This was a good episode. I guess I should have figured out the ending after what led up to it. I was thinking Basilone would die in a later episode. I looked up him up earlier so I knew he died on Iwo Jima. I believe episode 10 is post war so next week should be the last of the combat.
Overall, not a bad episode, though (as I worried) it did feel a bit rushed here and there. I have the feeling, though, if we edited each of the individual “stories” together as one long film, Basilone’s story wouldn’t feel quite as rushed. I wish there had been a slightly less jarring transition from “quiet time with the wife” to “shit exploding on Iwo Jima” but I think I can see why they did it that way.
One thing that surprised me was Basilone’s death - I’d always heard that he was killed by a direct mortar hit. That’s what the eye witnesses say, but the official cause of death is apparently bullet wound (according to some random people on the internet :)). I guess there is some debate and the producers decided to go with the official report. It was a good scene and done well, though.
Lena was great, too - a very smart, savvy woman. If she was in any way like that in real life, John made a good choice.
I saw a picture of the real Lena and the actress looked like her, right down to her hairstyle.
The battle scenes had my wife gasping involuntarily, and even though we knew Basilone didn’t make it off that island, it was still a sad shock when he “died”. One of the better eps, certainly.
In a big battle like that I think it would be hard to pin down the exact cause of death for everyone. You could be shot and then have your legs blown off after you are dead.
The combat imagery in this series is incredible. I’m really impressed with what they have achieved both technically and artistically.
It seems that this is more bloody than Band of Brothers. In BOB we saw people get shot but I don’t recall as many people getting blown up or limbs being blown off. Also in BOB I don’t think the people who got shot looked that bloody.
To me The Pacific seems one or two steps above BOB and every other war movie I have seen in terms of realism.
It’s not a big deal but one scene where I thought they compromised for storytelling purposes was Ack Ack’s death. A rifle bullet to the head will pretty much blow it up, especially when exiting the cranium. Instead he seemed to have some bad Hollywood B movie makeup on with a neat little bullet hole. It wouldn’t be quite as pungent to revere a semi-headless corpse it seems.
I don’t think it’s more bloody than the opening of Saving Private Ryan.
I thought I saw some goo in the Siege of Bastogne episode…
Bastogne was the 1 episode in BOB that was bloody for a good part of it. There were bloody scenes in other episodes but not as much as the Pacific.
It was a small entry wound, but the back of his head was pretty bloody on the stretcher… then again, you’re right, it wouldn’t have been as poignant (cough :)) a scene if his head looked like the half-head of the Japanese soldier from an earlier scene.
I thought it was a great episode. I had spoiled it earlier in the season-- clicked on Basilone’s wiki page, learned he died on the first day of Iwo Jima, and immediately regretted knowing that. The GF, however, didn’t know that, so when I started getting nervous at the end of the ep she was wondering why I was fidgeting. After it ended, I looked over her and told her, “I knew what was going to happen… the dread was in the waiting.”
I think it’s safe to say at this point that it’s not as good as BOB, but it is great. Took a while to get there, but given the usual caliber of WWII crap, The Pacific is outstanding.
I realized that BOB was better the 2nd time I saw it because at that point I did know all the characters since I had seen them before. Maybe the Pacific will be the same.
This episode was good. The action on Iwo Jima was extremely well done, very chaotic and violent.
But ultimately, The Pacific just doesn’t have the compelling narrative that Band of Brothers had. BOB followed one company of the 101st Airborne and their experiences during the war. Individual episodes might focus more on a single character for a particular purpose (such as following “Bull” Randleman after he got cut off in Holland), but there was a clear narrative arc. The Pacific is based on several memoirs with the much broader focus on the Marines in the Pacific theater. Rather than taking us on a historical journey through the Pacific campaign, they’ve elected to make a series of character vignettes with battle scenes mixed in. Now, you could do worse than focusing on John Basilone for an episode, but Iwo Jima was tacked on almost as an afterthought.
As people have mentioned the European war is much more well known. BOB covered 3 well known battles - Normandy, Market Garden and Bastogne. And it only covered 1 year in time. Both of those things made it an easier story to tell.
Agreed 100%. That’s why BoB was made first, and also why BoB is better than The Pacific.
I think The Pacific is aiming to do something very different. BoB is about the bonds that form people people in combat. The fact that it’s set in the European theater of WWII is somewhat incidental… the same basic story could be told about a thousand groups of young men in a thousand different war.
The Pacific, on the other hand, is really specifically about what that specific group of men experienced. As such, it’s much less comfortable to watch, and much harder to really “enjoy”.