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

[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.