Sunday, May 9, 2010

The Pacific

The ten-episode series, The Pacific, will conclude on HBO next Sunday evening.  And, the companion piece to Band of Brothers has proven to be an intense revelation of the horror of war in the Pacific in World War II.

While Band of Brothers also showed how horrific war is (remember the scene of the 101st Airborne discovering the German concentration camp towards the end of the war), it focused on the leadership of Major Dick Winters and developed key characters over the course of the ten weeks.  The Pacific, on the other hand, has jumped from character to character, thus making its focus more on how the character changed due to the living hell of wartime in the Pacific islands.

I can watch the DVD set of Brothers back-to-back-to-back.  The Pacific is so intense that one episode at a time has proven to be a numbing experience.

The new series has drifted to the homefront, on occasion, and has also developed story lines around characters' time on leave.  It was one of these story lines, around Congressional Medal of Honor winner John Basilone, which turned particularly poignant last week.

If you haven't seen The Pacific, it's worth the watch.  Just don't plan to sit down over a weekend and consume the entire boxed set once it's released.

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