"The answer is 184" to reiterate that he was confident in the heading he had given them was also good stuff.
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Feb 5, 2024 09:11
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Entirely possible I'm just reading the intended portrayal wrong, absolutely. The character just bugs me I guess 
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Feb 5, 2024 09:37
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Well this show just entirely justified it's budget as far as I'm concerned 
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Feb 6, 2024 02:27
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Cojawfee posted:Mabel Thompson has already lost 3 of her hunk sons, so we need to go find the fourth and bring him home. They don't teach that at Oxford 
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Feb 6, 2024 02:41
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I still think that early Band of Brothers episode where they assault the German artillery is amazing in how it is filmed and edited, and how effectively it showcases the result of all that training, including adapting when things don't go according to plan. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtHscTcEb4k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cr-RsS0w-4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4o4LU9yM3s
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Feb 11, 2024 14:02
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Dr.Radical posted:No they need to do the theater my grandfather was in: The Caribbean. He was a dentist in the navy and had harrowing stories about stuff like seeing a huge spider in the dental clinic on the ship Spielberg and Hanks finally give us the gritty 21st Century adaptation of It Ain't Half Hot Mum the world has been begging for.
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Feb 13, 2024 09:30
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U-47: You know what zey say, Greyhound? Ze bull gets zee horns Krause: But... you're the bull. You're getting the horns? U-47: ... you win zis round, Greyhound...
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Feb 15, 2024 23:55
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Episode 5 was definitely the best one of the series so far for me, but it's a shame it's come with half of the show apparently done now. The shot of the remains of the rest of the 100th bombers falling through the air around them was particularly strong I thought.
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Feb 17, 2024 09:59
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Still holding out hope that Band of Brothers through The Pacific through the first five episodes of Masters of Air was all an incredibly complicated delivery mechanism for it to turn into a remake of Hogan's Heroes.
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Feb 20, 2024 09:05
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kiminewt posted:I have no idea what Hogan's Heroes is It finally happened: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NChPewIs0js Hogan's Heroes was a sitcom about American POWs in a German Prisoner of War camp famed for never having a successful escape, but actually using it as a cover to connect with Resistance Networks to aid bombing and sabotage operations and to aid prisoners from other camps to escape through a series of underground tunnels. It was a controversial subject for a show initially but proved very popular, and had a number of Jewish actors who were cast with the agreement that the Nazis would always be the butt of the jokes, made to look incompetent or corrupt. The titular character was an American Air Force Colonel running a crew of Allied soldiers - British, French, American - played by Bob Crane who was a weird loving dude, and I also recommend the movie Autofocus for a look at his life and death (murder).
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Feb 20, 2024 18:07
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M_Gargantua posted:Speed, time, a slide rule, and the occasional visual landmark. I know it's more complicated than I'm putting it, but I did laugh when Crosby is asked for a heading and gives up on the maps for the moment and runs over to look out the window 
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Feb 20, 2024 19:55
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Yeah, fully onboard for POW stuff in the next episode, and Rosenthal is really working for me as the "lead" in a way neither of the Bucks did, but also I'm finally interested in the Bucks now that they're grounded and in captivity looking to escape, so this current setup is working nicely for me. Only 3 episodes left just as the series is starting to feel like it's found its feet is a shame though.
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Feb 23, 2024 13:38
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Open Source Idiom posted:Two episodes left. The eighth episode is a complete side step. That's kinda loving crazy 
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Feb 23, 2024 23:45
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Keyser_Soze posted:The British lost a bunch of actual Lords and poo poo during WW1 since officers were still voluntarily leading suicidal cavalry charges into machine guns especially during 2014-2015. drat, the Brexit campaign was more hardcore than I remember.
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Feb 29, 2024 03:46
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Episode was a bit of a letdown after the previous two seemed to be the show hitting its stride, but I did like that the Americans didn't get shoehorned into the "Great Escape" and were caught as completely off-guard by it as the Germans were. Count me in as one of those disappointed that the earlier storyline about the guys landing in Belgium and being smuggled out gets resolved with them just cheerily biking in to say goodbye to everybody. Rosie's still the most interesting guy in the show and I'm glad (and sad!) that he decided to stick around after getting his 25 flights done.
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Mar 2, 2024 09:42
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It was part of the Geneva Convention, and handled through the Red Cross, I believe?Article 36 of the 1929 Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War posted:Each of the belligerents shall fix periodically the number of letters and postcards which prisoners of war of different categories shall be permitted to send per month, and shall notify that number to the other belligerent. These letters and cards shall be sent by post by the shortest route. They may not be delayed or withheld for disciplinary motives. Not later than one week after his arrival in camp, and similarly in case of sickness, each prisoner shall be enabled to send a postcard to his family informing them of his capture and the state of his health. The said postcards shall be forwarded as quickly as possible and shall not be delayed in any manner. As a general rule, the correspondence of prisoners shall be written in their native language. Belligerents may authorize correspondence in other languages. So it seems that once taken prisoner, you could write a postcard to your family saying,"Hey, yeah this sucks but I am still alive!" and then the families would be able to send them mail which the Red Cross would deliver along with checking the conditions of the camp etc. The idea being that you let your enemy prisoners do that so that it is reciprocated in kind for your soldiers who have been captured. Edit: Beaten
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Mar 5, 2024 15:58
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I absolutely cannot fathom why, based on what it looks like will be the final episode "wrap up" of all the storylines, they didn't have the Tuskagee Airmen in the show from the beginning or at least early so everything could come together. But then this whole show has been a series of,"Why didn't they do <x> instead?" where the episodes and scenes I've enjoyed have been in spite of the overall weakness of the show itself. Last week's episode ending with,"That's the mission now, we're bait to draw out the Luftwaffe and crush them" and this week's episode being,"Yeah the Luftwaffe are basically a spent force now and no longer a relevant threat" is kind of insane to me, there's at least one episode you could get out of demonstrating that. It's fascinating to armchair quarterback and think of how this show might have worked. Show them training! Make Rosie and Crosby the central characters early on or, if you're insisting on the Bucks, put the Bucks into the POW camp earlier. Introduce the Tuskagee Airmen earlier, demonstrate why so many of the POWs reacted with gratitude for the fighter support they'd been given by them during missions etc. Actually, you know, show them flying missions instead of taking off and then the wait later to see how many returned etc. After next week is done gonna take the weekend and binge back through Band of Brothers, just to remember how good a show in this setting can actually be.
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Mar 9, 2024 06:26
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I will say though that I loved Crosby insisting that he was okay but his words are just babbled gibberish.
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Mar 9, 2024 06:33
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Lampsacus posted:I bet Gatwa had like, one scene, and then when he was cast as, or well received, as ol docky who they used every last .mp4 in which he appears. Hence weird cuts like the one where he is listening to the mission brief or whatever. I had to laugh that they first time you see him for more than just like a brief cut of his face he's sitting down at a poker game, and it cuts before he can say anything. It had powerful "adult Maggie Simpson never gets to speak" energy.
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Mar 10, 2024 03:32
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I remember genuinely enjoying the scene where they fake out that they're a fishing boat full of drunken sailors singing 
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Mar 10, 2024 09:58
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Cojawfee posted:Rosie is so cool, why aren't we doing missions with him? It was VERY important we spend an episode showing one of the Bucks being a giant drunken rear end in a top hat in Iceland so we would all be wowed at how cool he is.
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Mar 10, 2024 22:44
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Feel like I'm largely just repeating myself at this point, but there were good parts of that episode that just further reinforced the season-long problem that the show wasn't quite sure what it wanted to be. There's enough there to make me thing it COULD have been salvaged into something better, but then I get the impression that the whole reason it got made in the first place is because enough people kept saying that and having a go for 10+ years until eventually somebody said,"gently caress it, good enough, put it out there!" Time for a Band of Brothers rewatch!
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Mar 15, 2024 14:48
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INTJ Mastermind posted:Buck, Bucky I honestly kept forgetting which one between the rear end in a top hat with main character syndrome and Val Kilmer from Top Secret was Buck or Bucky, so I just settled on calling them the Bucks. Rosie was the best character on the show, and I think he only showed up for the first time in episode... 4?
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Mar 15, 2024 22:57
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Just rewatched Currahee from Band of Brothers and seriously, even one episode of training in Masters of the Air would have made a huge difference. In Curahee you get to know characters, personalities, histories etc all with the ever looming first mission hanging over everybody's heads and getting closer and closer, as opposed to Masters of the Air showing Buck and Bucky drinking and dancing before Miles Teller Buck goes to Iceland and acts like a huge rear end in a top hat all while Val Kilmer Buck spends the episode looking like he (justifiably) hates his "best friend".
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Mar 16, 2024 02:14
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Speaking of not being good at watching things, I have to admit I wasn't sure, but the guy they take on that final run WAS the young mechanic who headed up the ground crew, I thought? When he said he came over by boat in 44 and had never flown in a plane and Crosby is mouth agape over it, I thought it was because this is the guy who was fixing up their planes (extremely well!) and he couldn't quite believe it? Did I mix him up with somebody else? Flikken posted:Linked earlier in the thread the 100th had a wild time in training with one exercise had them take off in Kansas and the whole group ended up scattered all over the western united states, except one plane that ended up in eastern Tenessee. Which coincedently was where the navigators wife lived. Oh my God, that would have been a fantastic inclusion. Jerusalem fucked around with this message at 09:04 on Mar 16, 2024 |
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Mar 16, 2024 09:02
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Day of Days in BoB still a loving incredible watch, and the one-off characters who appear in it like "Cowboy" Hall ("From Texas?" "No, Manhattan") actually feel like real people. Also I don't have the best eye for this stuff but I thought the visual effects of the planes flying through the flak and the paratroopers making their jumps through all that hell stands out particularly strongly even today. I had also forgotten just how quickly Speirs is established as a very effective killer with zero fear or seemingly moral compunctions and how his direct approach is contrasted so effectively against Winters' more strategic and careful (even if quickly improvised) planning.
Jerusalem fucked around with this message at 19:56 on Mar 28, 2024 |
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Mar 16, 2024 12:52
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Carentan is another great episode for Band of Brothers, with the taking of the titular town and the later engagement with the Germans planning a counterattack both incredibly compelling to watch. I also love Marc Warren's portrayal of Blithe, a guy seemingly moving through water, still all there but also detached from reality by the sheer enormity of emotions/terror/confusion and basically moving and talking and reacting almost by muscle memory as his mind tries to reconcile everything. But I just can't get over the fact that even today the home media releases retain the final section declaring that Blithe died from his wounds in 1948, despite the fact he not only lived, but remained in active military service his entire life, served in Korea as a paratrooper and won medals, and lived till 1967! I can understand why the initial release got it wrong, when Ambrose wrote the book he relied on the information given to him by the Easy Veterans who genuinely believed he was dead, but at least he corrected that in subsequent editions, while in the TV show it continues to state he died almost 20 years earlier than he did. Also, apropos of nothing, Speirs continues to be loving terrifying. The guys sharing stories about him does a good job of showcasing his reputation, but it's that late night "chat" with Blithe (while Martin wisely doesn't say poo poo) that really does the job, when he tells him the secret to being a soldier is understanding you're already dead 
Jerusalem fucked around with this message at 19:56 on Mar 28, 2024 |
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Mar 18, 2024 07:28
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I also like that, much as they do to the wider company, Winters and Speirs kind of reflect two different forms of leaderships/inspiration to Blithe. Speirs is terrifying but somebody who appears to have a strong grip of who he is, what he has to do, and how he has to do it. Winters is more supportive and approachable, representing an authority who can be looked to for guidance: he'll help you get to where you need to be. Winters gently asks Blithe what is happening when he has gone hysterically blind, doesn't challenge or sneer at the condition but in the process makes Blithe feel supported enough that suddenly he can see again. Speirs leads Blithe back to his foxhole in the dark and tells him he has to accept he is dead in order to do what needs to be done, offering a solution to his predicament but no comfort. Winters finds him screaming and unable to fight in the foxhole during the battle and stands present, bellowing commands but also offering a form of praise as he encourages him to keep going when Blithe finally manages to get to his feet and start firing. Perhaps most importantly, Winters is putting his money where his mouth is, right there with him in the fight. Blithe is almost in awe at seeing him standing atop the foxhole in plain view of the enemy, apparently entirely unafraid though the opening of the episode is at pains to remind us that ALL the soldiers were scared. Of course, neither of those differing ways of approaching Blithe are going to deal with the underlying issue which is that he has shell shock/PTSD, but I liked that even Speirs and the other soldiers never treat Blithe with disgust or outrage: the soldiers are a little confused as to why Blithe seems so off but continue treating him as one of their own. When Speirs finds out that Blithe fell asleep when he first landed and then never went looking for his company, he just calmly tells him what he thinks he needs to do to be a "better" soldier. When Winters finds Blithe "blind" in the aid camp, he just assures him they'll send him home, and when Blithe thinks he has recovered he is accepting of his return. Carentan is a really fascinating episode, not least of all because it ends - slightly too late for Blithe - with a brief reprieve and the sense that the men are more tightly bound than ever now that they've come through combat together. Which makes the coming "Replacements" (briefly seen at the end of the episode, though Heffron finds an immediate acceptance from Guarnere of all people!) even more interesting, because after 3 episodes of following a core cast they're bringing in a bunch of "new" characters, ones who don't have that shared history, the understanding of in-jokes or even stories/poems like "The Night of the Bayonet". It's something Masters of the Air also does but often felt disconnected or missing some cohesion, while with Band of Brothers it all flows together narratively so strongly. Folks, this might be controversial, but I think Band of Brothers might have been a pretty good television series! Jerusalem fucked around with this message at 19:57 on Mar 28, 2024 |
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Mar 18, 2024 11:26
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Yeah, and Rosie runs Crosby through every step of his journey when they're catching up after his return. The Bucks we don't get the details, but I think it would have been redundant explaining after Rosie had done so earlier.
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Mar 19, 2024 00:38
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Watching Replacements for Band of Brothers and there's a scene where the infantry are watching the bombers flying back and they muse,"I wonder if they hit anything?" - basically all they know is that the bombers flew out there, none of them saw the actual bombing mission they undertook, they they all flew back. The people who made Masters of the Air clearly took this scene as a show bible. Replacements is, you'll be shocked to hear, ANOTHER great episode! You have the titular replacements (including a babby James McAvoy!) who are in awe and feeling deeply overshadowed by the men who fought in Normandy while they were training, and the feeling they don't belong: great scenes like them watching the other men on the airfield and stripping down their kits to match, the unease Miller feels when Cobb calls him out for wearing a Unit citation etc, all leading through to their eventual bonding with the unit (at least those who survive) after the debacle of Operation: Market Garden. But there's also guys like Cobb, who similarly feel like outsiders because they went through all the same training/bonding etc with the original soldiers but due to circumstances outside of their control ended up not being involved in the fighting. Cobb got injured on the plane flying in to Normandy, and it's clear that he WANTS to be considered the same as the other soldiers but feels like he stands apart now, but he also can't fit in with the replacements. All throughout the episode you see him struggling to figure out how to approach matters, he freezes up during the firefight in the village, he forces himself to join the search for Bull and he seems desperate for approval in a way the others don't when they're reunited. Cobb stands in contrast to Popeye, who made the Normandy landing but got shot in the rear end right at the very opening seconds of the assault on Brecourt Manor and thus never actually took part in any of the fighting. But his return is greeted with excitement and approval from the other men, because he WAS there with them, and now he's gone AWOL from the hospital and given up a potential chance to go home to rejoin them (hell, even Sobel appears to approve, encountering him on the road on his way to his new role as supply officer and actually giving him a lift!). That has to make Cobb feel even more like an outsider, because technically speaking almost nothing separates the two of them. Both were originals, both got injured immediately before they could actually do any fighting, but the guy who made the jump feels like part of the unit while the guy who didn't feels like a fraud. Also, just an interesting thing I always forget - the first time we see Buck Compton in the show, Winters is warning him that betting with the men is a problem because if he wins, it puts him in a position where he has to "take" from them. So it kind of stands out that Buck is openly betting (only cigarettes, but still) and hustling men under his command playing darts at the start of this episode. The liberation of Eindhoven is fantastic for a lot of reasons, but I'm always haunted by the thought of what happened to the city after the pushback by the Germans. My understanding is that the allies kept control of the city but that it was heavily bombed by the Luftwaffe, and there's a line from Winters about how he doesn't expect a repeat of the rapturous ovation they got when they initially arrived. All those poor people who survived Nazi occupation (the pure hatred on the faces of the townspeople towards the women collaborators is something to behold) and thought all their dreams had come true when the British and Americans arrived only to see the bulk of the allies have to pull back and face heavy bombing almost immediately afterwards. Also it's one thing to know thanks to cultural osmosis and various war films/documentaries that Market Garden was a debacle, but my mind is still boggled by the text at the end of the episode that notes the British Airforce lost EIGHT THOUSAND TROOPS in the operation - "A bridge too far" indeed.
Jerusalem fucked around with this message at 17:39 on Mar 19, 2024 |
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Mar 19, 2024 17:30
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twistedmentat posted:I hope it was a plug, because biting on a chunk of cigar and chewing on it would be like having a mouthful of sawdust. Yeah every time I watch my first thought is cigar, except it would be suicide to light that up, but then he starts chewing on it like food which confuses me (you can probably tell I don't chew tobacco or have any idea what the gently caress a "plug" is!). Though it does remind there is another scene earlier where you see the troops hanging out waiting for the next mission, and they're trying out the German rations and they find them disgusting... but when one of them complains about how hard the bread is another is quick to snatch it off of him because goddammit, food is food and they're hungry!
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Mar 21, 2024 04:25
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Crossroads, the 5th episode of Band of Brothers, is interesting for a lot of reasons even if of all the episodes I've rewatched so far it is the "weakest" (i.e, still really loving good). The title refers to a crossroads where Winters leads a battle to prevent the Germans from an effort to regain ground lost during the otherwise disaster for the Allies that was Operation Market Garden. But it also leads up to Easy's orders to go to Bastogne, which sits at the center of multiple roads which could allow the Germans to split the British and American forces and be able to spread out further into Europe again. It marks a turning point for Easy Company, losing Winters as commander, putting them directly on the ground in battle as opposed to being airdropped in. It shows the growing weight on the men of the things they've seen and done, with the adrenaline and moment-to-moment excitement of battle fading as they spend more time training and drilling and have time to actually think. It's also an episode edited differently to most, standing somewhat apart with its use of transitions, sound bridges, parallels and flashbacks to drive home it's point. The central storyline is around Winters struggling through the aftermath of an assault that saw him kill, among many others, a young German soldier. Promoted to Battalion Executive Officer, Winters struggles with the admin work that Colonel Sink promised him he wouldn't need to worry about doing, including an After Action Report of the attack that saw him and Easy unknowingly facing off with two companies of SS troops that held a superior position. Winters is given the main focus, but there's a constant repeat of the strain that the other soldiers are feeling: Nixon in particular is clearly starting to unravel, drinking even more heavily than before, losing what little sense of discipline he had (which leads to a hilarious scene where Winters wakes him up by tossing what he thinks is leftover beer on him which turns out to be Nixon's own piss). But men are being sent on leave, attending weddings or functions, every attempt is being made to give them some kind of break because people can only be pushed too far. In a particularly pointed moment, Guarnere returns after going AWOL from hospital to keep fighting, and while he's greeted warmly by Winters, Nixon et al, he quickly realizes that they're already moving on past his welcome because there simply isn't time to celebrate and shoot the poo poo. This stands in direct contrast to the hero's welcome that Popeye got in the previous episode, because at this point everybody is just too worn down and busy to offer more than the briefest celebratory moment before having to move on. What really struck me this time around though was that Winters' prominence around his struggles to keep things together means that it isn't till extremely late in the episode that we see that Buck Compton - up till this point an utter rock - is on the verge of a complete collapse that none of the other soldiers appear to have noticed until Winters tries to chat to him during a movie and gets a belated sense of how brittle he has become. That Buck is then sent immediately to Bastogne is a bad sign, and this is the other crossroads the show and Easy has reached, as the officers who have mostly done a good job of leading are either dead, falling apart or promoted out of direct action. At first things look okay, with Moose Heyliger appearing to be a strong replacement for Winters who successfully leads Easy in their part of Operation Pegasus to retrieve 140 British "Red Devils" who survived on the axis side after Operation Market Garden. But then he's shot by a jittery private on guard duty who panicks when he sees Winters and Heyliger walking in the dark, and replaced by Lieutenant Dike. This all sets the scene for the back half of the season and the next two episodes featuring the Battle of the Bulge, with Easy at only 65% fighting strength, most of whom are replacements, with NCOs at their own breaking points while holding everything together. Dike, like Blithe and Sobel, was apparently not given a particularly fair representation in the show based on the actual real life person, but just from the television show perspective we're given indications that the character at least is not somebody who inspires confidence or loyalty. He delegates commands for his own personal comfort, he's concerned with drilling to a degree that brings to mind Sobel, he appears to miss basic preparation ideas that he should come up with on his own initiative - when Winters lays out calmly and quickly all the things he SHOULD have done by this point, Dike is clearly completely caught off-guard. While Market Garden was a disaster, the final shots of the episode give us our first look at a large number of American troops not only defeated but DEFEATED: like walking dead, they shuffle in lines in a complete daze past the bewildered Easy men, shell-shocked by the sudden arrival of the Germans who completely overwhelmed them. This may be the weakest episode of the series to date, but it's still very good. What carries it, and what sets Band of Brothers so clearly apart from Masters of the Air, is that we get so much time to build up the characters and relationships and they do a ton of heavy lifting, and they make the arrival of new characters work by how they impact and relate to characters we already know and care about well.
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Mar 23, 2024 03:45
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Yeah, I had to keep putting in the qualifier because it's only "weak" in comparison to the other episodes, and it's still an exceptionally good episode of television.
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Mar 23, 2024 04:03
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Arc Hammer posted:You have one round. You drop a prisoner, the rest will jump you, got it? Oh yeah, that dude taking shots at the probably fatally wounded but still living German soldier was incredibly hosed up. There's also a moment where two soldiers surrender screaming that they're Polish, and the soldier who doesn't speak German points out that they're SS and thus must be Germans (I legit don't know enough to know if that is true, but it sounds about right to me). They still take them prisoner though, which brought to mind for me that scene in Saving Private Ryan were two soldiers are trying to surrender and get shot by an American soldier who laughs about it, and apparently they were shouting in Polish that they were conscripts forced into service by the Germans.
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Mar 23, 2024 04:29
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Thank you for the lesson, I definitely was under the impression that being in the SS was supposed to be a very strictly controlled thing, but I should have known that like most of the Nazis' purity bullshit the truth was far from the image often being presented.
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Mar 25, 2024 07:06
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