Hi Alan! I'm like you in that I have been waiting for this air war story since I first heard about it in the wake of HBO's excellent (poorly received and way over budget) The Pacific. I wrote a novel about the air war, The Ruining Heaven, which is told from the perspective of a bombardier who gets shot down over the second Schweinfurt raid. In researching this book I spoke to a few veteran officers who remembered the 1943 bloodbath and gleaned from them such details as the smell of farts that got trapped in the oxygen system, the weary long-term oxygen fatigue they all felt, and the weirdness of never seeing anyone die (they just were gone, as though vacuumed out of the world).
Thus, I have ridiculously high expectations, but when I learned the source was going to be the dry-as-dust Masters of the Air I was a little skeptical because there isn't really any character narrative in that book, comprehensive as it is. I also decried The Cold Blue, which recut Wyler's Memphis Belle footage with new narration of mostly enlisted guys who flew late in the war and thus had little to say. I think that is because by the time they recorded the audio there were so few of these men alive that they used what they could, as opposed to Peter Jackson's They Shall Not Grow Old which had access to thousands of hours of BBC interviews recorded while the veterans were in their middle age.
As for True Detective, I am still so charmed that women can be more than great wives, whores, or murder victims! We rewatched S1 to get a feel for the series and man, Nic is a douche. His women are more cartoony than Hemingway's. The women in S4 are fantasticly complex and interesting, and the mystery is pretty freaky.
I haven't seen it yet. It's too much to expect the source material to be equal to Sledge (nothing is) but the story of the air war is so fantastic that it would be pretty easy to go overboard. Malcolm Gladwell covered a lot of Eaker's precision bombing obsession in The Bomber Mafia, but the sheer horror of freezing in one of those cans for ten hours is such a gripping scenario. There was so much discomfort and boredom, too.
Thanks for continuing with these. Enjoy the short takes as well as the longer pieces from Rolling Stone, the mothership.
As to "laundry folding" shows, just curious if you have any current favorites that don't rate even a short take, let alone a Rolling Stone piece, e.g. American network shows, British, Canadian, Australian mainstream shows?
Not really. It takes up so much time just to watch the stuff I'm writing about, on top of me watching older shows and movies with my family, that there's rarely anything left over for me to pop on a Colin from Accounts, Kim's Convenience, or whatever. As the total amount of American TV begins to shrink now that the market correction from Peak TV has happened, maybe there will be more time for purely casual viewing. But the Reacher window felt like an unusual one.
I see Reacher as a hostess twinkie of a show. It's a little like reading Dan Brown: page-turning implausibility with shitty dialog but you just gotta know. I wish they'd make more Elmore Leonard books into series. That man knew how to write characters, and wouldn't you just love to see The Hot Kid or The Moonshine War made into a quality 10-episode show?
Amazon seems to have quite a few of these shows (I keep trying to get "Cromulent TV" to go mainstream as a descriptor). Reacher, Bosch, Jack Ryan, etc...all serviceable entertainment that I put on to keep me occupied while I'm working out. Narcos and The Night Agennt on Netflix fell into that category too. It's like a perfect niche of shows that are decent enough to entertain me during a mindless task, but not appointment viewing such that my family would be angry I watched without them.
Alan, been a reader since your BoB days and also for my second run through of Breaking Bad (that time with my son - great fun). I looked forward to Masters for 20+ years and also find it a bit disappointing. Whats not disappointing is to find you on SubStack. Cheers!
"Masters is probably more rewatchable than The Pacific, which I have never gone back to a second time because it’s so raw."
Oh wow, I've rewatched The Pacific multiple times along with the dozen or so times I've watched Band of Brothers in the past 20+ years. I'd agree, it's rough going at times, but I love all four primary performances (I consider Snafu a primary character) and even though the storytelling is fairly disjointed trying to support three different narratives, I think it holds together.
It's disappointing to hear multiple reviews criticize this new series, I've been waiting over a decade to see this finally come to TV.
One more comment is that I'm a little shocked at how deeply True Detective S4 is leaning into direct references to previous seasons, mostly S1. I never expected this season to be a de facto sequel to S1 and at least for the moment, it's certainly possible.
Oh, I think Pacific is incredible. I'd stack its very best moments up against the best moments of Band. And while the three leads (plus Snafu) makes the narrative feel bumpy at times, on the whole you get a much deeper understanding of them than you do of anyone in Band other than Dick Winters. I love it. I just would really need to brace myself to watch it again, you know?
In over 25 years in my current apartment, the only time my upstairs neighbor knocked on my door to turn the TV down was during the main battle sequence of the series ((Iwo Jima?)I was so caught up in it that I started to argue with her until I realized I was TiVoing it and could watch the whole episode the next day.
Yeah when I saw The Pacific I was blown away (and not just by Sledge being played by the kid from Indian in the Cupboard). I pegged Rami Malek as the breakout star of that show, and sure enough along came Mr Robot. Badge Dale was also amazing, and Rubicon deserved better than it got. That war was just so awful, and even the hunky dudes couldn't make it good. Sledge spent almost a year in China after the war ended, recounded in his book China Marine. He dealt with horrible PTSD, and the show did a great job of showing that (one of the only shows that ever did).
Oh yeah, it was clear Malek was going places after The Pacific, he was amazing. Seda has had a very prolific TV career, couple seasons of Treme turned into a lengthy run on NBC's Chicago TV shows and now Le Brea. Mazzello got a supporting role in The Social Network and has done alright since then. I expected James Badge Dale to get another lead after Rubicon and this but he's been mostly relegated to character parts and leads in oddball indies.
I really wish Pacific could have just followed Sledge (and his fantastic book) rather than jumping around, but I guess 3 episodes on Peleliu and 4 on Okinawa would have been too grim.
Yes, I read something at the time they loved Leckie's story because it allowed them to include Guadalcanal, the D-Day of the Pacific theater. Sledge enters the war later and they really wanted the series to arc the Pacific theater much the way BoB goes from D Day to surrender.
I've suspected they included Basilone because they felt they needed a real counterpart to Winters from BoB. In a sense they have that in Sledge's story with Ack Ack, but Sledge's entire arc is so dark I'm sure HBO wasn't keen to fixate on it entirely.
Leckie's book is fantastic. He wrote it in the early 50s before Sledge, and though it's got that sports journalist "kid lemme tell you about war, real war" vibe to it it's still one of the best memoirs about what it was like to be a Marine in WW2.
I checked out Reacher because the Dad TV set so insists on talking about it. As someone with no knowledge of the books, it's fascinating to see your take on who the character should be. From a non-book reader, I think I find him smarter than you (with his clever use of details and knowledge about seemingly every procedure ever), but I found him *too* stoic and flat. To the extent that I came away from S1 thinking that Ritchson can't really act and they only hired him for his size. I don't want the guy crying or anything (really, really don't!), but I wanted some nuance there, some kind of layered performance, something. So it's wild to see that you wanted him to be more stoic and disconnected. (I think a more gifted performer would actually address both perspectives. I'd be fine with stoicism if I felt there were something underneath it. Right now it seems like it's landing in the mushy middle.)
Book Reacher kind of comes across as Arnold in Terminator 2: supremely confident in his abilities, reserved, humorless (at least intentionally), but also not cold or cruel, and wanting to help. I think an actor with the right amount of magnetism could make that work. The goofier Reacher of season 2 is probably more in Ritchson's wheelhouse, but it still doesn't work for me.
I always say that an adaptation doesn't need to be overly faithful to the source material, and often find slavish adaptations to be outright bad because of their fidelity to the text. If I found the TV Reacher interesting, I wouldn't care that he was so different. (I do really like the first Tom Cruise movie, and think he's good in the second one, even if the movie as a whole is meh.) But because he is so underwhelming to me in everything but his physique, I can't help but think about how much cooler it would be if they had someone who could play the book version.
Ritcheson cannot act. As they used to say about Robert Urich, his ability is measured in board feet. Also, having him be huge and tough is one thing, but having a steroid-ripped bodybuilder with a tan is just dumb. I'm just glad they don't have him playing Travis McGee (the prototype for Reacher, but much better written and far cooler)
Thanks for the information on Masters of the Air. I probably am still going to check it out but with lower expectations.
As far as folding laundry American network TV, I recommend Will Trent on ABC/Hulu. I had fun watching the first season and it’s coming back in February. It’s filmed in Atlanta and takes place in Atlanta and feels that way to me (I live in the suburbs). Plus it has a first rate cast. I will take Reacher under advisement for the same role!
Disappointing to read your review of Masters. I was hoping for another gem. I did have to chuckle at your comment on Band of Brothers being perfect Dad TV. I remember TWOP’s recaps on BOB, which included references to the hotness of various characters/actors, my fave being: “I don’t know who the casting director was, but great job.” (But I do recognize that BOB is pretty much Dad TV perfection.)
Oh, it's both. My wife has had a thing for Damian Lewis forever, and it started with me forcing her to watch some episodes of Band. Lots and lots and lots of hot guys there.
Alan, I know you watch less late night tv nowadays but any thoughts about Comedy Central turning to Jon Stewart again for The Daily Show, even in a limited capacity?
I imagine I'll write about this when he actually returns, but it feels disappointing for both the show and for Stewart to retreat back to this, even once a week. I also think Stewart's "both sides are bad, and need to learn to talk to one another" philosophy really doesn't apply to a world where The Former Guy is running again, and I think he had the right idea to quit The Daily Show when he did in the first place.
The Problem was a hell of a show that never really took off. Jon's tone is a bit too shrill for the current times, which is why Oliver's "you are not going believe this shit" approach works so well. I would love to see Jon with no filters at all. The Daily Show needs to retire, IMO. It reminds me of the later years of Nightline.
I’m having a similar reaction to Stewart returning to The Daily Show. I hated that he left, because I loved that Stewart was able to intelligently articulate a lot of the problems with our government and the media. Him returning feels kind of sad. I would much rather have a third season of The Problem.
Hi Alan! I'm like you in that I have been waiting for this air war story since I first heard about it in the wake of HBO's excellent (poorly received and way over budget) The Pacific. I wrote a novel about the air war, The Ruining Heaven, which is told from the perspective of a bombardier who gets shot down over the second Schweinfurt raid. In researching this book I spoke to a few veteran officers who remembered the 1943 bloodbath and gleaned from them such details as the smell of farts that got trapped in the oxygen system, the weary long-term oxygen fatigue they all felt, and the weirdness of never seeing anyone die (they just were gone, as though vacuumed out of the world).
Thus, I have ridiculously high expectations, but when I learned the source was going to be the dry-as-dust Masters of the Air I was a little skeptical because there isn't really any character narrative in that book, comprehensive as it is. I also decried The Cold Blue, which recut Wyler's Memphis Belle footage with new narration of mostly enlisted guys who flew late in the war and thus had little to say. I think that is because by the time they recorded the audio there were so few of these men alive that they used what they could, as opposed to Peter Jackson's They Shall Not Grow Old which had access to thousands of hours of BBC interviews recorded while the veterans were in their middle age.
I will watch this expecting it to be stupid and to miss a lor of detail, but with hopes that it sparks interest in my book (plug- https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-ruining-heaven-j-hardy-carroll/1141451714 I think you'd like it. )
As for True Detective, I am still so charmed that women can be more than great wives, whores, or murder victims! We rewatched S1 to get a feel for the series and man, Nic is a douche. His women are more cartoony than Hemingway's. The women in S4 are fantasticly complex and interesting, and the mystery is pretty freaky.
Reportedly they also used Major Harry Crosby’s A Wing and a Prayer as source material, which is why he's featured as a voice-over character.
I haven't seen it yet. It's too much to expect the source material to be equal to Sledge (nothing is) but the story of the air war is so fantastic that it would be pretty easy to go overboard. Malcolm Gladwell covered a lot of Eaker's precision bombing obsession in The Bomber Mafia, but the sheer horror of freezing in one of those cans for ten hours is such a gripping scenario. There was so much discomfort and boredom, too.
Thanks for continuing with these. Enjoy the short takes as well as the longer pieces from Rolling Stone, the mothership.
As to "laundry folding" shows, just curious if you have any current favorites that don't rate even a short take, let alone a Rolling Stone piece, e.g. American network shows, British, Canadian, Australian mainstream shows?
Not really. It takes up so much time just to watch the stuff I'm writing about, on top of me watching older shows and movies with my family, that there's rarely anything left over for me to pop on a Colin from Accounts, Kim's Convenience, or whatever. As the total amount of American TV begins to shrink now that the market correction from Peak TV has happened, maybe there will be more time for purely casual viewing. But the Reacher window felt like an unusual one.
I see Reacher as a hostess twinkie of a show. It's a little like reading Dan Brown: page-turning implausibility with shitty dialog but you just gotta know. I wish they'd make more Elmore Leonard books into series. That man knew how to write characters, and wouldn't you just love to see The Hot Kid or The Moonshine War made into a quality 10-episode show?
"Run the Burbs" from the CBC, now on Hulu, with Andrew Phung from "Kims Convenience", is an easy watch.
Amazon seems to have quite a few of these shows (I keep trying to get "Cromulent TV" to go mainstream as a descriptor). Reacher, Bosch, Jack Ryan, etc...all serviceable entertainment that I put on to keep me occupied while I'm working out. Narcos and The Night Agennt on Netflix fell into that category too. It's like a perfect niche of shows that are decent enough to entertain me during a mindless task, but not appointment viewing such that my family would be angry I watched without them.
Alan, been a reader since your BoB days and also for my second run through of Breaking Bad (that time with my son - great fun). I looked forward to Masters for 20+ years and also find it a bit disappointing. Whats not disappointing is to find you on SubStack. Cheers!
I have actively missed watching Dennis Franz for almost 20 years now.
Alan, you’re the TV writer I tell everyone about.
"Masters is probably more rewatchable than The Pacific, which I have never gone back to a second time because it’s so raw."
Oh wow, I've rewatched The Pacific multiple times along with the dozen or so times I've watched Band of Brothers in the past 20+ years. I'd agree, it's rough going at times, but I love all four primary performances (I consider Snafu a primary character) and even though the storytelling is fairly disjointed trying to support three different narratives, I think it holds together.
It's disappointing to hear multiple reviews criticize this new series, I've been waiting over a decade to see this finally come to TV.
One more comment is that I'm a little shocked at how deeply True Detective S4 is leaning into direct references to previous seasons, mostly S1. I never expected this season to be a de facto sequel to S1 and at least for the moment, it's certainly possible.
Oh, I think Pacific is incredible. I'd stack its very best moments up against the best moments of Band. And while the three leads (plus Snafu) makes the narrative feel bumpy at times, on the whole you get a much deeper understanding of them than you do of anyone in Band other than Dick Winters. I love it. I just would really need to brace myself to watch it again, you know?
In over 25 years in my current apartment, the only time my upstairs neighbor knocked on my door to turn the TV down was during the main battle sequence of the series ((Iwo Jima?)I was so caught up in it that I started to argue with her until I realized I was TiVoing it and could watch the whole episode the next day.
Yeah when I saw The Pacific I was blown away (and not just by Sledge being played by the kid from Indian in the Cupboard). I pegged Rami Malek as the breakout star of that show, and sure enough along came Mr Robot. Badge Dale was also amazing, and Rubicon deserved better than it got. That war was just so awful, and even the hunky dudes couldn't make it good. Sledge spent almost a year in China after the war ended, recounded in his book China Marine. He dealt with horrible PTSD, and the show did a great job of showing that (one of the only shows that ever did).
Oh yeah, it was clear Malek was going places after The Pacific, he was amazing. Seda has had a very prolific TV career, couple seasons of Treme turned into a lengthy run on NBC's Chicago TV shows and now Le Brea. Mazzello got a supporting role in The Social Network and has done alright since then. I expected James Badge Dale to get another lead after Rubicon and this but he's been mostly relegated to character parts and leads in oddball indies.
I really wish Pacific could have just followed Sledge (and his fantastic book) rather than jumping around, but I guess 3 episodes on Peleliu and 4 on Okinawa would have been too grim.
Yes, I read something at the time they loved Leckie's story because it allowed them to include Guadalcanal, the D-Day of the Pacific theater. Sledge enters the war later and they really wanted the series to arc the Pacific theater much the way BoB goes from D Day to surrender.
I've suspected they included Basilone because they felt they needed a real counterpart to Winters from BoB. In a sense they have that in Sledge's story with Ack Ack, but Sledge's entire arc is so dark I'm sure HBO wasn't keen to fixate on it entirely.
Leckie's book is fantastic. He wrote it in the early 50s before Sledge, and though it's got that sports journalist "kid lemme tell you about war, real war" vibe to it it's still one of the best memoirs about what it was like to be a Marine in WW2.
I checked out Reacher because the Dad TV set so insists on talking about it. As someone with no knowledge of the books, it's fascinating to see your take on who the character should be. From a non-book reader, I think I find him smarter than you (with his clever use of details and knowledge about seemingly every procedure ever), but I found him *too* stoic and flat. To the extent that I came away from S1 thinking that Ritchson can't really act and they only hired him for his size. I don't want the guy crying or anything (really, really don't!), but I wanted some nuance there, some kind of layered performance, something. So it's wild to see that you wanted him to be more stoic and disconnected. (I think a more gifted performer would actually address both perspectives. I'd be fine with stoicism if I felt there were something underneath it. Right now it seems like it's landing in the mushy middle.)
Book Reacher kind of comes across as Arnold in Terminator 2: supremely confident in his abilities, reserved, humorless (at least intentionally), but also not cold or cruel, and wanting to help. I think an actor with the right amount of magnetism could make that work. The goofier Reacher of season 2 is probably more in Ritchson's wheelhouse, but it still doesn't work for me.
I always say that an adaptation doesn't need to be overly faithful to the source material, and often find slavish adaptations to be outright bad because of their fidelity to the text. If I found the TV Reacher interesting, I wouldn't care that he was so different. (I do really like the first Tom Cruise movie, and think he's good in the second one, even if the movie as a whole is meh.) But because he is so underwhelming to me in everything but his physique, I can't help but think about how much cooler it would be if they had someone who could play the book version.
Ritcheson cannot act. As they used to say about Robert Urich, his ability is measured in board feet. Also, having him be huge and tough is one thing, but having a steroid-ripped bodybuilder with a tan is just dumb. I'm just glad they don't have him playing Travis McGee (the prototype for Reacher, but much better written and far cooler)
Thanks for the information on Masters of the Air. I probably am still going to check it out but with lower expectations.
As far as folding laundry American network TV, I recommend Will Trent on ABC/Hulu. I had fun watching the first season and it’s coming back in February. It’s filmed in Atlanta and takes place in Atlanta and feels that way to me (I live in the suburbs). Plus it has a first rate cast. I will take Reacher under advisement for the same role!
I agree on Will Trent. Fun show with not much at stake.
I watched the first two seasons of Sort Of on your recommendation. Glad to hear it’s back and wraps up well.
In an age of long gaps between seasons and no promotion of non-tentpole shows, I often wonder how many shows I enjoyed and missed their returns.
Disappointing to read your review of Masters. I was hoping for another gem. I did have to chuckle at your comment on Band of Brothers being perfect Dad TV. I remember TWOP’s recaps on BOB, which included references to the hotness of various characters/actors, my fave being: “I don’t know who the casting director was, but great job.” (But I do recognize that BOB is pretty much Dad TV perfection.)
Oh, it's both. My wife has had a thing for Damian Lewis forever, and it started with me forcing her to watch some episodes of Band. Lots and lots and lots of hot guys there.
Alan, I know you watch less late night tv nowadays but any thoughts about Comedy Central turning to Jon Stewart again for The Daily Show, even in a limited capacity?
I imagine I'll write about this when he actually returns, but it feels disappointing for both the show and for Stewart to retreat back to this, even once a week. I also think Stewart's "both sides are bad, and need to learn to talk to one another" philosophy really doesn't apply to a world where The Former Guy is running again, and I think he had the right idea to quit The Daily Show when he did in the first place.
I'm not enthused.
The Problem was a hell of a show that never really took off. Jon's tone is a bit too shrill for the current times, which is why Oliver's "you are not going believe this shit" approach works so well. I would love to see Jon with no filters at all. The Daily Show needs to retire, IMO. It reminds me of the later years of Nightline.
I’m having a similar reaction to Stewart returning to The Daily Show. I hated that he left, because I loved that Stewart was able to intelligently articulate a lot of the problems with our government and the media. Him returning feels kind of sad. I would much rather have a third season of The Problem.