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

[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.