Masters of the Air: Episode 9

 

            Well, it’s finally over. The series we waited for years to see. Did it finish strong? Let’s see.

It opens with a mission to Berlin on Feb. 3, 1945. It takes a while for us to know that the bomber that is being focused on is Rosenthal’s. Again the series has a problem with identifying the characters with their masks on. His bomber is crippled and Rosie bails out behind Russian lines and lands in a battle. This is the first of several developments that challenge credulity. The episode follows the template of the last few episodes. It jumps around following Rosenthal, Crosby, and Bucky and Buck. Spoiler alert, I can’t do this review without pointing out some of the ridiculous scenes.

            Let’s take each at a turn. Rosie is rescued by Russians and has a long road home. Along the way, the series manages to force a Holocaust scene to match “Band of Brothers”. But in BoB, it made sense that they would run into a labor camp. In Masters, Rosie is riding in a car with a Soviet general. They stop right in front of the camp and Rosie is kicked out of the car by an officer. This gives Rosie (who is Jewish, of course) the chance to walk into the camp and see all the corpses.  Box checked. Suddenly, Rosie is back and we only get his description of his travels. He tells this to Crosby who responds with another whine about war being hell. That’s right, the character with the desk job has PTSD and the character who has flown over 40 missions, been shot down twice, survived a battle, saw a concentration camp, and made several stops on the way back to England is seemingly unaffected!  The series has done a terrible job developing its characters.

            Crosby’s arc has him still moping. When the equipment room is left locked, he busts open the door to dole out some parachutes. He then goes to confront the man responsible and after the officer says what we all are thinking – dude, I haven’t seen you on any missions, Crosby proves he’s not a whiny milquestoast by shoving the guy’s face into his meal. Hey screenwriter, it’s too late for this. By the way, Crosby is going to be a daddy, but we don’t see Jean in the episode. Apparently, her spy escapades are no longer worthy of coverage.

            Buck and Bucky start the episode in Stalag III with the trio of Red Tails. They have spent all that time with no attempt to tunnel out. The Americans are nearing, so they are moved at night during a snow storm. It’s not horrific, just miserable. At one point, a P-51 strafes the column. At night. Bucky complains to the German officer about marching them at night as though it is more dangerous than moving in the daytime! Like strafing is less likely in daylight! This episode is the P-51 episode because later we get another lone Mustang strafing their new camp, but don’t worry, it only strafes the Germans.  USA! USA! USA!  Eventually, B & B decide to escape, but Bucky is caught. Buck has a run in with some Nazi Youths, so we get an action scene. B&B get reunited in a sappy way. The war is winding down and they go on one last mission together, holding hands the whole way. Just kidding. The series decided to cover this raid where they drop parcels to Dutch civilians. That’s right. The series that avoided showing bombing raids, leaves us with a milk run so we can see the lovely Dutch windmills! I don’t know if it was a CGI windmill. We finish with the 100^th flying off into the sunset taking our expectations with them. You may notice I have said nothing about the Red Tails. They are simply there, with nothing to do.

            I always wonder why movies and series that are bad and will be compared to previous movies or films, choose to remind viewers of them.  In this case, we get a scene with a pirate mug ala “Twelve O’Clock High”. And there is a shot of a man bicycling and some cows in a field to remind of “Band of Brothers”. It was just sad to see that. What might have been. I have said from the start that the screenwriters made poor decisions. The series should have concentrated on B&B with Egan playing the Dick Winters leadership role. He was a great leader, but you don’t get that from the series.  The series did not develop a leader. It should have concentrated on one crew reaching the 25 mark with other crews going down. And then switched to Rosenthal for his second tour. And nothing else! I got to the point where I hated Crosby. His character arc was a waste of time. He came off as though the series had to balance all the heroes with a lame-ass. The sad thing is that I checked out a biography of him and he flew 32 missions and was lauded by Curtis LeMay as one of the best leaders in the 8^th Air Force. Did anyone get that impression from the series?  The man’s memoir was a key source for the screenwriters and this is the way they treated him? Give me a break.

            Obviously, I was tremendously disappointed with the series. I would compare my mood to when I watched the “Catch-22” series. In that case, the problem was the screenwriters threw the book in the trash can and decided to go their own way. MOA went a different route. As far as I can tell at this point, it stuck to the characters’ actual stories, but with some enhancement. It’s flaw was the decision on what subplots to pursue and having too many subplots. But it’s biggest flaw was giving us some incredible combat scenes and then no more.  What a tease! Compare THAT to “Band of Brothers” and “The Pacific”. Two series that made little use of CGI, but got the human elements right. Well, two out of three ain’t bad. Maybe we should think of “Generation War” as the third in the trilogy and just forget about MOA.

GRADE =  D

OVERALL = D