DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Tailgate Forum The Pacific on HBO

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Nothing against the guy, but as a lover of history, Ambrose is amazing.

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Ohh I agree. Have you ever read his book "Citizen Soldiers"? I really enjoyed that book and really like reading his writing style. I picked up a book he wrote on Ike too for a US History class I took in college that I enjoyed reading. Band of Brothers was an awesome book and I was so excited when HBO turned it into a series.

I agree with the other posters in saying it is difficult to ID the characters. Band of Brothers was relatively easy b/c the series started at the beginning of training and not right in the middle of the battle.
The 2nd episode was better than the first and to me it was mostly just b/c of the action. Action sequences alone don't make a war flick though and it looks like this weeks episode focuses more on the characters.
If you have HBO On-Demand check out the airfield scene. It's bad ass!

A rather slow episode last night. The girl was a hottie -- but that's not why I'm watching a war miniseries

Agreed. That episode could have been condensed to about 10 minutes. The girl was smokin', though.

One other difference I noticed with BoB:

During the "interviews" at the beginning of each episode, they would put the name of the person on screen, so that you got to know who was whom. And it was the actual person that the movie was portraying.

In The Pacific, they don't do that at all... they have vets speaking, but I have no idea who the heck they are. They don't give the name, and we KNOW it isn't John Basilone or Chesty Puller as both are long dead (well, Chesty is recent, but Basilone died in the war - on Iwo, I believe.).

And the amount of time that it takes to start an episode is really standing out to me now.... AND the amount of time taken out at the end. The thing is bracketed by 10 minutes of non-story at each end. You're already condensing months and years of story into a small timeframe - and then they artificially shrink it further.

Last night was episode # 4 and I'm still having a hard time getting into this !

I agree. I'm really trying to like this series but it's a hard watch at times.

Hopefully over the next few episodes it'll improve, but it feels disjointed.

In Ep. 4, they started the episode by showing like 2-1/2 minutes of the kid with the heart murmur... then they never go back to him for the rest of the episode until they show the previews for Ep. 5.

I don't think the series is bad but I am definatly disapointed. I was expecting Band of Brothers 2.0 and instead I am getting Band of Brothers Beta.

Just not enough action so far. I assume from the previews for episode 5 there is plenty of action but I thought the same was going to be for episode 4 and there was about 5 min of fighting the rest was drama about how the boys were having trouble adapting to the harsh jungle and they were getting sick, killing themselves and Leckie was peeing himself.

Band of Brothers had a lot of action and you saw a lot of military strategy like episode two when they took out the mortar barages. I just don't see a lot of that in the Pacific....maybe it has a lot to do with the 101st airborne had a lot of training before D-Day and maybe the Marines in the Pacific didn't have the type of training the 101st recieved. Also the Pacific takes place much earlier in the war than BoB. Finally as I thought about it durring episode 4, I really enjoyed the old european towns and country side atmousphere opposed to the jungle of the Pacific. I think that is also swaying my feelings and makes me feel like something is missing,

Oh another thing I find funny is I don't get to watch the show when it airs because it is just a bad time slot for me. So Episode 3 I didn't watch till Thursday and I just watch 4 tonight. I kept seeing posts in this thread and it was hard for me not to open it. I was really hoping you guys were talking about how great the last episode was....then I watch them and come here and see all of you were just as disapointed.

Wow! Things really picked up in episode 6. I won't be a spoiler for those that haven't seen it yet.

It is getting better.

jc and bumping

I didn't get to see this last year and finally got around to getting it off of netflix.

First off: spoiler alert in case anyone hasn't seen it yet.

Overall not too bad, it was no BOB, but was still good. It was definitely more graphic and illustrated the horrors of war a lot better. BOB did this, but I felt the Pacific took it a step further, especially later in the series when the marines were starting to get at each other throats as well as the ones that just seemed to have "lost it." I felt the episode where they encountered the civilians on Okinawa illustrated this as well.

I also liked the return home episode (episode 10) in the Pacific better. It actually shows the characters returning home and trying adjust to a normal life after everything they had been through. Another thing I noticed is that most of the marines that were portrayed in this series had died by the time this was made. I counted only 3 marines (based on the descriptions at the end of episode 10) that are still living.

Things really got moving in episode 5 and for the most part kept up until the end.

As was stated by others, the series was very disjointed. Mainly because of the way they based this around 3 marines vs focusing on a single company as BOB did. Basilone was pretty much out of the picture after episode 2, Leckie was done by episodes 4-5 and Sledge really didn't come into it until episode 5.

It was hard to follow the flow of the series because they jumped around so much. For example, episode 9 in Okinawa, for most of the episode they were fighting off the Japanese. Then towards the end, they just jump to the marines being near a beach and cleaned up a bit. What happened that led to that? I think some narration would have helped smooth out some of these things, like the way Lipton had narrated the episode with all the shellings and the attack on Foy in BOB.

Overall, I think they just tried to cover too much. The topic of WW2 is huge and there is the story of many soldiers to tell. Unfortunately, it just isn't possible to tell them all in 10 episodes. I found each episode to be good on it's own. But as a whole, it would have been better if it was more focused on a single company.

I got the Bluray version as a Christmas gift. It was kind of cool to rewatch it with all the extra stuff included in the set. Awesome in hi-def and surround sound! It was a top-notch production.