Masters of the Air: Episode Discussion 3

[muccamukk]

I recently learned (because someone had checked Wikipedia, and I had not) that there will only be 9 episodes, not 10 like the other series :'(

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

[muccamukk]

Only 9 episodes, and this one was 40 minutes if you take the trailers and credits out. Not sparking joy.

The fog scenes at the start were really good! I loved the atmosphere and sort of eerie lighting. The flying shot when it's all going to shit was really evocative too.

I wish we'd met the crew we're supposed to care about now a bit earlier. It seems a bit like the Band of Brothers thing where they'd give someone a few lines just to remind us they were a character who existed, right before killing them off.

RIP Curt. You were my fave.

I'm confused about Croz. I thought he was going to be promoted to a desk job? Why was he on the mission? I did like the running thing between him and Blakely (sp) though, with the goblin quiz.

Also confused about why Egan was on the mission. Because he could? Do we want to ship him with anyone from SAS Rogue Heroes, since he's over on the right continent now?

I enjoyed Cleven's commander of steel bit. I'd seen the part where they start ditching stuff already, but it was still a great section. No Engine Cleven starts to pay off.

The show is starting to show how pointless this shit was. Cheering that on.

No women with speaking roles, so all the hair was fine. Bit concerned about episode 4, which looks like it's going to be making up for this.

[partypaprika]

I also liked the foggy bits! I enjoyed that part a lot. I am sad about Curt as well. I am surprised that he died this early, although that's probably because he's gotten more famous since the filming of this and the release of this.

Is SAS Rogue Heroes good? I haven't heard much about it.

I did also like the Cleven pushing the plane on. I am kind of shocked that it made it all the way from Belgium to North Africa with so much damage, but I guess that shows you how little I really understand airplanes.

Yes, minimal female presence lol

[muccamukk]

I think Curt's also the one who dies to prove that No One Is Safe, which wasn't a role the other two series had, but is common in HBO stuff.

I liked but didn't love SAS Rogue Heroes. I posted a review here: https://muccamukk.dreamwidth.org/1556788.html

The B-17s were pretty famous for "Wing and a prayer" returns.

[wearing_tearing]

I was also confused about those points! It's like we're missing some information about how things are supposed to work.

[muccamukk]

MercuryGrey said that Croz gave his desk job to Bubbles, who was the one who did the briefing, but I'd liked to have a scene where that happened!

I feel like they're spoon feeing us some stuff, and then expecting we read the book on some stuff, and it's very uneven.

[wearing_tearing]

I feel like they're spoon feeing us some stuff, and then expecting we read the book on some stuff, and it's very uneven.
This makes more sense! I haven't read the book, so I was extremely confused about some of the scenes and how the characters got where they were.

[sovay]

Croz gave his desk job to Bubbles, who was the one who did the briefing, but I'd liked to have a scene where that happened!

+1, especially since it seemed a rather big deal, both in terms of status and not having to throw up all the time, that Crosby was getting the desk job.

[muccamukk]

They included Croz getting the job in the "last time on" bit! I thought it was going to be a plot point! Then there he is, back on the plane. IDK, man.

[impala_chick]

Ohh I just assumed he hadn't actually been promoted yet. Because I thought bubbles was still at the hospital and that's why he still has the globe.

[partypaprika]

Alright, my thoughts:

1. We're still introducing lots of people that I'm not sure I've met. Hard to keep track of people. I did like the accent of the guy who did the briefing for the mission, who I think was nicknamed "Red"?

2. Why were so many command officers taking part? I thought the Air Exec position didn't fly (but he was flying, right?).

3. This is an "iron fortress" conversation is pure gold because I'm with Quinn. They are in a tin can that will accordion at the thought of a cow.

4. Love that they're playing the good guard lying guard game.

5. What was Bucky reading? Was it Guys and Dolls?

6. I'm getting major "The channel coast is socked in with rain and fog. High winds in the drop zone. NO JUMP TONIGHT." vibes with the fog. Aesthetically, I liked the fog and the return of MY FAVORITE CHARACTER, Meatball!

7. Do we know why the decision maker for the division didn't wait for the other task force divisions before sending them? I find this very confusing.

8. Yikes. Ok so a lot of death. Ooofff. I do not like this.

9. Quinn....poor Quinn. Poor Baby Face.

10. I'm more into this episode than the last, so the series is definitely growing on me, although I'm still not in love with it. Also, for some reason, the end emotional beat felt like an odd one to end on.

11. Did the destruction of that one factory actually cause any quantifiable injury to the German army? That seems like a lot of death and it's not clear to me if we're meant to see it as evidence that the bombing units didn't make much impact or if they did.

[muccamukk]

The book was guys and dolls. Which I love for him.

My memory of the book was that it was more or less a cock up that the groups didn't go together as planned. Bomber command had a lot of those.

I'm really curious about 11. It did seem to indicate that they effectively hit the target (which wasn't always the case), but to me also implied that it might not have been worth the cost to the 100th. The Germans just started building factories underground, anyway. Bombing the submarine pens did literally fuck all.

[wearing_tearing]

7 could have been a matter of time/logistics so they decided to just go for it or it could have been a matter of show producers wanting to keep things going since there aren't many episodes to move things along. I do agree that this episode had a lot of confusion around this mission and who was in it, though.

[wearing_tearing]

Some progress made on being able to tell people apart when they're not wearing masks! For the life of me, I can't tell who's who when they're flying. I do love their jackets :D

The visuals during the first 15min or so were fantastic! I'm a big fan of foggy settings and the scenes of them flying right after the credits were very pretty.

I am having an issue caring about the characters, though? I don't feel like I know them yet and/or have established a connection with them. This means the more dangerous/tense scenes don't have much of an impact on me. This is a big contrast with BoB and TP where we had time to get to know the characters and get invested in their arcs.

Really didn't expect Curt.

The ending was also a bit abrupt...

[muccamukk]

I can get Egan, Cleven, Croz and (sadly) Curt with their masks on. Everyone else, I'm pretty well guessing from context of who they're talking to or where their plane is. I want name tags.

[wearing_tearing]

Name tags would be most helpful! Stitch them to the jackets. Glue them to the foreheads.

[muccamukk]

In Black Hawk Down (which I haven't seen), they apparently glued name tags to their helmets, which the actual Marines wouldn't have had, but they wanted to help the audience out!

Remember the first episode of BoB when everyone had nametags? THAT WAS VERY HELPFUL!

[wearing_tearing]

Sometimes the audience needs a little help and that's okay!!

[partypaprika]

When the masks are on, I have zero idea who is who as well. I'm like...welp, just hoping someone calls out a name when they're talking to someone else.

[wearing_tearing]

A lot of us are struggling with that :(

[muccamukk]

I can usually tell Cleven because his voice has a slight rasp, but everyone else it's just ???

[sovay]

I can usually tell Cleven because his voice has a slight rasp, but everyone else it's just ???

Cleven sounds like he's pitching his voice lower than it naturally sits, which if so, I appreciate the effort, it does mean I can find him in a crowd, but damn.

[muccamukk]

He apparently had a dialogue coach just so he didn't sound like Elvis.

[sovay]

He apparently had a dialogue coach just so he didn't sound like Elvis.

I got to say, if he sounded like Elvis, I'd really be able to find him.

[muccamukk]

Missed opportunity.

[sovay]

What the fuck, Curt, the little big mouth from Brooklyn isn't supposed to bite it until the last reel if at all!

(I can see that his refusal to leave Dickie even if it does kill them both is a counterpoint to the other character who abandons the tail gunner to die and also to Buck successfully landing with all engines gone, but still.)

I did like the cold equations stripping down of the shot-to-shit plane in order to make it across the water to Africa, also the guy who argues quite accurately that a B-17 would lose a head-on collision with a cow.

The pacing for this show remains extremely weird.

[muccamukk]

Yeah, poor Curt. I did think it was well done though, from a narrative perspective, having it right after the improbable landing that worked out, and just feeling like the ones we liked were going to make it.

The pacing is VERY weird.

[sovay]

I did think it was well done though, from a narrative perspective, having it right after the improbable landing that worked out, and just feeling like the ones we liked were going to make it.

I think it may be the other way around in time: Curt who had previously made that ridiculous emergency landing in Scotland can't repeat the trick in Belgium or France or where the hell ever the trees took out his last aileron, so we shouldn't feel guaranteed that Buck is going to be able to bring in his equally damaged plane. Agreed that it works, just (a) I liked Curt, plus he was one of about four characters I could actually distinguish in the air (b) it still feels narratively jarring and not in a way that valuably increases the unpredictability of the narrative.

The pacing is VERY weird.

It starts like someone cut the episode where they actually all met!

[muccamukk]

It's weird because a lot of people really love "Currahee" the first episode of Band of Brothers where we meet the characters while they're in training, and then spend an episode doing that before they go into combat in episode two, then we'd be invested in them living or dying, even if I don't think BoB killed off that many PoV characters. (Though there's a whole side story about a character who was supposed to be the PoV character in Currahee, and then die in a training accident to prove that the situation was serious, but the actor playing him pissed off TPTB so much they rewrote AND reshot the episode to cut his character).

Then The Pacific didn't do that, just had a brief intro of the characters deciding to go to war (TRAGICALLY cutting the bit in Leckie's book where he introduces himself in the first paragraph as limping due to a USMC-mandated circumcision), then skips forward to combat and two episodes of yelling in the dark, where no one can tell who anyone is. It takes multiple watches of that show to get a sense of the characters, but then again the structure is... creative. And many people complained about that! (I'm sure at the time too.)

And the Bloody 100th had a HILARIOUSLY cursed time at training too, at one point they were trying to do a cross country flight from Nebraska to California, and one of the forts ended up in Tennessee!

Plus Marge (the blonde from the first episode) and Cleven were actually childhood sweethearts who met up again while he was training in Texas, which is kind of a sweet story, if they had to include her.

[sovay]

(Though there's a whole side story about a character who was supposed to be the PoV character in Currahee, and then die in a training accident to prove that the situation was serious, but the actor playing him pissed off TPTB so much they rewrote AND reshot the episode to cut his character).

Wow.

And the Bloody 100th had a HILARIOUSLY cursed time at training too, at one point they were trying to do a cross country flight from Nebraska to California, and one of the forts ended up in Tennessee!

That would have been delightful to watch, and what's more, it would have made a good buildup to their unhilariously cursed fog-scrubbed mission.

Even a brief intro would have helped Masters of the Air a lot. The whip-round of the voiceover really doesn't compensate. And again, medias res is a time-honored mode of dropping into a story, I don't understand why everything is so slightly out of focus here.

Plus Marge (the blonde from the first episode) and Cleven were actually childhood sweethearts who met up again while he was training in Texas, which is kind of a sweet story, if they had to include her.

Yeah, seriously, coming into this story with no historical knowledge of any of the characters, she just registers as J. Random Blonde.

[muccamukk]

Yeah, and it would've given us ten episodes :(

I just thought of this, but Band of Brothers was written before the kind of writers rooms we have now were a thing. Basically there was the book, a bunch of interviews with the guys, and then the story was divided up into ten parts, divided out, and written more or less independently. So each episode took place in a more or less emotionally coherent arc overall, since they were pulling from the same novel, and could ask the vets questions, but also was its own story, and each had a slightly different flavour.

Given what both the Pacific and MotA are like, I wonder if we should go back to not letting the writers talk to each other. Because I know John Orloff's writing from BoB, and he can do better than this.

Yeah, J. Random Blonde who's known Cleven for like two weeks tops. SHE WAS THE LOVE OF HIS LIFE, FOR CHRIST'S SAKE. WHAT IS HAPPENING!?

[sovay]

Yeah, and it would've given us ten episodes

Still not sure what happened there.

So each episode took place in a more or less emotionally coherent arc overall, since they were pulling from the same novel, and could ask the vets questions, but also was its own story, and each had a slightly different flavour.

I like the sound of the quasi-anthology feel that would have given the series. Was Orloff head writer on the earlier series, too?

SHE WAS THE LOVE OF HIS LIFE, FOR CHRIST'S SAKE. WHAT IS HAPPENING!?

Maybe we'll get flashbacks?

[muccamukk]

I suspect planes are expensive and they ran out of money. Band of Brothers was a 13 episode order, until HBO realised how much each episode cost.

Orloff wrote Day of Days, which was mostly excellent with a small amount of unnecessary voice over, and Why We Fight, which is probably my least favourite, but I feel like he did the best he could given the topic.

Day of Days has one of the best shorthand character introduction scenes I've ever seen, which I included in my top three favourite moments of the entire show.

I don't think he worked on The Pacific, at least not as a writer.

[kore]

Day of Days has one of the best shorthand character introduction scenes I've ever seen, which I included in my top three favourite moments of the entire show.

Which one was that?

[muccamukk]

The scene with Winters and Hall in the woods.

[kore]

(Though there's a whole side story about a character who was supposed to be the PoV character in Currahee, and then die in a training accident to prove that the situation was serious, but the actor playing him pissed off TPTB so much they rewrote AND reshot the episode to cut his character).

I did NOT know this.

[impala_chick]

I didn't know that about currahee!! Or Marge. They could have thrown in a few lines of dialogue to at least point out their characters' histories.

[copperfyre]

Coming to this a week late, but that does mean I have another episode to watch this weekend! I think I liked this episode best of the three so far; the single mission gave it a tight story, and it is astonishing to me how far these planes fly and how far they fly when they're beat to shit.

I liked all the atmospheric foggy stuff (and the return of Meatball!!!) at the beginning, though I felt like I needed some more explanation as to why they got ordered to go without the other planes. I guess just a fuckup from command and a total disregard for the loss of life (and also of materials, it's kind of wild to me that they're throwing so many planes and all their equipment away every time!) (And also lives, but given its the military that is sadly less surprising to me.)

Unfortunately the only people I can tell apart thus far are Crosby and Curt; this did mean that Curt's death did actually hit for me, unlike everyone else where I confess they're all a bit faceless nobodies to me. I really think an episode of everybody training or everybody just hanging out on the base would be helpful to establish everyone (and the latter would be interesting to delve into the weird thing about being in the air force which is you could be flying a bombing run and watching all your friends die in the morning, then safe and at a club in the evening). It is weird to me that so far Crosby is the only character who seems to have a story? Everyone else is just kind of... competent.

I think there was one woman who got a speaking line this episode, the lady in Belgium at the end. I feel like it's particularly egregious in 2024 to have just no women in your show, especially given they do have WAACs and Red Cross staff and Land Girls in the backgrounds of shots; give some of them actual roles! The show clearly realises they were present, it's just not interested in them mattering, I guess. (I'm crossing my fingers for future episodes.)

[copperfyre]

Oh, I also looked up up the pilot who landed his plane in the sea (confusingly in the episode I thought they said he was 350 miles from anywhere, but in real life he was 90 miles from Sicily, but maybe they meant 350 miles from Allied territory), and he and most of his crew became POWs but survived the war! And then one of his crew later described it as "Van Noy shut down remaining engine and made the most beautiful landing he ever made. He never could land an Airplane except when it really counted" which makes me wish he'd been an actual character before he exited the show stage left.

[impala_chick]

Oh wow interesting, thanks for sharing! I had assumed they mostly lived from the way the other characters seemed satisfied/relieved by the water landing, but it's nice to know there's a story there. I agree, I think this ep was stronger than the other two.

[muccamukk]

I thought that this one was probably one of the stronger ones, given that the whole plot was we fly the planes, which fit into a fairly coherent structure. Plus the flying the plane bits are the most coherent parts of the show.

But the amount of men and material the army spent on all this really is staggering, especially as the submarine pen raids did bugger all, and they knew they did bugger all.

I really don't know why the women in England both American and English don't get more screen time. It's just really shallow?

Very sad about Curt :(