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]

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: