Masters of the Air: Episode Discussion 9

[muccamukk]

A final episode, a 77-minute runtime, and a new director. Goodnight, sweet show!

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.


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

Comments

[sovay]

I am about three episodes behind at this point, but just hit this article from the Library of America on the Regensburg raid in the airmen's own voices and this comm seemed a suitable place to leave it: "'Their Own Tiny Circle of War': Masters of the Air, in Their Own Words." (The Library of America seems to have opinions about the show.)

[muccamukk]

That's a great essay! Thanks! I did feel like episode 3 at least partly captured the absolute chaos of that mission, including a couple long, silent shots of Cleven just surrounded by destruction.

(Is the opinion disdain?)

[sovay]

That's a great essay! Thanks!

You're welcome! I wasn't familiar with any of the primary sources.

(Is the opinion disdain?)

"There is a haunting irony that these scenes—uncanny and borderline incomprehensible even to the men who witnessed them—would form the basis for the eyeball-cramming, CGI-enhanced battle sequences of Masters of the Air."

(I agree with you that that silence does come through in some of those scenes and even more so in the Münster raid in Episode 5. But I also understand the LOA's side-eye.)

[partypaprika]

I like this article! The writing by the airmen that is included is great and packs a real punch.

[sovay]

I like this article! The writing by the airmen that is included is great and packs a real punch.

Agreed! I may in fact track down the LOA volumes which contain the rest of it.

[muccamukk]

Well, if you wanted Gale/John content, this episode was a GOLD MINE. A+ shipping.

Rosie's escape from the plane and then landing in no-mans-land was mostly good, though the CGI took a wooble so bad even I noticed it. I liked that they included his tour of Eastern Europe. I'm... less impressed that they made a Jewish character go to a death camp when he (as far as I know) did not do that.

I thought they did a good job making Croz look like he'd aged about 20 years since the first episode. I'm still mad about him for cheating on his wife?

The PoW storyline generally held together really well, and the escape bits were really tense (again, great for John/Gale).

The scenes with Lemmons in the plane was really cute!

This is the director who did Episode Four of the Pacific, and it felt like he knew how to handle war plots?

I'm pretty disheartened on the whole that we had zero queer characters (but some more homophobic jokes!), the Tuskegee guys felt very tokenised after their introduction last episode (underlined by them being the only people outside the main four who got "what happened" bits at the end), and I guess one significant woman, who got treated pretty shabbily. The book to me felt like it'd been published twenty years before it was, and I think the same is true of the show.

So many plots just got dropped. There was so much voice over telling us what was happening. You wanted to know what happened to any of the other characters they spend so little time establishing? I guess that's what the Internet was for. I feel like this is going to be even worse on rewatch, though I currently can't see myself rewatching. It'll be "Oh yeah, that guy!" "Oh right, that was a plot that happened then we never saw again!" for days.

And to be very fucking clear: the Americans never bombed civilians, and if they did those civilians had it coming. Just in case anyone was wondering about war crimes: that would be something exclusive to the Germans. I knew they were going to do this, and then was pissed off that they did it.

[partypaprika]

Agree about Buck/Bucky content. I haven't really been shipping much of anyone for this show, but the emotion felt very on point for this episode for the two of them.

I'll be mad forever about Crosby cheating on his wife. I hated that plotline so much.

So frustrated by introducing the very interesting Tuskegee men and then...next to nothing in the last episode.

[muccamukk]

The plot with Sandra was *perfect* if they'd left it at her first episode, and maybe had him trying to call her and hearing that she was a captain then not explaining! I'd have loved that! Alas.

We just didn't get anything from Alex and Meacon this episode! I guess Alex got maybe a scene, but nothing of any significance. Meanwhile I had no idea who the heck the two guys who escaped with Gale were. Was I supposed to remember them?

The show keeps doing this weird thing where it's like "Well historically, the unit have five different commanders, and Cleven escaped with these two guys, so we have to include that!" and just... for character continuity and good sense, how about you change it to characters we've fucking heard of! Or follow those characters so we find out who they are?

[partypaprika]

I'm just so frustrated that we couldn't have a cool female character without her becoming a love interest and then defined by that love interest. Arghhhhh

I have never seen those guys who escaped with Gale before lol. If they're already mixing and matching historical events, why not at least make it easier on the viewer...

[muccamukk]

I'd have even taken a cool love interest like Lena from The Pacific, but... I guess she did some spy stuff that didn't have anything to do with the rest of the plot?

The Stalag scenes were similar to Bastogne to me, where just when I'd got the hang of what people looked like, they all grew beards! Dammit. But I don't remember hearing their names before.

[soundandvision]

I need these same actors to do a show just about the Tuskeegee men because they had such good chemistry. They were on for such a short time but really nailed it imo

[partypaprika]

Me too! I really liked Alexander especially. Ughhhh. What could have been.

[partypaprika]

I have to say that I was both so bitter and so happy at the start of the episode. It was so good. It was exactly what I've been wanting more of. This is an aside, but I will die on this hill--I think that so many of the airplane scenes could have been so much better throughout the series, by focusing more on the interior of the plane and its occupants (and would have been better at heightening tension).

I love the connection that we got to see between Buck and Bucky. I loved that moment when Buck calmed Bucky down by agreeing to go with the escape. And then the separation! AND BUCK'S FACE WHEN BUCKY'S VOICE CAME ON THE RADIO AFTER HE GOT BACK TO BASE.

I really wish that we had more of Alexander, Robert and Richard. I really wish that we had seen them from the beginning or at least several episodes sooner. I liked getting to see them in the "more about" section at the end, but it treated them as main characters where the show did not but really should have. So the showrunners knew that they should be main characters but didn't want to actually do it? I don't even know.

I also really liked how upset Crosby was about Rosie's plane going down. I'm still not sure when they really became friends, but I like that friendship. That exchange about meeting up after the war was nice.

I was SUPER not prepared for the bayonetting of the POW escapee.

For the camp attack, at first, I was like, was shooting at the POW camp a smart idea? But then the explosions started and it made a lot more sense.

They definitely packed in a lot at the end. I loved Ken getting to go up in a plane! Women! They exist!

This episode was good! But felt like it easily could have been split up into a few episodes. Even with the compressed time frame, the emotional beats felt so much better for this episode--again, why couldn't we have this in the other episodes?

The show ended on a high and I'm glad that it did, but on the overall, this show really felt like a let down.

[muccamukk]

John being in the tower when Gale landed was PERFECT! Yes good, more of that for the last idk 8 episodes. Though they did get notably more shippy once they hit the PoW camp. I do wish we'd kept the sharing a bunk for warmth thing. Oh well.

So the showrunners knew that they should be main characters but didn't want to actually do it?
Yeah, that was so fucking cynical. I can't even.

I kept feeling like the attacking Americans (great casting on the tank commander, who looked like ten miles of bad road) could've just said, "Hey, you're surrounded, surrender pls."? And not risked killing a bunch of PoWs. I wonder how that actually went down.

I'm going to sit with the show for a week or so before writing a final review, but yeeaaaaaah.

[partypaprika]

I can't wait to rewatch the tower bit. It was so good! I just wanted more of it. And yes, that tank commander, A+. Dude looked rough.

[soundandvision]

Fanfic writers have their work cut out for them with this show.

[muccamukk]

I'm trying to decided if I have the will to fanfic.

[soundandvision]

do it do it do it do it. I need y'all to unravel Egan and then make him better for me lmao.

I have to rewatch the show back to back before I write cause there was so much going on.

[muccamukk]

I'm not that invested in Egan, either, tbh, but lots of people seem to have picked him as their fave, so I'm sure the fic exists. I'm puttering away at some OC lesbians, but would need to do a bit more research before anything else.

And probably rewatch the whole show back to back, like you.

[soundandvision]

idk if he's my fav or not but I feel like the actor did a good job. The guy who played Biddick also did a fantastic job and I like the mechanic.

I liked that they had more women in the show and I feel like there is good crossover wlw fic potential now

[muccamukk]

I really liked Biddick, too (RIP), and Lemmons! Baby Law did good.

I would've liked the more women in the show to have actual roles. I think it was on par with The Pacific for women with speaking roles, and about the same level of not giving them interesting things to do. *sighs*

[wearing_tearing]

Well! I'm glad it's over. There were parts of this episode that were great, but that only made me question even more some of the decisions made throughout the series. :/

Favorite moment was Lemmons in the plane! Finally!

[muccamukk]

That the show could have been good just makes it all more annoying somehow.

[wearing_tearing]

It does! The elements were all there, but they went and focused on a bunch of weird things. Ugh.

[soundandvision]

that is literally the most annoying part of this whole show.

[partypaprika]

Lemmons in the plane was so fun! It was a great moment.

[soundandvision]

Whomstever said "yeah 9 episodes is great" needs to be sent to federal prison

[muccamukk]

Ha. To be fair, it was better than a bunch of the other episodes (7 comes to mind).

[soundandvision]

I meant the number of episodes. IE 9 instead of 10 eps.

Trying to decide which episode was my fav vs least fav. I promise I liked this show but man I think they had too long to stew. They needed to step back and look at it with fresh eyes before they went into production.

I wonder if the long lead between them deciding to make it and then making it made a difference.

[muccamukk]

Oh yeah, right. I can read. Sometimes.

I suspect they ran out of money. BoB was supposed to be 13 episodes, at least as per initial series announcements, and HBO tightened the purse strings down to ten.

You're right on in the main issue, IMO. There's some serious forest for the tress issues happening.

[partypaprika]

I think that they caught in trying to make it too big, too grandiose and that was never going to work with 9 episodes. And the storytelling...all over the place for me.