Protecting those who need it.
Fighting those who deserve it.
Being positive representations of masculinity and demonstrating the qualities most men aspire to.
The first two of nine episodes dropped this weekend on Apple+.
But this one featured series writer John Orloff.
Which he points out was much harder because withBoBthere was source material to work with.
Not just the Stephen Ambrose bestseller, but the actual members of Easy Company.
This required mountains of research.
Notebooks filled with names, dates, locations, missions, battles, the living and the dying.
He handed it to Hanks and fully 10 years later, it’s finally on the screen.
The first thing that hits you watching this is the sheer scale of the undertaking.
Orloff told the podcast hosts that literally thousands of people worked on it.
WhereasBoBchanges locations, it mostly takes place on dry land and involves a fairly manageable group of recurring characters.
Same withThe Pacific, except it involved a lot of filming on the ocean.
Although that last part didn’t happen nearly enough.
Amazon’sLord of the Rings: The Rings of Poweris the most expensive show ever filmed.
And to me it looks like the kind of movie you make toget intofilm school.
Cheap, amateurish costumes and make up.
Bland, one-note characters, badly acted.
But withMasters, you see where all those man hours, labor, care and effort went.
Right down to the fact the producers took great pains to make it as historically accurate as possible.
The strongest element so far is, not surprisingly, the flight sequences.
You get a true sense of the physics of these planes.
How small they seem on the inside when you get a crew of 10 in there.
Like stuffing 10 grown men and thousands of pounds of ordinance into a school bus.
How hard they were to maintain.
Or when shards of shrapnel come tearing through the cabin like ninja stars.
At times, it’s stunning.
Some of the best and (I assume) best combat scenes ever committed to film.
And I don’t think I’m spoiling anything when I say they promise to grow in scale exponentially.
Later in the war there was one raid over Berlin that took3 hoursfrom the first plane to the last.
As far as the characters, it’s still a work in progress.
And it can take a few episodes before you really get familiar with them.
Right now there’s a lot of guys with similar names, similar faces, and similar mustaches.
And believe me, this show’s mustache game is strong.
If I have a complaint, it’s that it does lapse into trope territory every now and again.
The stereotype of the wiseass Masshole with a terrible Boston accent.
The obligatory dance party scene with a Big Band playing period music.
Which I suppose can’t be avoided in a story like this.
What can be avoided is a personal beef of mine.
We owe these guys and they deserve better.
Those flaws aside, it’s so far, so good.
The Dad TV is strong with this one.
And two episodes in, I’m giving it an 85% on Thorntomatoes.
Stay tuned as I think it’s only going to get better.
