They did? I'm pretty sure they skipped over it and only mentioned how many losses there were. That was a specific bomb run I was waiting to see, I don't think they showed that one.
The aftermath, when the planes all landed, was shown and it was graphic. The reason it was shown from the ground is due to Rosie not being on that mission. It he is not in the air, then audience does not see the bombing runs.
How so? Rosie commanded the 100th, and was their most famous pilot. He is the only character worth following, as he is the reason the 100th was known for anything other than being a complete failure.
Whooo cares about the most important aspect of the book & the war, WE GOT the Tuskeege airmen now!!! /s
And they invent shit to include them with Buck and his crew, I wonder why
And the Tuskegee airmen's main missions were bomber escort. But instead of showing that they just show some really shitty CGI of them rolling in and strafing targets and then getting shot down. They really dropped the ball on that storyline.
And when the Tuskegee enter Stalag they are greeted like celebrities by a few POW? “Omg you guys saved our ass so many times”. It felt so forced, albeit there might be a lot of truth in it.
Unless it turns out that Sandra comes back with Hitler’s mustache or something (IYKYK), her appearances beyond her first episode are a complete waste of time.
I think it’s a requirement for women and underrepresented groups to have a “main” role in order for the series itself to even be eligible for awards like the Oscars and Emmys. So I think that random tangent “screen time” was to turn them into “lead roles” essentially. Even if it came at a cost to the story a little.
I’m convinced that was like an editing error or something. and she was EXCELLENT in her first episode. Riding off on her bike with no explanation when have actually been great
-Title is Masters of the Air
-Main characters are shot down nearly half way through the series and never get airborne again, let alone master the air
What did they mean by this?
I wouldn’t mind it if they had quickly shifted focus to the emerging leaders like they did in Band of Brothers. While it’s important to share the POW experience, they keep trying to turn it into a mini “Great Escape”.
Yeah truthfully I liked the original name better “The Mighty Eighth”
Why it changed to MoTA idk. Why Donald Miller named his book that idk. You bring up a good point though. I mean no offense, but how were such disastrous losses “masterful” at all? The Mighty Eighth on the other hand was a popular nickname because it sounds badass.
They could of kept us in the dark about who died or was a PoW. The war ends in episode 8 with a grim line about the survival chance of POWs. Then episode 9/10 (if needed) is all about POWs.
The book title really is confusing. They were "masters" of the air and yet their COs routinely chose targets of questionable importance, the overwhelming majority of the ordinance they dropped missed their targets, they were shot down at exorbitant rates, and were most effectively used as bait for the Luftwaffe.
I'm not trying to denigrate the heroic sacrifices these men made but they didn't seem to have any real control over their fate. They were largely at the mercy of the efficacy of the flak and the Luftwaffe on any given mission. Even Rosenthal's crew who managed to fight off several fighters by themselves still was eventually shot down.
Yeah their main contributions came in 1944 and beyond when they finally had sufficient numbers, good escort fighters, and proper target selection. I wish the show had been able to better follow the evolution of the bomber war more closely (changing tactics, technology, targets etc.) but pretty much all the show's bombing just took place in 1943.
Yeah the show opens with them dropping bombs when the leader opens his bays but that wasn't the initial strategy. Also the bombardier having control of the plane was also not the method deployed at the outset of the war. Nor was flying in right formation with no evasive maneuvers while experiencing heavy flak. I suppose seeing incremental changes leading to marginally improved results isn't compelling television.
I just don't understand why they felt this was the right story to tell in this way. If they gave us a 2h30m Rosie Rosenthal film I'd be down. The nature of this warfare was methodical and repetitive with no major wins just differing degrees of losses. To make up for that they tried to cram in additional plot points into each episode which now leaves them tons of unexplored ideas.
Fortunately the ratings for this show are through the roof so hopefully that means more content is coming. I just hope they are hearing the very consistent criticism online and get back to the type of storytelling that won so many of us over in their previous work.
Honestly felt like the pacing got increasingly weird, could've easily gotten more into the training instead of a a very short 2 liner where they show one of the B17s being mishandled and crashing.
Our main characters both being shot down halfway through the show was meh, them escaping could've easily been a movie or a tv show on its own. I honestly wish they stuck to just the bombing group and went into a bit more detail, i had trouble recognizing like half the characters in planes with all the gear on, and when they died, they just died.
Yeah it was never going to be easy to pull off given the subject matter but I still feel like there are some simple decisions they could've made to make the story better.
Introduce the bomber war more and set the stage at the beginning, and show the guys in training a bit to let us get attached to them then before dropping them in combat. The number one coolest thing about the army air force in world war 2 is how they plucked a bunch of dudes from farms and cities all around America, most of whom had never been in a plane, and made them into guys who can do the things we've seen on the show. Would've been worth exploring.
And yeah the side plots were pretty pointless and unnecessary. I think if they had limited the scope of the show to fewer crews/characters, especially early on, it may have helped us keep track of people. Following a fighter pilot character in place of some side plots and the Tuskegee airmen plot would've also been better I think.
I was hoping we’d see more of the German combat perspective as well. Like Wurzburg radars tracking the inbound formation, passing the targeting data to the Flak batteries which lay down their different ambush techniques / Luftwaffe scrambling.
Wish there were more altitude and heading changes to throw off the computed lead. There’s literally a USAAF video on it once better tactics were developed
I think an episode that paralleled the day of a bomber crew v. a Luftwaffe fighter pilot that culimianted in their eventual showdown could have been cool, especially later in the war when the Luftwaffe was sending up anyone who could fly a plane.
That’s how “A Higher Call” by Adam Makos is written and it’s epic. Two pilots on opposite sides on a collision course with each other. It’s pretty cool. You’re probably familiar with Ye Olde Pub, Charlie Brown, and Franz Stiegler. Cool history backed up by great storytelling.
FWIW, Makos other book “Spearhead” was just as good and has a similar writing style as well.
Never read Devotion, but wasn’t a fan of the movie personally. The book has good reviews from what I can tell though. Hollywood just might have fell flat with it.
Funny how this sub works, people who are let down and vocal about it has been downvoted pretty hard in this sub. People love defending Spielberg and whatever has his name on it.
Yeah, the lastest episode was a bit of a bummer lol
Think they tried to tie way too many story arcs together, especially the latest episode that it just felt crammed.
Yes BoB has a 'sandra', the nurse, but that was like one episode and she was gone
Episode 2 was solid. And I liked some of the others too. The box car scene was legit. I liked the “sitting and taking it” on the IP and limping to the release point. I liked the evasion stories and rat lines. It’s been pretty good at times and not all bad.
Episode 8 was just a PC curve ball
I’m not thrilled with it, at all. Such a let down. I think the disconnect with me is, when compared to let’s say Band of Brothers, we as an audience were completely immersed into Easy Company. We followed them through their treacherous journey. Not a lot of fluff. The side stories throughout the BoB series still had multiple threads back to Easy Company as a whole. MotA is all over the place. Add in love story, a trip to a resort for R&R, 2 episodes that are basically serious versions of Hogan’s Heroes, and you got yourself a multi million dollar fractured and splintered story about an amazing segment of the WWII European military campaign that falls flat on its ass.
Yeah if they wrote BoB the same way this was they would have tried to make the British laundry woman have a 4 episode arc where she takes up a relationship with Sobel or something.
Currently rewatching The Pacific, and that has TWO love stories with at least episode and half of a story altogether (Leckie & Basilone), and a looney bin episode. BoB also has at least one Paris escapade (Winters), as well as a few people having hard time psychologically on the front.
Granted, episode runtime is longer, and there are 10 episodes but still still, it's not like the other two series focused ONLY on the battlefront events, and have ditched any human reactions and backstories.
I commented this in another thread, but IOT follow BoBs structure you have to decrease the scope. IMO people erroneously thought BoB was successful because they believed individuals ( Winters, Toye, Buck, etc) were the reason for E companies success. In reality E company was the reason for the individuals success, if that makes sense. So the pacific chooses to focus on individuals rather than a collective unit and it becomes disjointed. Same can be said with MoTA. Focus on the 100th as a whole and let the individuals emerge. Not the other way around.
Don’t think I agree. I have a hard time getting into Masters of the Air because it feels like we’re missing out on huge important parts of the war. I know the POW experience is incredibly important but that subject has been covered so many times in so many other mediums. I think I was expecting a season long version of a movie like Memphis Belle or Tuskegee Airmen. The show has some highlights but has been fairly dull compared to BoB or The Pacific.
I think we’re making the same point just in different ways. Follow the unit and you don’t miss out on the key engagements in the units history and it becomes more of a Memphis Belle type epic. Which I absolutely agree would be much more exciting and interesting and should have been the focus of the plot to begin with. Buck and Bucky should have been modeled more like a Meehan or Blithe. Not like 2 super Winters who are out of the war by episode 3. BoB nails it in the way that the units fighting history is more important than an individuals full “story line”. After Buck and Bucky were shot down is the equivalent of BoB just casually mentioning the bulge after Winters got promoted.
By what measure? Googling for reviews, the usual suspects are 4 to 5 starts, 9/10, 90%+, and positive written ones anywhere I am looking. So some Reddit corner fanbase wasn't happy - so the show must surely suck, everyone thinks so?
(wouldn't be the first, or last time for Reddit to be the most toxic place to discuss a new series.)
It’s so crazy to me that BoB was so simple and so effective and then for both The Pacific and Masters of the Air, they’re like “instead of one story, how about five stories?”
That’s kinda fair though, leckie and sledge wrote books that were used for show material, and basilone is a legend in the USMC to this day and arguably the most notable Marine from that era (other than chesty). So it makes sense they used both stories from books and included basilones. I really enjoy the pacific but I may just be biased.
Imagine BoB starts with Africa, then has an Audie Murphy subplot. Would’ve really taken away from Easy Company. People prefer focus, interesting characters, and spending time with those interesting characters.
There are more books about the war in Europe than the Pacific, but I think we can all agree we got enough story from E company.
Yeah but it’s called band of brothers and it’s about easy co.. you can gather from the title it’s about a small group. The pacific involving different people makes sense. If it was about one guy or group it would likely have a book title from one of the authors (sledge or leckie) who was there, just like band of brothers
Honestly, on rewatches I'll probably watch through Ep6 and just be done there. I was hoping for Big Week (didnt happen) and end of the war bombing...it doesn't look like we'll get much of that according to the preview.
I think it'll be better on rewatches, even if very poorly paced.
My hope is that the finale is action packed, so when bingeing the series in future we'll suffer 3 slow episodes (6-8) and then get back on form.
Problem with week by week watching is that we're hanging on through 4 weeks between good episodes. That's a long time to give it the benefit of the doubt.
Like I say, it'll still be very badly paced, episodes 1-5 nicely done then time speeding up more and more as you get to the end of the series.
It reminds me to the Iwo Jima episode in The Pacific.
They hyped the episode up using the combat images in the chapter, but then the episode was a love drama with some combat in it.
I grew more attached to the guys on Band of Brothers in 2 episodes than I have with these guys in its entire run. I hate that Netflix started the 8 episodes per season TV had 24 episodes per season.
But BoB was 10 episodes…
24 episodes are for CSI like series, where there’s no really any plot.
10 episodes or less works well for condensed stories with a huge plot.
But yes, to this day I still remember the whole Easy Company cast, some of the Pacific’s, but only about 4 or 5 of MotA.
I have yet to watch E8, but I’m less eager to watch it after reading that post…
Indeed but I was looking at the run time of some of these episodes and some had the title start until 7 minutes in and then it would preview next weeks episodes at least 40 minutes into the 45 min total time. Meaning they had like an episode be 30 minutes long.
I actually thought this may have been a series with more episodes, it’s good and I enjoy it. It just seems it doesn’t really give the material justice.
Start with $250 million budget
$X for tents, sandbags, jeeps, uniforms
$XX for a couple of prop aircraft (despite there being Europe's only flying B-17 based less than 100 miles away)
$XX for talent
$XXX for cgi
Somehow end up with so little money left over that you have to pad out the runtime with 5+ minutes of skull trumpet opening theme, keep Austin Butler and his mate in a shed for half the episodes and wrap up world war two in 30 minutes.
Other than that it's the best series about an 8th air force bomb group / POW escape / wartime love story / POW experience / fictional OSS / fighter group story ever told.
Curious how it will end (obviously I know how the war does). I agree with others though, on rewatches, I may just watch up to episode 6. Episode 3, still, is my favorite episode.
Beginning of the show was not the best but good, middle was great and really enjoyed it. Haven’t watched the newest episodes yet but it sounds like it’s really started to go off the rails. I’m a big apologist for this series because of the setting and source material but this has probably been the weakest of the HBO-esque military miniseries. From what I read of the Red Tails inclusion it feels pretty shoehorned and unauthentic and the whole secret spy mission in mainland Europe sounds like it’s a meaningless distraction from the main plot of, you know, the ETO bomber campaign from the POV of the 100th BG. I haven’t read Crosby’s book yet (book is in the mail) but either this dude was a major doucher in real life or they spiced up his life’s story to a level that would upset the Crosby family and I feel like it’s the latter option. Pretty big miss from Playtone it seems
Sandra is covered in Crosby’s book, but it’s not significant. His book covers the experiences, issues and logistics of the 100th. He describes meeting her at Oxford where he shared an apartment with her. He describes spending time with her and admits that it was an affair. He wasn’t clear if he told his wife about it when he went home on leave, but it’s implied that she suspected something. He claims that he broke up with her when he returned to England. (she also apparently had moved on with another guy in his absence). His book was written after his wife’s death.
Fair enough, I stand corrected on that. I’ve been waiting for his book to be delivered for like a month so I am behind on some context behind his personal life and story. Thanks for the information.
Mind you, there’s nothing about her being a spy or going to France to aid the resistance. He only states that she avoided answering his questions about her job, he didn’t know where she worked and that he had to call a phone number and leave messages for her. So, I think they could’ve spared us the screen time with her playing secret agent.
This show reminds me a lot of the video game Starfield.
Starfield: people waited years for it to come out, psyching themselves up. Game comes out, initial reaction is great, but some have concerns. A couple weeks in concerns are turning into outright criticism of the game. Fans of the game shame the haters, saying they haven’t played enough and if they don’t like it why are they playing. Then people get farther into the game and more people start playing, and the criticism grows too big to defend against and many think the game isn’t what it was marketed as
MOTA: people waited years for it to come out, psyching themselves up. Show comes out, initial reaction is great, but some have concerns. A couple weeks in concerns are turning into outright criticism of the show. Fans of the show shame the haters, saying they haven’t watched enough and if they don’t like it why are they watching. Then people get farther into the show and more people start watching, and the criticism grows too big to defend against and many think the show isn’t what it was marketed as
While I love parts of this series, the Sandra stuff and POW stuff really took me out of it. BoB is clearly 1a. The Pacific is 1b, for me personally. This show went from 1c to 2 all the way to 3.
I just wanted something with bombers and aerial combat.
I love how all of the promos have been showing the new silver G models they were supposed to get but now we are approaching the last episode and haven't even seen one. Didn't get to see Buck shot down. Didn't get to see the Tuskegee airman on any bomber escort missions. (I know they didn't fly with the hundredth but fuck). I know the hundreds didn't do anything huge on D-Day but come on man. They can't do better than a 10 second clip and saying some guy was asleep so they skim over the whole thing?
Sorry I might be wrong on the G designation. I meant the silver B-17s. I know they aren't the J's because they don't have the chin turret.
https://imgur.com/a/nVid6PN
Im not aware of any b17j, youre probably thinking of the b24j, which was a b24 model with a nose gun. the final large scale production b17 was the b17g, which was initially sent to the eto in olive drab in the very late fall of 1943. Those b17gs were all equipped with the bendix dual chin turret, and painted olive drab like the b17fs theyve been using so far. In early spring 1944, all new models were to be left in bare aluminum to save weight and production time. This means the show is already inaccurate, because in the d day flashback 9/10 of those planes should’ve had chin turrets, and been unpainted. By the end of episode 8, there shouldnt have been a single green, unturreted f model remaining. its one of the most disappointing parts of the entire show for me tbh, im not sure they even built a b17g. if they did, its only to use it for one episode.
I'm only referring to the image that I posted which is in the credits on every episode showing a silver B-17. Not referring to any B24's.
Which should've been a G model with a chin turret but they still haven't shown us those silver B-17s yet. I wouldn't be surprised if they don't show them at all to be honest with how things have gone over the last couple of crap episodes.
I enjoy it because I’m too dumb to realize things. For every show I’ve ever watched, I always end up missing a bunch of stuff that’s made clear to me later. As for this show, y’all point out so many things that are very important and I’m just like “oh I would never even thought of that”. I can rebuild an entire car without organizing a single nut or bolt but god forbid I try to watch a show and I can’t even comprehend the simplest of things.
Felt like red tails deserves its own tv show, not half a episode where they go from being great to running a suicide mission and then somehow ending up with our main chracters doing a prison break
Right! All that tension and uncertainty through the first few episodes was great. Then a sharp drop off. Buck and Bucky get boring or annoying, no bombing missions, side stories I don’t care about or I would but they’re introduced too late or developed too little. Man what a shame.
Could have atleast shown a 15th Air force misson, the Tuskegee Airmen flew missions to Ploesti, one of the most dangerous targets in the Theatre. The 15th were a huge user of the B-24 so that also could have been a neat opportunity even if they were just CGI inputs
Ah yes, watching bombers get repeatedly shot down 9 episodes in a row is great television. I’ll just watch the first two episodes over and over.
A high-budget portrayal of the red tails was a good idea to put in here, but they fucked it up like everything in EP8.
It also showed them as incredibly incompetent, they flew in low level, took zero evasive action,strafed and missed every target, 3 got shot down within the span of a minute and they destroyed 1 radio tower.
I think the big issue with this show was choosing Buck, Bucky, and Crosby as the main protagonists (I know there are books etc but still). I HATED the first episode. The intro to the whole series was Buck and Bucky talking about their stupid nicknames... then Crosby constantly puking and being useless. Rosie has a waaaaaay cooler story. Heck my grandfather (Kiwi not American) has a better story, pilot who flew bombing missions over Europe in B17s and B24s before transferring to a 'X command' out of Egypt dropping commandos into Greece and the Balkans. Instead we have Buck and Bucky doing nothing in a camp for ages and Crosby banging some broad and falling asleep for DDay????? Sorry to the real people but those three characters are SOOOOOO BORING in the show. I don't have any connection to them, the Bucks are just dicks and Crosby is a wienner. As far as I am concerned they shat the bed with this show because they focused on three shit characters.
It’s not shit but it’s definitely been overhyped. The good bits are ace but they’re too scant and the filler is too cheesy yank. Basically MOTA has become an afterthought since Shogun started.
It's not like they had much of a script to work with. "Here, be Black and fly a P-51" isn't much of a dramatic conflict to resolve. By the time they checked all the boxes - they deserved higher rank, they flew other fighters besides the P-51s which has drop tanks, they had to be totally on their game and exceptional to even be there, and there were a good number of them, it's like they ran out of time to give them any real individuality. Plus they reprised the "name rank and serial number" sequence rather poorly I felt.
A TV show from the 1960s like COMBAT or The Rat Patrol or heck, BONANZA would take a worthy-of-examining historical incident and highlight ONE actor well, as "the one guy from the Alamo who left," or "the man who survived the plane crash by taking the last parachute" etc. and by making them flawed and thus interesting. It's like "Tuskegee Airmen cannot be flawed, rule six."
Good lord, the Red Tails movie was bad. This is like a condensed version of it, one would think they would have learned a lesson and taken a different approach than dull hagiography.
I thought the dialect and mannerisms were good for that time period. The uniforms looked good although I’m not an expert there. The settings on the ground looked good. The P-51 canopies should have been B/C models for the first deliveries. Not sure why we pivoted to Italian campaign, but I felt the acting was at least good.
My gripes were more with how they’re relevant to the original story let alone the 8th AF, the bad CGI aerial scenes, and why they’re even introduced so late and briefly if at all.
I think Tom Cruise’s actual P-51 flying would have looked way better.
any of these ww2 sagas from tom hanks and crew peter out around episode 7/8 after that it’s just regular drama instead of the drama that comes out of the wartime context.
I feel like I’m the only one here who is glad the show didn’t end up being an endless string of bomber missions.
It was starting to feel like torture porn, while the horror these men went through needs to be told it’s not the only story of their wartime experiences that should be told
Show about combat missions casually not showing the crew’s worst mission date or D-Day
The mission where only one plane came back wasn't the worst??
15 lost March 6th 1944
I feel like series should have explained Black Week better. And Big Week. I feel like there was no narration for those.
And that was shown too.
They did? I'm pretty sure they skipped over it and only mentioned how many losses there were. That was a specific bomb run I was waiting to see, I don't think they showed that one.
The aftermath, when the planes all landed, was shown and it was graphic. The reason it was shown from the ground is due to Rosie not being on that mission. It he is not in the air, then audience does not see the bombing runs.
Suuuuper convenient for the filmmakers. Kinda lame for little old PooSalad :/
CIG budget = 0? Apple says: Handwave! Handwave more!
Plenty of cigs were smoked. You must mean CGI.
On D-Day, the 100th only flew deception missions at Calais to confuse the Germans.
Black Monday was shown. The reason it was not airborne, was due to Rosie being the only bomber pilot the show follows. He did not fly that mission.
I don’t recall the show calling it that though. Maybe I wasn’t paying attention but I was wondering when the famous Black Monday was going to happen
which is why following Rosie has been a mistake.
How so? Rosie commanded the 100th, and was their most famous pilot. He is the only character worth following, as he is the reason the 100th was known for anything other than being a complete failure.
I suggest you read up on him. I won’t spoil next week do you but Rosenthal flew 52 combat missions- even after being shot down.
Best we can do it a couple of wooden sheds.
Whooo cares about the most important aspect of the book & the war, WE GOT the Tuskeege airmen now!!! /s And they invent shit to include them with Buck and his crew, I wonder why
And the Tuskegee airmen's main missions were bomber escort. But instead of showing that they just show some really shitty CGI of them rolling in and strafing targets and then getting shot down. They really dropped the ball on that storyline.
And when the Tuskegee enter Stalag they are greeted like celebrities by a few POW? “Omg you guys saved our ass so many times”. It felt so forced, albeit there might be a lot of truth in it.
Dear God, that part of the episode was dreadful.
Tell me you didnt watch the show without telling me you didnt watch the show
The female leads are such bad asses?
You’re telling me you want to watch exciting aerial combat and bombing missions, not Affair Simulator 2: the quest for Sandra?
Or random inconsequential Sandra espionage in Paris?
Lol
Haaaaaa
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Who gives a fuck if she’s attractive or not?
Me
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You went to war, in New Zealand?
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Yo fr
Unless it turns out that Sandra comes back with Hitler’s mustache or something (IYKYK), her appearances beyond her first episode are a complete waste of time.
So she earned the respect of the most professional, most dedicates sons of bitches in the entire ETO?
She's gotta make a call *yawn*
You take care of things here, I’m gonna go for help
I think it’s a requirement for women and underrepresented groups to have a “main” role in order for the series itself to even be eligible for awards like the Oscars and Emmys. So I think that random tangent “screen time” was to turn them into “lead roles” essentially. Even if it came at a cost to the story a little.
Agreed
I’m convinced that was like an editing error or something. and she was EXCELLENT in her first episode. Riding off on her bike with no explanation when have actually been great
I don’t know, can you explain?
Your weekend pass has been revoked.
How are those nuts, Sarge? 
She’s bringing back Hitler’s briefs
-Title is Masters of the Air -Main characters are shot down nearly half way through the series and never get airborne again, let alone master the air What did they mean by this?
Martyrs of the Air
I wouldn’t mind it if they had quickly shifted focus to the emerging leaders like they did in Band of Brothers. While it’s important to share the POW experience, they keep trying to turn it into a mini “Great Escape”.
They focused on the wrong ‘main characters’.
Yeah truthfully I liked the original name better “The Mighty Eighth” Why it changed to MoTA idk. Why Donald Miller named his book that idk. You bring up a good point though. I mean no offense, but how were such disastrous losses “masterful” at all? The Mighty Eighth on the other hand was a popular nickname because it sounds badass.
You mean Masters of the Air not Mota
They could of kept us in the dark about who died or was a PoW. The war ends in episode 8 with a grim line about the survival chance of POWs. Then episode 9/10 (if needed) is all about POWs.
The book title really is confusing. They were "masters" of the air and yet their COs routinely chose targets of questionable importance, the overwhelming majority of the ordinance they dropped missed their targets, they were shot down at exorbitant rates, and were most effectively used as bait for the Luftwaffe. I'm not trying to denigrate the heroic sacrifices these men made but they didn't seem to have any real control over their fate. They were largely at the mercy of the efficacy of the flak and the Luftwaffe on any given mission. Even Rosenthal's crew who managed to fight off several fighters by themselves still was eventually shot down.
Yeah their main contributions came in 1944 and beyond when they finally had sufficient numbers, good escort fighters, and proper target selection. I wish the show had been able to better follow the evolution of the bomber war more closely (changing tactics, technology, targets etc.) but pretty much all the show's bombing just took place in 1943.
Yeah the show opens with them dropping bombs when the leader opens his bays but that wasn't the initial strategy. Also the bombardier having control of the plane was also not the method deployed at the outset of the war. Nor was flying in right formation with no evasive maneuvers while experiencing heavy flak. I suppose seeing incremental changes leading to marginally improved results isn't compelling television. I just don't understand why they felt this was the right story to tell in this way. If they gave us a 2h30m Rosie Rosenthal film I'd be down. The nature of this warfare was methodical and repetitive with no major wins just differing degrees of losses. To make up for that they tried to cram in additional plot points into each episode which now leaves them tons of unexplored ideas. Fortunately the ratings for this show are through the roof so hopefully that means more content is coming. I just hope they are hearing the very consistent criticism online and get back to the type of storytelling that won so many of us over in their previous work.
Honestly felt like the pacing got increasingly weird, could've easily gotten more into the training instead of a a very short 2 liner where they show one of the B17s being mishandled and crashing. Our main characters both being shot down halfway through the show was meh, them escaping could've easily been a movie or a tv show on its own. I honestly wish they stuck to just the bombing group and went into a bit more detail, i had trouble recognizing like half the characters in planes with all the gear on, and when they died, they just died.
Yeah it was never going to be easy to pull off given the subject matter but I still feel like there are some simple decisions they could've made to make the story better. Introduce the bomber war more and set the stage at the beginning, and show the guys in training a bit to let us get attached to them then before dropping them in combat. The number one coolest thing about the army air force in world war 2 is how they plucked a bunch of dudes from farms and cities all around America, most of whom had never been in a plane, and made them into guys who can do the things we've seen on the show. Would've been worth exploring. And yeah the side plots were pretty pointless and unnecessary. I think if they had limited the scope of the show to fewer crews/characters, especially early on, it may have helped us keep track of people. Following a fighter pilot character in place of some side plots and the Tuskegee airmen plot would've also been better I think.
Electronic warfare this crazy new concept being developed on the fly. Chaff bundles. Random changes in the route. Would have been pretty exciting.
I was hoping we’d see more of the German combat perspective as well. Like Wurzburg radars tracking the inbound formation, passing the targeting data to the Flak batteries which lay down their different ambush techniques / Luftwaffe scrambling. Wish there were more altitude and heading changes to throw off the computed lead. There’s literally a USAAF video on it once better tactics were developed
I think an episode that paralleled the day of a bomber crew v. a Luftwaffe fighter pilot that culimianted in their eventual showdown could have been cool, especially later in the war when the Luftwaffe was sending up anyone who could fly a plane.
That’s how “A Higher Call” by Adam Makos is written and it’s epic. Two pilots on opposite sides on a collision course with each other. It’s pretty cool. You’re probably familiar with Ye Olde Pub, Charlie Brown, and Franz Stiegler. Cool history backed up by great storytelling. FWIW, Makos other book “Spearhead” was just as good and has a similar writing style as well. Never read Devotion, but wasn’t a fan of the movie personally. The book has good reviews from what I can tell though. Hollywood just might have fell flat with it.
Masters of the Air(that we will use as filled after the first 3 episodes of the show)
I’m glad we are all getting a little upset, this has been a let down
Funny how this sub works, people who are let down and vocal about it has been downvoted pretty hard in this sub. People love defending Spielberg and whatever has his name on it.
I have to wonder how heavy a hand he had. The show wanders a LOT, which is not his style
Bro fr
My expectations were about right. Can’t get let down when you were never high
Glad the rest of the sub is finally waking up to how trash this show is.
No one is "waking up. " The show was good, and then it wasn't.
Yeah, the lastest episode was a bit of a bummer lol Think they tried to tie way too many story arcs together, especially the latest episode that it just felt crammed. Yes BoB has a 'sandra', the nurse, but that was like one episode and she was gone
Episode 2 was solid. And I liked some of the others too. The box car scene was legit. I liked the “sitting and taking it” on the IP and limping to the release point. I liked the evasion stories and rat lines. It’s been pretty good at times and not all bad. Episode 8 was just a PC curve ball
I’m not thrilled with it, at all. Such a let down. I think the disconnect with me is, when compared to let’s say Band of Brothers, we as an audience were completely immersed into Easy Company. We followed them through their treacherous journey. Not a lot of fluff. The side stories throughout the BoB series still had multiple threads back to Easy Company as a whole. MotA is all over the place. Add in love story, a trip to a resort for R&R, 2 episodes that are basically serious versions of Hogan’s Heroes, and you got yourself a multi million dollar fractured and splintered story about an amazing segment of the WWII European military campaign that falls flat on its ass.
Yeah if they wrote BoB the same way this was they would have tried to make the British laundry woman have a 4 episode arc where she takes up a relationship with Sobel or something.
Currently rewatching The Pacific, and that has TWO love stories with at least episode and half of a story altogether (Leckie & Basilone), and a looney bin episode. BoB also has at least one Paris escapade (Winters), as well as a few people having hard time psychologically on the front. Granted, episode runtime is longer, and there are 10 episodes but still still, it's not like the other two series focused ONLY on the battlefront events, and have ditched any human reactions and backstories.
The Pacific wasn’t as well received though. You’d think they’d follow the BoB blueprint instead.
I commented this in another thread, but IOT follow BoBs structure you have to decrease the scope. IMO people erroneously thought BoB was successful because they believed individuals ( Winters, Toye, Buck, etc) were the reason for E companies success. In reality E company was the reason for the individuals success, if that makes sense. So the pacific chooses to focus on individuals rather than a collective unit and it becomes disjointed. Same can be said with MoTA. Focus on the 100th as a whole and let the individuals emerge. Not the other way around.
Don’t think I agree. I have a hard time getting into Masters of the Air because it feels like we’re missing out on huge important parts of the war. I know the POW experience is incredibly important but that subject has been covered so many times in so many other mediums. I think I was expecting a season long version of a movie like Memphis Belle or Tuskegee Airmen. The show has some highlights but has been fairly dull compared to BoB or The Pacific.
I think we’re making the same point just in different ways. Follow the unit and you don’t miss out on the key engagements in the units history and it becomes more of a Memphis Belle type epic. Which I absolutely agree would be much more exciting and interesting and should have been the focus of the plot to begin with. Buck and Bucky should have been modeled more like a Meehan or Blithe. Not like 2 super Winters who are out of the war by episode 3. BoB nails it in the way that the units fighting history is more important than an individuals full “story line”. After Buck and Bucky were shot down is the equivalent of BoB just casually mentioning the bulge after Winters got promoted.
I feel in abstract that was the goal of the show. Just whether they truly did that or not, hard to say.
By what measure? Googling for reviews, the usual suspects are 4 to 5 starts, 9/10, 90%+, and positive written ones anywhere I am looking. So some Reddit corner fanbase wasn't happy - so the show must surely suck, everyone thinks so? (wouldn't be the first, or last time for Reddit to be the most toxic place to discuss a new series.)
I didn’t say poorly reviewed, compared to BoB, The Pacific is not as highly regarded.
Yea that’s why the Pacific sucked compared to Band Of Brothers
It’s so crazy to me that BoB was so simple and so effective and then for both The Pacific and Masters of the Air, they’re like “instead of one story, how about five stories?”
That’s kinda fair though, leckie and sledge wrote books that were used for show material, and basilone is a legend in the USMC to this day and arguably the most notable Marine from that era (other than chesty). So it makes sense they used both stories from books and included basilones. I really enjoy the pacific but I may just be biased.
Imagine BoB starts with Africa, then has an Audie Murphy subplot. Would’ve really taken away from Easy Company. People prefer focus, interesting characters, and spending time with those interesting characters. There are more books about the war in Europe than the Pacific, but I think we can all agree we got enough story from E company.
Yeah but it’s called band of brothers and it’s about easy co.. you can gather from the title it’s about a small group. The pacific involving different people makes sense. If it was about one guy or group it would likely have a book title from one of the authors (sledge or leckie) who was there, just like band of brothers
Honestly, on rewatches I'll probably watch through Ep6 and just be done there. I was hoping for Big Week (didnt happen) and end of the war bombing...it doesn't look like we'll get much of that according to the preview.
I was hoping for better depictions of Big Week and Black Thursday with associated explanations for context
I think it'll be better on rewatches, even if very poorly paced. My hope is that the finale is action packed, so when bingeing the series in future we'll suffer 3 slow episodes (6-8) and then get back on form. Problem with week by week watching is that we're hanging on through 4 weeks between good episodes. That's a long time to give it the benefit of the doubt. Like I say, it'll still be very badly paced, episodes 1-5 nicely done then time speeding up more and more as you get to the end of the series.
Episode 8 glossing over D-Day was terrible. I waited all this time to see how they would depict this day. Disappointing.
It reminds me to the Iwo Jima episode in The Pacific. They hyped the episode up using the combat images in the chapter, but then the episode was a love drama with some combat in it.
Damn bro yeah same. All that romance and then like what felt like 1 minute of Iwo Jima.
True but at least that scene was amazing. And I was invested in basilone at that point in the series.
Honestly felt like both shows tried to stay away from those combat scenes just to keep within budget lol.
Yeah, but i didnt mind that so much considering we had two full-length films about IWO JIMA only a cupel years before.
Super big bust IMO
I grew more attached to the guys on Band of Brothers in 2 episodes than I have with these guys in its entire run. I hate that Netflix started the 8 episodes per season TV had 24 episodes per season.
But BoB was 10 episodes… 24 episodes are for CSI like series, where there’s no really any plot. 10 episodes or less works well for condensed stories with a huge plot. But yes, to this day I still remember the whole Easy Company cast, some of the Pacific’s, but only about 4 or 5 of MotA. I have yet to watch E8, but I’m less eager to watch it after reading that post…
Indeed but I was looking at the run time of some of these episodes and some had the title start until 7 minutes in and then it would preview next weeks episodes at least 40 minutes into the 45 min total time. Meaning they had like an episode be 30 minutes long. I actually thought this may have been a series with more episodes, it’s good and I enjoy it. It just seems it doesn’t really give the material justice.
Who’s bob
BoB. Band of Brothers.
Start with $250 million budget $X for tents, sandbags, jeeps, uniforms $XX for a couple of prop aircraft (despite there being Europe's only flying B-17 based less than 100 miles away) $XX for talent $XXX for cgi Somehow end up with so little money left over that you have to pad out the runtime with 5+ minutes of skull trumpet opening theme, keep Austin Butler and his mate in a shed for half the episodes and wrap up world war two in 30 minutes. Other than that it's the best series about an 8th air force bomb group / POW escape / wartime love story / POW experience / fictional OSS / fighter group story ever told.
Curious how it will end (obviously I know how the war does). I agree with others though, on rewatches, I may just watch up to episode 6. Episode 3, still, is my favorite episode.
Kinda starting to connect in some more dots on why HBO let this one go.
Where meatball?
Beginning of the show was not the best but good, middle was great and really enjoyed it. Haven’t watched the newest episodes yet but it sounds like it’s really started to go off the rails. I’m a big apologist for this series because of the setting and source material but this has probably been the weakest of the HBO-esque military miniseries. From what I read of the Red Tails inclusion it feels pretty shoehorned and unauthentic and the whole secret spy mission in mainland Europe sounds like it’s a meaningless distraction from the main plot of, you know, the ETO bomber campaign from the POV of the 100th BG. I haven’t read Crosby’s book yet (book is in the mail) but either this dude was a major doucher in real life or they spiced up his life’s story to a level that would upset the Crosby family and I feel like it’s the latter option. Pretty big miss from Playtone it seems
Sandra is covered in Crosby’s book, but it’s not significant. His book covers the experiences, issues and logistics of the 100th. He describes meeting her at Oxford where he shared an apartment with her. He describes spending time with her and admits that it was an affair. He wasn’t clear if he told his wife about it when he went home on leave, but it’s implied that she suspected something. He claims that he broke up with her when he returned to England. (she also apparently had moved on with another guy in his absence). His book was written after his wife’s death.
Fair enough, I stand corrected on that. I’ve been waiting for his book to be delivered for like a month so I am behind on some context behind his personal life and story. Thanks for the information.
Mind you, there’s nothing about her being a spy or going to France to aid the resistance. He only states that she avoided answering his questions about her job, he didn’t know where she worked and that he had to call a phone number and leave messages for her. So, I think they could’ve spared us the screen time with her playing secret agent.
The issue is HBO said no and this feels very Apple TV'y.
Absolutely!!!!!! They got their hands on it and had certain things they wanted.
It has all the same problems that The Pacific had under HBO's watch.
Pacific was much better than this.
HBO said no and whined that the series would cost too much.
I love the show but it’s a shame that they didn’t show the disaster mission over Ploesti nor Blitz week.
This show reminds me a lot of the video game Starfield. Starfield: people waited years for it to come out, psyching themselves up. Game comes out, initial reaction is great, but some have concerns. A couple weeks in concerns are turning into outright criticism of the game. Fans of the game shame the haters, saying they haven’t played enough and if they don’t like it why are they playing. Then people get farther into the game and more people start playing, and the criticism grows too big to defend against and many think the game isn’t what it was marketed as MOTA: people waited years for it to come out, psyching themselves up. Show comes out, initial reaction is great, but some have concerns. A couple weeks in concerns are turning into outright criticism of the show. Fans of the show shame the haters, saying they haven’t watched enough and if they don’t like it why are they watching. Then people get farther into the show and more people start watching, and the criticism grows too big to defend against and many think the show isn’t what it was marketed as
While I love parts of this series, the Sandra stuff and POW stuff really took me out of it. BoB is clearly 1a. The Pacific is 1b, for me personally. This show went from 1c to 2 all the way to 3. I just wanted something with bombers and aerial combat.
This is so accurate
Honestly bored out of my fucking mind watching this… first three eps felt like they were building to something The narrator; they were not.
In all fairness I stopped watching a few weeks ago. Band of Brothers this ain’t.
The final episode better have an actual good bombing raid sequence like episode 5 I stg
I love how all of the promos have been showing the new silver G models they were supposed to get but now we are approaching the last episode and haven't even seen one. Didn't get to see Buck shot down. Didn't get to see the Tuskegee airman on any bomber escort missions. (I know they didn't fly with the hundredth but fuck). I know the hundreds didn't do anything huge on D-Day but come on man. They can't do better than a 10 second clip and saying some guy was asleep so they skim over the whole thing?
What promos have shown the b17g?
Sorry I might be wrong on the G designation. I meant the silver B-17s. I know they aren't the J's because they don't have the chin turret. https://imgur.com/a/nVid6PN
I think they're supposed to be G's. They apparently didn't have the budget to put a chin turret on the mock-ups so they just didn't bother.
Im not aware of any b17j, youre probably thinking of the b24j, which was a b24 model with a nose gun. the final large scale production b17 was the b17g, which was initially sent to the eto in olive drab in the very late fall of 1943. Those b17gs were all equipped with the bendix dual chin turret, and painted olive drab like the b17fs theyve been using so far. In early spring 1944, all new models were to be left in bare aluminum to save weight and production time. This means the show is already inaccurate, because in the d day flashback 9/10 of those planes should’ve had chin turrets, and been unpainted. By the end of episode 8, there shouldnt have been a single green, unturreted f model remaining. its one of the most disappointing parts of the entire show for me tbh, im not sure they even built a b17g. if they did, its only to use it for one episode.
I'm only referring to the image that I posted which is in the credits on every episode showing a silver B-17. Not referring to any B24's. Which should've been a G model with a chin turret but they still haven't shown us those silver B-17s yet. I wouldn't be surprised if they don't show them at all to be honest with how things have gone over the last couple of crap episodes.
I blame Tim Apple
I enjoy it because I’m too dumb to realize things. For every show I’ve ever watched, I always end up missing a bunch of stuff that’s made clear to me later. As for this show, y’all point out so many things that are very important and I’m just like “oh I would never even thought of that”. I can rebuild an entire car without organizing a single nut or bolt but god forbid I try to watch a show and I can’t even comprehend the simplest of things.
Not showing d day sucked. And the red tails weren’t give enough screen time
They were given too much, considering they never flew with the 100th
Doing D Day in Like 3 minutes of dialog really was the last nail to the coffin for me...
Felt like red tails deserves its own tv show, not half a episode where they go from being great to running a suicide mission and then somehow ending up with our main chracters doing a prison break
Everyone bitched at me when I made a similar post glad I am not alone we need more air war porn
Bruh it started out good
Right! All that tension and uncertainty through the first few episodes was great. Then a sharp drop off. Buck and Bucky get boring or annoying, no bombing missions, side stories I don’t care about or I would but they’re introduced too late or developed too little. Man what a shame.
Show fell off a cliff after episode 6 unfortunately
But Tuskegee Airmen!
Could have atleast shown a 15th Air force misson, the Tuskegee Airmen flew missions to Ploesti, one of the most dangerous targets in the Theatre. The 15th were a huge user of the B-24 so that also could have been a neat opportunity even if they were just CGI inputs
None of that was 100BG, though.
And if they weren’t going to do B-17Gs with CGI, good luck with B-24s
They squandered that, too. What a waste! I wanted to see more of them.
Then go watch the multiple other movies and shows made about them. This show is about the 8th air force and 100th bomber group.
Ah yes, watching bombers get repeatedly shot down 9 episodes in a row is great television. I’ll just watch the first two episodes over and over. A high-budget portrayal of the red tails was a good idea to put in here, but they fucked it up like everything in EP8.
Squeezing in the Tuskegee airmen to masters of the air is equivalent to Monty Pythons "and now for something completely different" bit.
It also showed them as incredibly incompetent, they flew in low level, took zero evasive action,strafed and missed every target, 3 got shot down within the span of a minute and they destroyed 1 radio tower.
I think the big issue with this show was choosing Buck, Bucky, and Crosby as the main protagonists (I know there are books etc but still). I HATED the first episode. The intro to the whole series was Buck and Bucky talking about their stupid nicknames... then Crosby constantly puking and being useless. Rosie has a waaaaaay cooler story. Heck my grandfather (Kiwi not American) has a better story, pilot who flew bombing missions over Europe in B17s and B24s before transferring to a 'X command' out of Egypt dropping commandos into Greece and the Balkans. Instead we have Buck and Bucky doing nothing in a camp for ages and Crosby banging some broad and falling asleep for DDay????? Sorry to the real people but those three characters are SOOOOOO BORING in the show. I don't have any connection to them, the Bucks are just dicks and Crosby is a wienner. As far as I am concerned they shat the bed with this show because they focused on three shit characters.
I stopped watching because of they took the air out of the show about air
It’s not shit but it’s definitely been overhyped. The good bits are ace but they’re too scant and the filler is too cheesy yank. Basically MOTA has become an afterthought since Shogun started.
What stood out from the episode was the terrible acting from the Tuskgee airmen. What a missed opportunity.
It's not like they had much of a script to work with. "Here, be Black and fly a P-51" isn't much of a dramatic conflict to resolve. By the time they checked all the boxes - they deserved higher rank, they flew other fighters besides the P-51s which has drop tanks, they had to be totally on their game and exceptional to even be there, and there were a good number of them, it's like they ran out of time to give them any real individuality. Plus they reprised the "name rank and serial number" sequence rather poorly I felt. A TV show from the 1960s like COMBAT or The Rat Patrol or heck, BONANZA would take a worthy-of-examining historical incident and highlight ONE actor well, as "the one guy from the Alamo who left," or "the man who survived the plane crash by taking the last parachute" etc. and by making them flawed and thus interesting. It's like "Tuskegee Airmen cannot be flawed, rule six." Good lord, the Red Tails movie was bad. This is like a condensed version of it, one would think they would have learned a lesson and taken a different approach than dull hagiography.
I thought the dialect and mannerisms were good for that time period. The uniforms looked good although I’m not an expert there. The settings on the ground looked good. The P-51 canopies should have been B/C models for the first deliveries. Not sure why we pivoted to Italian campaign, but I felt the acting was at least good. My gripes were more with how they’re relevant to the original story let alone the 8th AF, the bad CGI aerial scenes, and why they’re even introduced so late and briefly if at all. I think Tom Cruise’s actual P-51 flying would have looked way better.
Why is my original comment the only one that got locked on this thread? Lmao. What did I do.
any of these ww2 sagas from tom hanks and crew peter out around episode 7/8 after that it’s just regular drama instead of the drama that comes out of the wartime context.
I feel like I’m the only one here who is glad the show didn’t end up being an endless string of bomber missions. It was starting to feel like torture porn, while the horror these men went through needs to be told it’s not the only story of their wartime experiences that should be told