Episode Nine

Oh my God.

I was sitting in the break room at work the other night when the discussion came up about The Pacific versus Band of Brothers. This kid I work with, Brett, a person I respect and will listen to when it comes to discourses of an historical nature, said that Band of Brothers was better. He was hazy on the reasoning, but I had a slow game and had time to think about it.

The storyline is different. In The Pacific you follow specific individuals. In Band of Brothers you follow a specific company and the people within it. The individuals in the Pacific range from the 1st Battalion of the 1st Marine Division to the 7th of the 1st, then to the 5th division, with the last character back in the 1st Division. That gets a little confusing, and it also cuts off huge parts of the Pacific campaign. Tarawa, Guam, the Philippines, and a massive part of Iwo Jima are not covered because the people that make up The Pacific weren't there, (or in the case of Iwo Jima, not there for long.) Easy Company of the 506th Battalion, 101st Division, US Army fought at Normandy, Holland, Bastogne, a veritable who's who of the European campaign, but NOT the end all do all of the ETO. That gets lost in the diverse character stories of Band of Brothers, where the three main characters of The Pacific are very focused, very intense and very intimate in their particular battles and experiences. So by the end of the night, I was tempted to agree with brett. They are completely different, but I saw Brett's point and began to feel like Band of Brothers was the better of the two.

Then I saw Episode Nine.

My only personal experience with WW2 vets, live personal touching history kind, was Ray Foster. He never talked of the war sober, or at least very very rarely, and when drunk he'd speak disjointedly. (His demonstration to Titus concerning slashing a Jap's throat in a way so as not to get bathed in blood is frozen in my mind forever.) But by the end of his life, while harboring a dislike of the French and a grudging respect of the Germans, he never (and I mean NEVER) gave up a visceral hatred of the Japanese. He never bought a car made in Japan (and I don't think was aware that the Raider my father purchased for him in 1989 was imported by Dodge from Japan), looked with intense dislike and almost loathing at the 40th anniversary of the bomb being dropped on Hiroshima in 1985, ("I guess we're not going to remember Pearl f@#king Harbor," he said from his rocking chair at the lake) and responded with absolute venom to anyone who attempted revisionism concerning the bombing campaign of the 20th and 21st Air Forces (both commanded by Curtis Lamay, a guy Ray could identify with) when dealing with ending the war without invading the home islands.

That absolute gut level fighting, no surrender, any and all means for victory being used, fighting that vets from the German/Russian front could recognize, is captured perfectly in Episode 9.

There's nothing for it. There is no comparing the two works. It's the same war but then again it's a completely different war. I think Ray would agree with that were he alive. So the next time someone wants to discuss which is better, Band of Brothers or The Pacific, you cannot compare the two. I am very grateful Dreamworks made the show because it's a story that hasn't been told like THAT before.

Unreal. An awesome experience.