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 100th 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 8th 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
People who have read and studied the air war over Europe in World War II don't like the series. The reviewers and commenters who gushed over it probably never gave much thought to the Eighth Air Force bombing raids until this TV series.
ReplyDeleteA commenter at IMDB said the show taught him about "flack" (his spelling), something he had apparently never heard of before.
I find you have to differentiate between a reviewer of all types of movies as opposed to a war movie reviewer. Generic reviewers often concentrate on whether a war movie is entertaining and disregard the fact that the movie might be unrealistic.
DeleteThanks for your thoughtful report. If I watch this series someday it will be with low expectations.
ReplyDeleteIt is a shame, though. It seems like a more focused storyline might have worked well to convey what war was like for strategic bomber crews.
Don’t feel bad, those of as who were looking forward to the Lincoln assassination series "ManHunt", are feeling a drought with that series as well. couldn’t have been more dissatisfied and disappointed. The book was one of the best; the adaption series had mire falsehoods and make believe as to irritate Lincoln fans and did a disservice to history and new viewers are so mislead that they will be forever off path of greatest story in Americas history
ReplyDelete