*OFFICIAL THREAD* "THE PACIFIC" on HBO

[KMFJD]

Who is the kid that nicknamed Eugene "Sledgehammer"?

Snafu?

 

[TehMac]

I really liked the Basilone training scene where he gets the recruits in order. That was well done methinks, and I'm glad despite Hank's retarded soundclips, the producers actually showed the Marine Corps ethos of making their recruits understand that their enemies are hard SOBs.

 

[Train]

Was a good episode, but they seemed to cram it all in.

Basilone gets transferred, trains a platoon, meets a girl, courts her, marries her, gets shipped out, lands on Iwo, and dies. All in under an hour?

They shouldnt have felt so compelled to fit everything into 10 episodes.

Though I could have swore Basilone was killed by a mortar round, not bullets. I hope they didnt change the story just for the show.

 

[GasX]

Yes, he was killed by artillery - probably a mortar round.

Inspired by their portrayal of his heroics on Iwo Jima, I looked up his story and while I was not surprised to see that they had altered the tale a bit for "artistic reasons", the true story is by no means any less heroic. Gunny Basilone was truly one of the great heroes of WWII.

 

[TehMac]

Though I could have swore Basilone was killed by a mortar round, not bullets. I hope they didnt change the story just for the show.

Yea, Basilone was instantly killed by a mortar round while fighting for an airfield.

I thought the battle scenes were pretty damn good, but yea, they over dramatized his death, and if anything took away from it--the fact that war spares no one, not even heroes is a powerful message, and yet they messaged it with him dying slowly like that.

An insta death may superficially take away, but portraying how it really was would pay a better homage to his deeds than the death scene they created

 

[HendrixFan]

Was a good episode, but they seemed to cram it all in.

Basilone gets transferred, trains a platoon, meets a girl, courts her, marries her, gets shipped out, lands on Iwo, and dies. All in under an hour?

They shouldnt have felt so compelled to fit everything into 10 episodes.

Though I could have swore Basilone was killed by a mortar round, not bullets. I hope they didnt change the story just for the show.

They are squeezing 4 years into 10 episodes, so everything has been a little tight. The platoon training, girl, courting and marriage took place over 6 months (according to wikipedia) so it wasn't too compressed. Military marriages are often rushed.

At first I wasn't too sure about they way they jumped from character to character, following the main 3 guys. They would focus on one and forget about the others for long stretches. They do have different stories and views, and timewise they didn't really have too many overlapping stories in real life. As it draws to a close, I think it was a good approach to the series. I just wish they were doing more than ten episodes.

 

[Printer Bandit]

John Basilone

Bob Leckie

Eugene Sledge

 

[bdude]

That was a damn good hour of TV. Riveting stuff.

 

[Kaervak]

Finale on now.

 

[Imp]

HBO is free this weekend in Canada, and I figured out there was a Pacific marathon all weekend at 5pm. Caught 4 episodes, starting from the second Peleliu episode. Pretty damn good show, very different tone from BoB.

Unfortunately, Foyle's War is on and I'm choosing to watch that over the finale.

 

[Printer Bandit]

It's over.

 

[OutHouse]

the one line at the end when Bob was getting out of the cab and offered the cabbie the fare plus tip and the cabbie said.

"im not taking that. I might have jumped off at Normandy but i got rehab in Paris and London, all you Gireenes got was jungle rot and malaria"

that one line was awesome and i want to believe that it was added by hanks/spielberg to reinforce the difference between the two war's and between Band of Brothers and the Pacific.

 

[Aharami]

i think the 9th episode was the best of the bunch

 

[Inferno0032]

I enjoyed it, a couple of episodes I didn't care for as much, but I'm really glad they hit on many aspects and facets of the war, and not just the "hollywood" action scenes that everyone expects from war movies.

I thought they did a great job on the psychological aspect, and taking an "innocent virgin" and you can see how the war "hardening" continues, starting with starting to smoke to being brutal. And then when he's back home and cannot shoot the gun, I really liked how all that tied together.

Overall, I liked it, a bit more "fluff," but, it's not all run-n-gun, so I appreciate that in some ways as well.

 

[Printer Bandit]

I wished they showed more of the perspective from the Japanese side.

 

[Gooberlx2]

I wished they showed more of the perspective from the Japanese side.

But why would they? Doing so would have been completely beside the point of the series. This series was about the Marines, 3 specifically. Not the Pacific theater in general.

The gritty conditions and battles were very intense. The connections I felt to the main characters were stronger than any one BoB character, and they did a good job of tackling the emotional aspect of the war. It did lack a sense of cohesiveness compared to BoB...but I don't know how they'd do it differently.

I really liked the series. I said before it aired that if it was half as good as BoB, it would still be the second best TV series I've seen. The Pacific easily met that mark, for me.

 

[Kaervak]

I enjoyed it, a couple of episodes I didn't care for as much, but I'm really glad they hit on many aspects and facets of the war, and not just the "hollywood" action scenes that everyone expects from war movies.

I thought they did a great job on the psychological aspect, and taking an "innocent virgin" and you can see how the war "hardening" continues, starting with starting to smoke to being brutal. And then when he's back home and cannot shoot the gun, I really liked how all that tied together.

Overall, I liked it, a bit more "fluff," but, it's not all run-n-gun, so I appreciate that in some ways as well.

Exactly. To me, The Pacific was meant to show how the war affects the soldier and what damage it can cause. I enjoyed the series quite a bit and will be getting the DVD when it comes out. It wasn't BoB, nothing can be BoB, but it's just as good in it's own right.

 

[boomerang]

The daughter talking of her father waking up screaming every night really hit home. My father was in the Navy in the Pacific. He said he relived his experiences every night in his sleep. He said that every night he hoped he wouldn't but that it was out of his control. PTSD is real.

 

[DayLaPaul]

I loved how Leckie punked that army guy for Vera's right to his face.

I don't know how I feel about everyone parading around in their uniforms though. On the one hand, they've surely earned the right to. The freedoms that we all enjoy at home are a direct result of their contributions. But putting on a uniform just to get chicks or free coffee or whatever just seems to cheapen their sacrifice.

I have a lot of respect for Sledge's character saying that he'll never wear that uniform again. He enlisted in the Marines because he felt it was his DUTY, not for any personal gain or glory.

All the Japs that he killed, all the horrors that he saw, these are not things that he wanted to relive. It was a dark period of his life, one that he doesn't regret, but also, one that he does not celebrate.

 

[GTaudiophile]

I am just now catching up with the end of the series.

I thought the relationship between Basilone and his wife is quite touching in EP8.

Looks like she was a hottie:

And she never remarried!

 

[jonks]

Just finished. Put me with the people who found it lacking, not just compared to BoB, but to most WWII dramas. With a few exceptions, it wasn't memorable or moving. Oh well.

 

[Kev]

I just finished it too. I had completely lost interest after the first 3 episodes, but forced myself to watch it. Once the story transitioned to Sledge it got much better. I give it a 3/5 overall

 

[Ika]

Yeah, I think once the story settled down and people got a good handle on where the series was going it got much better. The focus on Sledge and his closer friends was especially good. The last three episodes were great, lots of psychological windows into what the soldiers were thinking - especially when Eugene first yells at the officer after using his sidearm, then after the baby in the house scene when the kid gets shot. I personally thought that was the best part of the series.

 

[LaBella]

Basilone is a local hero. An awesome series indeed.