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

[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 :(