Masters of the Air: Episode Discussion 1 & 2

[muccamukk]

For all your chatting needs, as the show comes out. I'll hopefully post one of these every Thursday.

Rules:

1. Don't be a dick. Specifically (but not limited to):


1. Not liking something is fine, and negative comments are fine. Please do not directly tell other participants why the thing they like is bad or that they are bad for liking it.


2. Kink shaming will be deleted.


3. Racism, homophobia, transphobia, antisemitism, misogyny, etc will be deleted.


2. Discussing material from the books is fine, but if you're going to discuss something that happens in future episodes, or the fate of historical characters, please put it under a cut and title the comment Book spoilers! or something similar.


3. Likewise, wanting to treat the show as a self-contained unit and not engage with the books/history is perfectly valid.

How to do an in-comment spoiler cut:
<details><summary>Describe what you're spoiling here</summary>All the spoilers go in this part.</details>

Comments

[sovay]

In no especially assorted order—

That is indeed what Boyd McDonald would have called an egregiously heterosexual show. I've seen movies from the Second World War which didn't spend so much time establishing their no-homo bona fides. Especially coming off Foundation which just drops two pairs of husbands into the main cast of its second season as indeed it ain't no thing, somebody better express some homosexual tendencies is all I can say.

I predictably like Crosby with his nerves and his airsicknesss ("I could make overthinking into an Olympic sport") and I am not convinced the show needs any kind of narration, even his. I have also developed affection for Curt, the reluctant air exec even if it took me forever to catch his name, and the ground crew dude who's good with kids. It is normal for me to care less about protagonists, but the Buck(y)s feel very standard-issue.

Barry Keoghan with an American accent is very confusing. Ditto Stephen Campbell Moore, James Murray, and Edward Ashley, who are the other actors I can recognize shouldn't have one. Could have used a wider range of period-accurate accents, if only because of how weird some of them sound to modern ears. Keoghan is at least doing Extreme Brooklyn, which is a valid archetype in this genre.

All of the technical stuff in the air is compelling to me, especially the tin cans and baling wire aspect. No complaints. Moment of familial nostalgia for the flight computer.

More with the clubmobile girls, please.

On the other hand, I am probably going to rewatch The Way to the Stars (1945).

[wearing_tearing]

I've seen movies from the Second World War which didn't spend so much time establishing their no-homo bona fides.
EXACTLY! They should be worried about other things, not the audience thinking someone would be queer. We're gonna do that anyway lol

Barry Keoghan with an American accent is very confusing.
I find his accent so off-putting. It doesn't match his face and confuses me so much. I do appreciate that he's going all in, though. Makes him stand out in between all the other white men.

[sovay]

They should be worried about other things, not the audience thinking someone would be queer.

I mean, statistically someone should be, anyway.

We're gonna do that anyway lol

Fair point! And it really does give the production as strong a contemporary flavor as if everyone's hairstyles were from last year. The history of aviation pictures is intertwined with the history of dudes kissing onscreen, all right? I don't make the rules, I just saw Wings (1927).

I do appreciate that he's going all in, though. Makes him stand out in between all the other white men.

I am one of the people who had no difficulty telling apart the three dark-haired young white male leads of Dunkirk (2017) and I feel this series is doing its best to discourage me from identifying any of its characters. They should absolutely have cast for more distinctive accents or voices since half the time it's just all eyebrows.

[wearing_tearing]

The history of aviation pictures is intertwined with the history of dudes kissing onscreen, all right?
Exactly! Ignoring it won't make it go away and won't make queer people stop existing.

I feel this series is doing its best to discourage me from identifying any of its characters.
This is pretty interesting since we're not alone in that, as mentioned by other people in the comments. Everyone sounds the same and looks sort of the same and yes! it's all just eyebrows. Different accents would have at least helped us some when almost every episode has someone say "keep your eyes peeled" at some point during all the flying.

[sovay]

This is pretty interesting since we're not alone in that, as mentioned by other people in the comments.

I think it's a real problem and I'm not sure why it was allowed to be. Ensemble miniseries are not a new form. I don't even watch that much TV and I can think of more than one show I have seen (I have not seen either Band of Brothers or The Pacific) that had to introduce a wide cast and start losing them almost immediately without losing the audience. I have certainly seen movies that work that way with even less time.

Everyone sounds the same and looks sort of the same and yes! it's all just eyebrows.

They really didn't cast for voices at all. Even before the accents, too many of the actors are speaking in the same register with the same kind of timbre. So much of each episode is spent in cross-talk in the air, they needed to be instantly identifiable to the ear. And the U.S. was full of distinct regional accents in the '40's! Almost none of these people who are supposedly drawn so widely from across the country that they keep a pushpin map of their far-flung home towns should sound so much alike. I feel like I should be hearing a lot more twangs and drawls and little quirks of dialect that even college or flight school wouldn't iron out of a person. My grandfather who was 4-F for World War II on account of his eyesight spent the majority of his life in the Midwest and New England and he sounded to the end of his life like the first-generation Brooklyn Jew that he was. I was born when American accents were already homogenizing in the second half of the twentieth century and a friend of mine from Wisconsin once sat me down and ran a compare-and-contrast on our dialects just for the fun of it. I shouldn't be able to be confused by a plane full of characters all from different states.

[impala_chick]

This is such a valid point, it seems like the only guy with an accent is the pilot who had to land in ep 2 (I can't remember his name).

[sovay]

it seems like the only guy with an accent is the pilot who had to land in ep 2 (I can't remember his name).

Lieutenant Curtis Biddick from Brooklyn! He also has distinctive eyebrows, which doesn't hurt, but the Brooklyn is the really key point.

[impala_chick]

Oh yesss Curtis, thank you! I hope we see more of him :D

[wearing_tearing]

I was born when American accents were already homogenizing in the second half of the twentieth century and a friend of mine from Wisconsin once sat me down and ran a compare-and-contrast on our dialects just for the fun of it. I shouldn't be able to be confused by a plane full of characters all from different states.
I think this is something they forgot to do/consider in MotA? I was rewatching a few episodes of BoB and the distinction in accents and intonation between each character was incredible. Not one person sounded the same. They also made sure to cast people with different body types and, with the exception of a few of the younger actors, no one looked alike.

[sovay]

I was rewatching a few episodes of BoB and the distinction in accents and intonation between each character was incredible. Not one person sounded the same. They also made sure to cast people with different body types

That's so important! And so weird that Masters of the Air couldn't remember to do it.

[wearing_tearing]

I'm Brazilian and I joke a lot about white men all looking the same. But here they all really look the same D:

[muccamukk]

I think in WWII, and Band of Brothers for that matter, they weren't worried about people thinking the characters might be queer, so they didn't bother to explicitly point out in the first scene LIKES GIRLS! But yeah, my teeth were grinding. That they're doing this off the bat, plus the jokes from the RAF guys, doesn't make me feel optimistic about any queer inclusion. So far it feels like a bit sign that says NO GAYS ALLOWED!

I'm a little salty.

The narration didn't establish anything that couldn't have been shown to use with other storytelling. I'm probably slightly in the minority, but I didn't like any of the narration in BoB, either. Except maybe Webster, because he was SO Webster! It just feels like lazy storytelling.

I'm going to go find out what The Way to the Stars is, and how to watch it.

[sovay]

I think in WWII, and Band of Brothers for that matter, they weren't worried about people thinking the characters might be queer, so they didn't bother to explicitly point out in the first scene LIKES GIRLS!

I just saw a rather strenuously heterosexual training film from 1947! But I also just saw The Story of G.I. Joe (1945), where one soldier sits for more than five minutes holding the dead hand of another as if the other man were alive and could feel it and be comforted and the Production Code didn't blink. So far this series seems to have a serious twenty-first-century impediment to the idea of male tenderness and I hope it gets over it soon.

I'm a little salty.

*passes the shaker*

The narration didn't establish anything that couldn't have been shown to use with other storytelling. I'm probably slightly in the minority, but I didn't like any of the narration in BoB, either. Except maybe Webster, because he was SO Webster! It just feels like lazy storytelling.

The voiceover tends to be the thing I want to rip off the print of a film noir unless something about the voice or the interplay with the action is especially well done, so no argument. If it's being done here as a convention of the time, it needed to feel more like it.

I'm going to go find out what The Way to the Stars is, and how to watch it.

Does this site work for you? John Mills as the lens character in the life of a fictional RAF station which fields first Bristol Blenheims, then Douglas Bostons, then hosts B-17s; he also flies Avro Lancasters and ends up in a Pathfinder squadron. Heavily reworked by Terence Rattigan from his stage play Flight Path (1942), which I have not seen or read. I watched it in 2022 when falling through John Mills and never managed to write about it given the chaos of the year, but I liked it a lot. Attrition rates in the main cast not quite the pure meat grinder of The Dawn Patrol (1930), but otherwise about what you would expect. The retrospective frame is one of these neat little shifts of reality because it looks entirely normal now to open on a derelict airfield before rolling back to fill in its wartime past, but the film itself was released between V-E Day and V-J Day; it's projecting the war-won future that hadn't quite happened yet.

[muccamukk]

I was watching bits and pieces of Test Pilot (1938) since it got name checked in the show. And whatever's going on with Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy...

Anyway, THIS: this series seems to have a serious twenty-first-century impediment to the idea of male tenderness Needs to be put on a sampler and mailed to John Orloff.

That site does work for me. I'll check it out later (probably). The derelict airfield thing is exactly now Twelve O'Clock High (1949) opened, come to think of it.

[sovay]

I was watching bits and pieces of Test Pilot (1938) since it got name checked in the show. And whatever's going on with Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy...

Please report back, since I have seen that one and all I remember about it is that it has very good aircraft and Paul Mantz did the stunts. I think it had a three-cornered emotional thing in it, which usually means it's actually about the guys.

Needs to be put on a sampler and mailed to John Orloff.

Thank you; I'm sorry.

That site does work for me. I'll check it out later (probably).

I hope you enjoy it if you do!

The derelict airfield thing is exactly now Twelve O'Clock High (1949) opened, come to think of it.

You're right! I'd forgotten that.