I only say a few episodes of Band of Brothers, and those out of order.
I’m looking forward to this new entry to HBO’s portfolio. I’m sure there are others here planning to watch.
My understanding is that this will be different from BoB in that we’ll be following 3 individuals in different units rather than concentrating on one unit.
I’ll BEE there!
The reviews so far have been positive, some saying they like it better than BoB.
And right, will focus more on 3 different characters.
We just cancelled HBO. 
I hope it comes out on DVD soon.
I’ve got popcorn ready to pop tonight and settling down to watch this. I loved BoB.
May be easier to get into with 3 main characters. It took me a while to figure out who was who with BoB.
And then the focus would shift and you’d forget. When I saw Spier in “Points”, it took awhile to remember who he was.
We dropped Showtime and re-upped with HBO for this, and for David Simon’s new series. But man, it’s like pulling teeth to get DirecTV to drop a premium channel. The guy offered three different “specials” before accepting that all I wanted was HBO.
Just watched it. I thought it was great just like band of brothers. Although the new format didn’t have the “getting to know the guys in training” part, which made me wish they used name tags. I can never tell one unkept 20ish white guy from the other, except the guy with red hair.
I like the way it ended. Singing happy birthday felt like their bonding moment – every war movie needs a bonding moment.
It could have used something to show how much time had passed between the landing and the battle. It must have been awhile, since they were bringing in reinforcements, but I just don’t know.
Looks like reading on Wikipedia, the “7th Marines” arrived on September 18th 1942, so more than a month passed since the initial landing to the end of tonight’s episode.
I have HBO on Demand with my cable-- it has had the getting to know each guy segments for about a month now. Don’t know if you have that channel, but I’d give that a shot!
I thought it was OK, but hope it improves next week.
The editing was off - it was hard to get a sense of the amount of time passing. The battle at alligator creek was filmed strangely - when it was on, the battle looked like two sides fighting across a river from each other, and in the morning, all the bodies were washing around in the ocean surf. They should have shot it to show the size of the flanking manoever and we should have known they had the ocean at their back. They also didn’t show the marine counter-offensive at dawn, which inflicted a lot of the casualties in the real battle.
They also didn’t give any kind of sense of the scale of the battle. There were 11,000 Marines on Guadalcanal by then, and over 1000 Japanese attackers hit them at Alligator creek.
I liked the show well enough, but I thought the directing mistakes and the way the battle was shot brought it down a notch from the quality of Band of Brothers. I hope the next episode improves.
Agreed. I happened to catch the WWII in HD miniseries on The History Channel last month, which was phenomenal. I highly recommend it to one and all. (It doesn’t require HD; that’s just the name of it because it’s all in color and I assume was upscanned to HD.)
That special explained that it was a month, and they really drove home the point about not having any resupply of food or ammo the whole time. They mentioned it in the pilot tonight, but for all they showed it could have only been a couple days.
After seeing that part on WWII in HD, you really felt for the miserable condition the marines were in when they finally got resupplied. Tonight’s pilot showed the condition but failed to lay the groundwork so it lost a lot of the impact. Those guys had been through a month of hell and were literally starving.
One thing I really liked that I never internalized before is that the Army fought in Europe and the Marines fought in the Pacific. Makes total sense, and looking back all the stories I know from the European theatre are Army through and through, but I never realized the services were consciously split up like that.
Have never seen BoB and haven’t intended to watch this either. To be honest, not a big fan of war films.
However, is this more of a documentary or a drama?
Any idea if they carry this through with specific characters like Saving Private Ryan - a film I took my father to see a few years before he died, as I knew he would like it and, surprisingly, so did I.
I guess what I am asking is if this series is in a similar vein, considering Tom Hanks seems to be involved.
Band of Brothers and The Pacific are both dramatized documentaries. Saving Private Ryan is fictional.
I fell asleep half-way thru it. Blame that on DST, plus a bit too much fun Saturday night.
I thought it was excellent. The timeline was hard to follow and I too had a hard time telling one 18 year old in a muddy uniform from another - maybe that was the point? I’m thinking they will flashback the stories for each main character … or maybe not. Anyway, great production. I especially liked the night sea battle even though they didn’t really explain the significance.
It looks like BOB redux, and I couldn’t get through a single episode of Band of Brothers. Bored the shit out of me. These eulogistic WWII epics are starting to get really tiresome. I loved SPR, but enough is enough. Givem me Inglorious Basterds any day.
I dunno, Dio. When I think of what these guys went through, I can sit through a eulogy or two. At least it’s realistic. We saw plenty of anti-heroism in BoB and there was some in this episode too. They’re just ordinary guys, doing extraordinary things.
The Army did fight in the Pacific, but devoted it’s resources primarily towards the push to the Philippines.
That was the The Battle of Savo Island. The Navy got it’s ass handed to it, and essentially left Guadalcanal to it’s own devices. Supplies came in afterwards as a trickle, in heavily escorted convoys.
Half an episode is way too little to dedicate to the interest battle of guadalcanal. I say half because the first half was pre-marine corps time with the characters back on the mainland. There’s quite a story to be told about the first guys in on Guadalcanal, and this show didn’t do them justice.
I thought the scene where they playfully picked apart the weeping Japanese guy was pretty chilling. It’s weird what people can do when you throw the normal rules of life out the window.