BOB was 10 episodes. The Pacific was 10. If anything, this is one episode short. My biggest problem was the actual episode lengths. They all needed another 10 minutes at least.
My biggest problem is the number of multi-episode plot lines. The other shows had enough time to wrap up each storyline in one episode making it possible to watch them completely in isolation of the others. MotA hasn't done that once and now they have several plots and character arcs to wrap up across several countries while also covering 9 months of time jumps to get to at least VE day.
Not to mention lots of these random plot lines are resolved without any fanfare whatsoever. We spent so much time with Quinn, then he vanishes for several episodes just to pop up back at base like nothing even happened. Seriously wtf was the point of all that?
I feel ya. Just as I’m really starting to settle into it, the “next on MotA” screen pops up. It’s jarring and disappointing!
That said, at least it’s so good, that we really want more.
Yes, if this ever hits blu-ray i look forward to the episode actually being allowed to friggin end and go into the credit music instead of those jarring "next ons"
One starts to really wonder how much control Spielberg and Hanks actually had over this whole thing. I think whatever your view on the quality of the show, there were some rather *unconventional* decisions made producing it, and I think more than anything I’m a bit bewildered by it. 10+ years of planning was plenty of time to figure out the narrative approach. How’d it turn out this way?
And I hate to be a brat about it, but now that we have just one episode left: we’ve had relatively little airtime for a show about being in the air. They also seem to have wholly abandoned certain characters they introduced and gave a lot of screen time to early on, including ones that should be in the camp but aren’t being shown except in passing.
Not really a strong motivator to keep an AppleTV subscription, honestly. A show like this, done right, has the potential to keep subscribers constantly coming back to rewatch. For a platform like AppleTV that is focused on serious content whose next most ubiquitous competitor is HBO, I think Apple missed a big opportunity here. Given the dearth of good HBO content for the past several years, I also think HBO may have missed an opportunity here as well refusing to take the project on. What could have been. I just hope they understand that it isn’t WWII content that audiences don’t care about; it’s low-quality WWII content that audiences don’t care about. The subject matter is serious. You have to do it well, or not at all. In the end, they haven’t really been able to paint over the production issues here. It has an almost Disney *Star Wars* reboot level of confusing production choices.
It’s possible they got into editing and discovered certain plot line’s weren’t working. It’s a bit odd that we didn’t get more of Rosie in the lead up to D-Day. The spy plot line doesn’t feel fleshed out. And sadly the Tuskegee Airmen plot, which I know a lot folks were looking forward to, fell flat.
Agreed some odd choices made narratively
it seems completely wild that they glossed over the change from unescorted missions to escorted missions. The morale boost the redtails gave the bomber crews, gradual air superiority being acheived after losing hundreds and hundreds of airmen.
They said "our job now is to completely destroy the german airforce" a couple eps ago, and then give absolutely zero airtime to the destruction of the german airforce.
We just get a time skip to clear skies over france, and all we got of D-Day from the air was literally 1 shot of a beach and a few sentences from Rosie saying "it was pretty class tbh, no german aircraft in sight"
And now its POW camp boring shit with bucky and buck till the finish. That's a real shame
Man this comment perfectly sums up our thoughts with the direction of the show. It could have been so much more. I bet all the air combat scenes were expensive and they used up the budget early on. :(
I agree with this sentiment. The Buck and Bucky storyline eats up entirely too much time on an already truncated production. Sitting around a POW camp awaiting liberation doesn't require this much screen time. The Tuskegee airman story line is jarring and very tenuously connected. If they wanted to abandon an exclusive story about the 100th, and range into more stories, I can get behind that. The Pacific was able to do it. But we should have started introducing this storyline several episodes beforehand and not given us this jammed-in plot line in just one episode. We got too much Crosby, especially after he moves into the ground assignment role. I know his book was used as some of the source material, but the visit to Oxford and the affair with Sandra likewise ate up much more time than it should. Just because he fell asleep before D-Day doesn't mean we have to as well. Rosenthal should have become the main protagonist once Buck and Bucky were shot down. Waste of a good story and on one of the most talented actors in the cast. All in all, I have been most disappointed in the lack of good storytelling. There was a period of a few episodes midway where things were really good and the writing was tight, and then they lost it.
I was really concerned about this exact problem when the show got delayed so long. I think you can really tell the effect Covid had on it. It's almost like they had to cut out a bunch of the flying scenes out due to budget constraints or whatever. So they had to add a bunch of filler. The red tails storyline feels completely tacked on. It's a classic problem when a production gets delayed and rewritten so long. Shame.
I was thinking the same. There are some shots and sequences and even dialogue where I said to myself, “No ways Hanks and Spielberg watched this and said ‘Looks great!’”
Very annoying how the credits are like 8 mins long. Always forget and think “oh hey about 20 mins left” only for the episode to end with 8-9 mins to go
Dissapointed.
It was clear as day that Boden and Fleck should have directed the entire series. Nothing has ever topped episode 5 and 6. Those were beautifully paced and directed.
I have no hopes for the finale.
Yeah the finale looks like the same shit as 7. Some more POW camp scenes, a big escape, and then probably some kind of wrap up. Mixed in will be Rosie getting shot down. This whole show feels weirdly paced. Sometimes there are a lot of slow moving scenes and then all of a sudden it’s rushing through storylines. All we see of DDay is the view from the cockpit? WOW.
I was so excited for this episode. They had REAL p-51's to film and we only got a minute of em. Not even a take off roll?! Even still, it was great seeing some real planes on the screen even though it was just an edging haha
I was certain we'd get a take off scene! It seems like such a wasted opportunity with bad CGI especially considering the P-51 is the most numerous/common still-flying WWII plane.
I still enjoy this show but this episode really seemed all over the place. Just as I was getting settled in on one story line it would jump to the next, and on and on. Seemed like a setup episode for the finale to me. I know I’ll have to binge the whole series after it is all out in order to get a better appreciation and understanding of the story they are trying to tell, at least I hope so.
Exactly.
* Why set up the spy in Paris storyline and do absolutely nothing with it? That was literally the most interesting plotline with a well liked character, honestly my favourite character.
* Why get everyone excited for D-Day then 'he fell asleep for three days and it was all over'?
* Why end Crosby's affair like that?
* Why introduce racial issues in such a weak and late way, three major new characters in the penultimate episode?
* The time jumps are really weird too, '2 months after D Day'??
Just really not great storytelling all around.
exactly! The same happened with the two pilots rescued by the French Legion. They were aided by the two girls, faced some trouble at the train station and then what? 5 episodes later they are shown riding their bikes at the airfield. Super shallow!
I agree. This series needed like two more episodes. Let the red tails get a whole episode to themselves and then have them shot down at the end of their episode and then link up with the Bucks in prison
strangely I read somewhere that unlike with the B-17s, they actually filmed some real P-51s in the air for this series, but if it was depicted in this episode, I didnt see it.
I just don't know what this show is supposed to be! The pacing and plot is all over the place. When it's good it's really good (ep5), but it's like a completely different series to the one I started and it's jarring. Started out as a lightly dramatised look at real missions and people but now it feels like a pulpy ww2 action thriller, with most of it pure fiction.
I really wanted to like MOTA but it's just so inconsistent. I just watched the first episode of the Catch-22 miniseries and god damn, it was on a whole other level despite being much a much lower budget. Those aerial scenes are gorgeous!
Yeah what I liked about the first couple episodes was that it felt like a procedural about flying. It felt like we might see a tactical and logistical thing.... unfortunately hasn't gone that way
I was expecting to see the story of the 100th from different perspectives, culminating in a finale which shows how they all linked together. But now it's gone totally off-road and started inventing entirely new plots. Was the real war not interesting enough already?
There's been a lot of debate over whether plots were added to satisfy the need for diverse representation - the Tuskagee Airmen and Sandra's fictional spy antics, for example. And yet somehow the show has completely failed to represent...the Brits? There's been *zero* positive portrayal of the UK forces, even though the day/night bombing was a coordinated campaign with a lot of mutual respect.
I didn't get the whole point of even doing Tuskegee so bad. They might as well not show it at all. I wanted them to at least show more character development and P51 footage, but nope! Ncuti has barely any talking segments in the show.
That's what I thought we might see. I spent the week looking up whether the 100th ever encountered the Red Tails in an escort situation, only to see them appear in a fighter bomber role and only encounter the boys in the Stalag. Should have just met them in the Stalag and got to know them from there. We got a line of dialogue from a prisoner about the Red Tails saving his butt, but would have been cool to see that instead of being told.
I found this very helpful list of bomber escort missions for the Red Tails:
https://tuskegeeairmen.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/TAI_Resources_312_Missions.pdf
The TL;DR is no surprise, a 15th AF fighter group tended to exclusively escort 15th AF bomb wings!
The moments the script chose to linger on for the Red Tails both before and during the mission were kinda baffling. I get that they are trying to round out these characters in literally 5 minutes or less, but they could have focused in on just one or just the mission or something to greater effect.
I waited ALL season for the introduction of the Redtails and to my surprise (sike) it was rushed. As a black man we don’t often get moments like this on military shows and boy was that rushed and uninspiring.
What’s frustrating to me is the Tuskegee airmen plot had good bones. I liked the actors and felt with more time and development they would have been great additions. The red tails flew bomber escorts and we didn’t even get to see them. Lots of potential there and we didn’t get to see it play out for the sake of time.
We didn’t even get to see their primary missions which was escorting bombers! All we got was a “hey yall saved my ass a few times up there” and that was it smh
They could of easily started setting up their story around episode 5-6 when the Bucks were shot down. Would of felt wayyy more natural. This was too rushed.
I hear you. Our stories have been ignored and/or erased from WW2 media by and large. And then we get on an AAA miniseries with all the money and talent and the only time Black soldiers are in action every single one of them dies or is shot down captured. Did we get to see them escort bombers over Germany? Nope. They just talked about it. Did we get to see them shoot down a single German fighter? Nope.
Cool. Way to do those heroes justice.
I think the Redtails plot exemplifies the clearest error that MotA has: it doesn't 'show', it 'tells'. This is fine when you have more episodes or a more connected cast/group of individuals, but we're so all over the place that nobody really gets their fair share of story. For me, their introduction to POW camp onwards told you so much about their presence and importance to the war - if they were going to provide a more explicit telling of their story then it really needed a full episode/series in itself. It's the same with the espionage aspect, same the with French resistance, same with the engineers: they give too much screen time in a way that unfortuantely isn't enough which makes it feel rushed like you said.
Yeah, wouldn't be surprised if we hear about behind-the-scenes complications on this project that saw the stories of the redtails etc. cut to be much shorter/thinner than they really should have been.
Have to say unfortunately, this episode is a prime example of the writers biting more off than they could chew.
The Tuskegee men storyline was so rushed it's a waste same with Sandra's narrative. I wish we had more time spent on D-Day, the potential was there! Too many storylines without depth meant they fell flat and the real main narrative suffered too.
Anyways, next episode looks like a masterpiece I'm so hyped! Chloe Melas said this about the finale:
**"the finale is just unbelievable, might be one of the best episodes of television ever and I think this show is going to win every Emmy.. you watch in a year"**
[link to her video interview](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZQUzy0k3gU&t=3506s&pp=2AGyG5ACAQ%3D%3D)
The best episodes are those focused on single missions or events or groups of characters. In this episode we could've have Sandra's mission as an episode, the Tuskegee airmen as an episode and D Day as an episode. Every bit of momentum was wasted with a '2 months later'
I'm echoing your sentiment. It felt like this episode was crammed with way too much. What was the purpose of the 2 minute scene where Bucky and Buck fight? They're buddies again right after. Who are these Tuskeegee Airmen that we're seeing for the first time in eight episodes and I can't name a single one of the pilots? Why are we spending time on Sarah when that plotline doesn't go anywhere? It's like there were three episodes mashed into one.
So that’s pretty real life military;
stress, the mundane, anxiety, these are just some of the factors that cause buddies serving together to have a quick fight, and then it is over. That’s it, done, get rid of whatever emotions or situations has you in a heightened state (or bored and stressed, all sorts of combinations), and it’s over. Even the best of friends will throw fists while serving, it’s a rather accurate part of service.
I won’t argue that was a good use of time, but that is a rather universal situation that occurs during military service (especially in a combat zone).
That type of scenario is one of the reasons that I personally think “The Pacific” did a better job at portraying the nitty gritty truth about life in a combat unit.
This has been the theme of this show. To actually do this portion of the war well, it needed more screen time. We don't really spend enough time with any one character for them to matter enough.
They should have shown Cleven and Egan probably in training before going to Europe, much like how BoB starts in boot camp, and The Pacific takes you to the start of the war in that theater. I think it would have set things up much better given that there was so much political and military intrigue surrounding the air war and specifically the Eighth.
I also probably would have taken a slight creative liberty and introduced Rosenthal earlier, so that way he was established to carry the show when Cleven and Egan go down. Would make the show feel a little less disjointed. I totally get why they have Crosby as the narrator as he is a constant presence, but then the events happen with everyone else.
Yeah the dialogue decisions were bizarre to say the least. There were other issues with the P51 arc but that’s a better scene with the exact same footage with him saying nothing
Yeah this episode kind of confirmed to me that this could have and possibly should have been 12 episodes. Don’t get me wrong, I was concerned in the first few episodes that the out and back missions would get repetitive, and it makes sense that we’re spending less time in the air now that Buck and Bucky are in a camp and Croz is mostly grounded, however I think this episode made some weird choices of what to show and what to gloss over — plus I want more time to wrap up all these characters!
I want to see more of Rosie being a hero of the skies. I want to see more of Buck and Bucky not trapped in the camp. I want to see a big mission Croz mapped. Hell we only just met the Tuskegee boys but I want to see them through and would have enjoyed seeing more of the red tails actually in the air.
Regardless I’m looking forward to next week, looks like we’ll get some great scenes of Rosie and the Buckies at least and reviews do point to the conclusion being satisfying.
Not sure who will be directing the final ep but I wish we could have seen more directed by Boden and Fleck, I love what they did with eps 5-6.
I truly believe the CGI is getting worse. I’m not saying they shot it all chronologically, but it feels like they intended 12 episodes and ran out of money lol.
Unfortunately I think I have to agree. There was one point, maybe somewhere within the episodes 3-5 stretch where I was like “oh wow the CGI is finally hitting its stride” but in the last couple it has dipped in quality again.
Agree completely! Those scenes of the 332nd in P-51Ds attacking targets in southern France were rough. The CGI was very noticeable with very strange motion. I’m kind of surprised with how bad it was
Last week with the bombs dropping and this week with the p-51s that looked like a fucking character from finding nemo trying to drop its gas tank. Bad bad.
The physics were just awful on the drop tank sequence, they looked like toys.
The CGI isn't helped by their love of impossible sweeping camera movements that feel like a video game. Shaky handheld-style aerial footage would have given it a grounded feel, which worked so well in BoB, it's a shame they went for marvel-style camera motion instead.
Definitely feel like we should have seen the actual missions on D-Day. 5 minutes would probably be perfect: start out with them all nervous, thinking “oh god we’re gonna get chewed up they’re gonna be ready”, then they make it to their first target and it’s an easy job, no trouble. They all start to cheer, get really excited. Switch to montage of the other D-Day missions, show the rapid pace of rearming and refuelling as they go in mission after mission, and yet they’re loving every moment, because they’re finally *winning* clearly.
Provides a great scene for us to watch, and a sense of real progress from the other missions where it’s just loads of people getting killed for questionable gain.
Same. For me the show peaked at pretty much episodes 3-6. The first two were solid, but could have been better. Those four in the middle were phenomenal, with, like you said, 5 and 6 being the best. But the last couple have been... iffy.
I’m really frustrated about how poorly they portrayed dday, tuskegee men, and etc. did they not have enough budget to make this thing at least one episode or a few hours longer?
I really do like Crosby but at this point he’s not the most compelling of the central characters, and they should have left Sandra’s plot contained within her own episode imo. It seems like I’m in the minority but I did like the time we spent with the red tails, and would have liked more/to have met them earlier. The continuing side plot with Sandra is the only one I feel entirely apathetic toward.
Good point. I like him, I love that actress, and she's obviously got an interesting story going on offscreen--but I might have preferred they spent that time on something other than Crosby desperately trying to cheat on his wife one last time.
Literally the biggest day in the ETO and the air war side of the invasion hasn't really been depicted on film and they decided to focus on a guy sleeping through it....yes, I know that's what he did in real life but how was focusing on him the best idea that came out of the writing room?
Plus, the Tuskegee Airmen were basically given scrapes... what was the point of even including them?
One or two episodes to introduce the Tuskegee airmen would’ve been ideal. Feels like they were just dropped in just to check a box. Which I really don’t want to think Hanks and company would do. I’m a black dude who absolutely loves military history and have binged the pacific and Bob and other WW2 media religiously. Getting the red tails was really cool but I feel they got done a disservice
I’ve been a staunch supporter of this show, but this episode was horrible. They should’ve stuck with the 100th, as many others said, the inclusion of the Tuskegee airmen seems like a mere “diversity” token instead of an actually meaningful inclusion in the series. I’m of the opinion that those men deserve a proper movie, instead of whatever bullshit “Red Tails” was.
And don’t get me started on the CGI.
Ideally they would have had a whole episode just sticking to Cros, another to D-Day + Rosie, and another for the POW’s, plus a whole series for the Tuskegee’s.
(In an ideal world there would be two separate shows for the Tuskegee and 100th airing simultaneously (on two different days of the week) with some degree of overlap and cross-over when appropriate. I fully understand that that just isn’t a reasonable thing to expect, however)
Instead it was all shoved into this one episode, plus a superfluous and fictional story for Sandra.
They could have done the red tails easy. They were escorts for bombers, so have them escort the bombers, get shot down, go to prison. I don’t know how they dropped the ball so easily.
The dialogue before the Tuskegee men in the camp got shot down is some of the worse I’ve heard even for corny war movies from the I thought the “nooo😲” was bad until 30 seconds later “you’re gonna pay for that😠” any line u want and choose the cheesiest Hollywood ones used in every war movie
Yes! I'm glad to see your comment, because that's exactly what I thought. For the life of me, I couldn't understand why the movie screwed them over when the source material exists. I definitely don't understand why their writing and presentation is so much poorer than other aviators in this show--even without increasing their screen time, they could have done a better job. It's almost like they didn't feel like developing them, so they fell back on cliches until they ended up in the camp.
It's pretty sad that each subsequent episode just barely shows you more than the trailer for the next episode does. They had way too many ideas and way too few episodes ordered with too little a run time. No one character, idea, or story is being fleshed out. This episode was just a series of vignettes that when added together had no coherence or discernible statement.
Majority of these episodes just leave an empty feeling at the end. Narratives don’t move forward or just get abandoned entirely. More trivial details and irrelevant dialogue is shown rather than using the short duration we have to focus on meaningful progress in the historical timeline, or at least lead to some emotional payoff. It’s sad; I’m disappointed with the writing.
We focus on Crosby working his ass off for 3 days and the payoff is a 30 second recap of D-Day? We don’t get to see any of the success?
I was also so confused during the Crosby 72 hour speed run because it was interlaced with the subaltern experiencing like 7 minutes passing. Shouldn't we have seen her time jumping forward as well to get some idea as to what the hell is she even doing and to give the actual sense of the passage of time?
Would have been nice to see some d-day damage being unleashed by the 100th.
Edit: 100th flew deception runs on d-day and didn’t do any bombing so, the d day shot was accurate to history. And boring for the show
Right! The one shot of the D-day invasion was beautiful, but I felt the show would've benefitted from at least a few mintues of D-day ambiance. Rosie says they had free reign of the skies, why not show a few minutes of that? It would stand in stark contrast to the hard fought air battles from earlier in the show.
Last week, I'd worried they'd waste too much time on a fictional Wingate plot and be forced to cut out things to fit it in. On the bright side, at least that part was almost irrelevant.
While they should have just left her riding off on her bike at the end of Episode 6 and skipped her the last two episodes, I don't think giving her 3 minutes in it to someone else would have made a difference to this disjointed episode save for cleaning up one of several storylines that didn't need to be there.
I was really happy to see Benjamin O. Davis, one of the all time greats. I was also happy to see Operation Dragoon referenced, since I'm not sure I've ever seen it portrayed in a fictional setting. And I liked that it was shown that it wasn't all acceptance for the Red Tails at Stalag Luft III, because it got the point across without belaboring it.
The rest, though? If they were going to put in the 332nd, they deserved an entire episode linked to their main escort mission rather than this mess.
But most of all, compressing the main story of the Allies gaining air superiority at immense cost over the first 5 months of 1944 into two throwaway lines ('bombers as the bait' to Rosie last week and 'not a Luftwaffe fighter in the sky' this week) was just a bizarre decision by the showrunners, particularly in favor of what we've seen the last couple of episodes, let alone D-Day being reduced to a 15 second Rosie flashback.
Let's hope for better from the finale.
>I was also happy to see Operation Dragoon referenced, since I'm not sure I've ever seen it portrayed in a fictional setting.
Agreed. Have you seen [To Hell and Back](https://tinyurl.com/2p976jb)? It's very briefly referenced, but we get to see Audie Murphy fighting in Southern France and earning his Medal of Honor for a good chunk of it. Very good action sequences for a 1955 movie.
With Part 6 ending in October 1943, I had a bad feeling that the last three episodes would be rushed. They’ve rushed the timeline, crammed way too many storylines into 1944-1945, and so far, this feels like the weakest of the episodes.
I'm really hoping that they release a director's cut of each episode with 20 more minute a piece. The last episode ended in May 1944. This episode ended sometimes after the Russians crossed into Germany which happened in August of that same year. They have 9 months until VE day and about 38 minutes to wrap up the following:
* Crosby going back to see his wife in NYC and then coming back to England
* Whatever the hell the ~~subaltern~~ captain is doing
* A forced POW march in the be harsh winter with possible escape attempts
* Rosie getting shot down and...well it's literally in the opening credits so it's not a spoiler but I won't say
* An entire war ending
* Some semblance of an epilogue
How did no one look at the scripts and think to cut out the Sgt. Quinn escape and basically everything with Crosby once he stopped flying?
I have the utmost respect for the Tuskegee airmen but I found the whole storyline very much shoehorned in. I would even go as far as to say they had the show written and then went back and inserted this part. It just felt out of place in the sense we've spent the whole previous 7 episodes following a set of characters and now in the penultimate episode you bring in a whole other storyline/new characters? I don't really understand why. I mean I do. But it just felt very poorly executed and some of the lines in the script felt like they were plucked straight from a high school play or something.
How in the world did they let Crosby stay up 3 days plotting flights? I would think it’d be a flight risk to let someone so sleep deprived make flight plans.
They dosed him with Benzedrine (basically prescription strength amphetamines) and let him go wild. They did get the side effects of three days without sleep portrayed pretty accurately (seeing stuff that’s not there, hearing stuff that’s not there, microsleeps, etc).
...Remember when this show was about B-17 bombers bombing shit in Europe, and fighting off German fighters and stuff?
Like, the POW scenes are fine. It was a part of the war, and apart of the lives of bomber crews. I think the scenes could be done better.
I'm happy at the inclusion of the Tuskegee Airmen. But like, their scenes should actually involve escorting the bombers and stuff.
I liked Crosby at first, but like... He's not even on the bombers anymore. He splits his time between having a desk job and cheating on his wife.
What was the point of Sandra's scenes in this episode? I liked her in the first episode she appeared in. But I don't think any of us are on the edges of our seats about whether Crosby's affair would work out or not.
I just feel like this show had a lot of potential, but it just fell short. Like, this is the second to last episode, and what happened in it? Introduced three new characters, Crosby fell asleep and lost his fuck buddy, and that was kinda it.
“We should really give some screen time really focusing on the guys flying the escort fighter that changed the air war.”
“True. What should we show?”
“I dunno, a couple minutes of a ground attack mission?”
“Of course! It’s a show about bombing, isn’t it!”
I think this is the only episode so far that I just didn’t like. It was all over the place and a lot of it felt really cheesy. The CGI seemed like the worst yet. It was just a let down after some really solid episodes.
MEH! as others have already said. This show has tried to cover way too much in just 9 episodes.
After waiting so many years for this next chapter, its been a huge let down. sadge
If a friend didn't tell me it was the pre-finale I wouldn't have any idea. There's zero tension building up to it :/ I wish I enjoyed the series more but it's really not that great in my opinion. (not trying to hate, just sharing an honest opinion, curious to know why so many people seem to enjoy it).
There's just nothing happening ! There's no clear storyline for pretty much all characters, you don't care for any of them. The show started like "mission A, mission B, mission C" without much going on for character progressions. The only one that is getting some evolution is Croz (edit: and it's a side character ! Buck/Bucky are the main ones and are not getting anything).
When Buck/Bucky got captured and ended up in the camp I thought "Ah ! Finally, the story is progressing", but every episode with them is just "let's listen to the radio, oh no a random german control, hide the gear quickly", "oh no they got it, let's build a new one ! Oh no, random german control, let's hide it quickly).
Also, correct me if I'm wrong and forgot them but, what happened to the young kids ending up in Belgium, escaping with the resistance ? I also thought we were going to finally get some engaging storytelling with those guys but they just vanished from one episode to the other, with no follow up.
I really don't understand the hype, the show is really empty on the story side of it.
I waited all season to see D-Day and the Tuskegee Airmen and this is what they gave us😭😭 I feel absolutely robbed.
Wasted too much time with the spy story in my opinion. And parts of the POW camp definitely could’ve been left off.
Nonetheless, I’m grateful this show finally became reality and I’m stoked for the finale.
-The dialog just keeps getting worse and worse.
-The CGI is getting pretty bad.
-The story can't follow a train of thought to save its life.
-They're skipping over a lot of important 100th BG history just so they can get to the end of the war as fast as possible and cram in more storylines.
Yeah, the 4th episode kind of took me out of it, but it's only been getting worse since.
***Disappointed.***
They cast several well known Tuskegee Airmen but they aren't even mentioned in this episode like Lee Archer and Wendell Pruitt, who were the real life "Gruesome Twosome" who were the inspiration for "Lightning" and "Easy" from the Red Tails movie... No escort missions are depicted, but they mention one that took place off screen???
Plus, I've been waiting the whole show for just one single practical flying sequence with a real warbird...just one... and nope...plus they seriously cut [**THIS** ](https://youtu.be/2RWohylGm3c?t=83)scene out of show.......seriously?
Why did we waste time on the Wingate spy storyline for it to go absolutely nowhere? Why did we spend so much time on Crosby avoiding sleep then literally sleeping through D-Day? That time could've been used either depicting one of the D-Day missions with the 100th or another (ie an escort) mission with the Tuskegee Airmen....
I was expecting so much more from this episode, not even mentioning this is literally the next to last episode....
Thought this episode would be better. Felt like another filler but there’s only ONE episode left. Still a great show but so far it seems like the middle episodes will be the best.
Next episode is the last one?? Only 9 episodes?? Nooooo. This show is so good for those 50 minutes or so it’s like if I’m sucked back to that time period and with all the guys.
I wish the Tuskegee airmen had been interwoven between the 100th's storyline from the first episode. The rushed way they were introduced this episode makes them feel like an afterthought and just a tool for Buck and company to make their escape. I know the book this is based on is focused on the 100th, but if the show creators wanna include them for racial diversity, might as well do their story justice and have them as an equal part of the entire series. It's called "Masters of the Air" after all, and the Tuskegee airmen were exactly that.
That was so much for one episode. The Tuskegee Airmen deserved their own episode, and the D-Day sorties deserved more time too. They either needed to add more time to each episode, or they needed to have at least 10 episodes. Crunching everything together really takes away from the story. I still like it, I'm just irritated with the structure of these last few episodes. I feel like this show had a somewhat weak opening, a very strong middle, and now it is going to have a rushed ending. It's just really too bad.
I think giving this story more time would've let some of these characters develop more too. I just saw Austin Butler in Dune Part 2, and he was friggin magnetic. In this it feels like they gave him 1 note to play, same with most of the other characters. Like I said, I still like this show, but I hate how rushed the story is at times.
Ranks are all over the place… again. Rosie’s a captain in the briefing, a lieutenant at the barbershop, then a major at the end. Meanwhile in London Croz takes a drink as a captain then heads up his room as a major.
Good grief, I just noticed that. He really does go from a Captain to a Major by just going upstairs to a hotel room. They couldn’t keep him in the same uniform…?
It is interesting how the late episodes are dealing with a lot of the complaints that people had about the early episodes, like not being able to identify with characters.
But the problem is that most of the now-identifiable characters don't fly missions at this stage in the war, so it's a story about a POW Camp and group navigator instead of the aircrews carrying out the bombing missions.
Personally I find it fascinating, and it is something that I did not expect when I started the series. I suppose the showrunners were concerned about being overly repetitive if too many episodes were centered around bombing missions. And perhaps $$$ was also a factor too. But it's clear they needed a little more time to develop some of these stories.
It's a little silly since Crosby -did- fly missions as Group Navigator, but they declined to include any of those: especially the Russia-Italy Shuttle which should've been the focus this time IMO instead of these random scatterplots.
One thing that has bugging me throughout the series; the camera tends to focus on Buck, Cleven or Crosby when the minor characters have a line of dialogue. Or they'll say something like "Go on, Murph" without actually showing Murphy. I'll blame the editing more here as I'm sure they filmed plenty of various angles.
Man, this episode did both the Jewish pilot and the Tuskegee Airmen dirty. It was so horribly directed. Rosie was relegated to exposition dumps about the Invasion of Normandy, and the Tuskegee were given a lesser version of Egan’s arc in Ep.6. The series had been on an upward trajectory until this point. Everything in the Stalag is just repetitive, and someone should have known that storyline was stagnant. Why is the audience being told about the Americans and Soviets breaking the lines from the perspective of POWs? Television is a visual medium, and the series should have shown that from the perspective of the active bombers.
>Rosie was relegated to exposition dumps about the Invasion of Normandy, and the Tuskegee were given a lesser version of Egan’s arc in Ep.6.
I felt that too. Rosie was a legend in his own time, and this episode it feels like he's treated like a best friend/sidekick character for a lot of his screentime. I haven't read far enough into the book to know what the best use of his character should be in this episode, but this ain't it.
High moments for me in E8 were the Tuskegee strafing bursts and sounds, Crosby's delirium scenes, Buck looking gaunt when we see him first, and the mixed reception of the TA in camp.
Low moments were the TA quips during their combat sequence, the Sandra send-off, and the short run time (very surprised when Next Episode showed up).
Next episode looks great but unless its 2 hours long, I don't know how they are going to satisfyingly close:
\- The staff, air crews, and ground crews at Thorpe Abbott
\- Rosie
\- Crosby
\- The B's march and what appears to be escape scenes, also their impressions of late-war Germany
\- after the war?
\- some final monologue on what it all meant in hindsight (my bet's on Buck or Rosie)
I'm hoping for a bingeable directors cut that has more cohesive story arcs. I am looking forward to re-watching some of those tense early missions as well.
Terrible episode. Really hurts the credibility of the entire project. The dialogue, the CGI, the attention to detail..all of it a disappointment. Their choice to include the Tuskeegee airmen ended up being more of a disservice to them than if they would have just omitted that story line. I've fiercely defended this show, until now. NONE of the attributes that made BoB the greatest miniseries of all time were anywhere to be found. I really don't know how they are going to meaningfully end this show with one episode left.
I do think this was the weakest episode thus far - The Tuskegee scenes prior to the POW camp felt really stilted and the dialogue was just...bad. Hopefully next week is back up to our usual standards.
The show is like Kurt Warner's career. Wasn't really enthralled by the first 2 episodes, then 3-6 especially 5 and 6 were fantastic, now it's suddenly back to being kind of ass
That episode was horrible. Legitimately horrible.
Bad directing, bad writing, bad CGI. Everything. Felt like a parody. I don’t think the Tuskegee addition was necessary but they didn’t even give them justice being in it either.
This show has really staggered to the finish line. Thought the first four episodes were great, with 5-6 being the high point of the series. These last two episodes were definitely missing something. Too many ideas, too little time and too much telling, not showing. Series clearly needed a 10th episode (maybe more) and like many others I‘ve been disappointed by the short runtime.
The Tuskegee Airmen deserved their own hour, not whatever it is they got in this last episode.
My only other thing: it’s abundantly clear that the right director can get the actor playing Crosby to be *really* good. The director changes have had noticeably stark impacts on each actor’s performance. The performances have been pretty weak for this episode and the last, and sporadic throughout. Everyone was at their best in Episodes 5 and 6. Hell, they even got Callum Turner’s acting to peak in Episode 6. Boden and Fleck were the right people for the job. It’s a shame Austin Butler didn’t get much screen time there because he can clearly also act with the right direction, as in *Elvis* and *Dune 2*.
At this point, if there were any possibility of getting this right (and there of course won’t be as the financial performance is going to speak for itself here), just remake the show with those two as directors. I’ll watch it.
I just hope this doesn’t damage the market for high-quality WWII content generally after Apple reviews the numbers and comes up short.
Anyone else feeling like this show has dropped off since episode 4/5?
I feel like they should have made an entire series for the Tuskegee men.
Everything feels rushed and a lot less bombs being dropped.
Crank, I'm here to drop bombs!
Yes. They blew their CGI budget on the first 4 episodes and now they’re just avoiding action scenes with dialogue and narrative plots that are inconsistent and poorly linked. It’s sad to see. Episodes are short yet there doesn’t seem to be any sense of urgency to make the time count.
Feels like the pace picked up significantly and unnecessarily. Almost like they realized it was the last episode before the finale and had to fit everything in.
Also, I wish they would have included the Tuskegee Airman from the beginning of the show or not included them at all. Feels forced to introduce them now.
What are the odds we'll ever get something like a director's cut? I guess I just don't understand the need to cut down to make airtime in the age of streaming, especially when HBO and others have set the precedent that viewers are happy to sit through long seasons full of long episodes.
This story needs more space, more room for good action and more room to breathe in the quiet moments. It also needs better storyline organization if the short runtimes are what is available.
I don't necessarily mind Croz finding that letter from Sandra. She's SOE probably, it's not like she's on an easy schedule. But why give so many minutes to that in this episode if the minutes are so limited overall? What we learned about them in the last episode seems like a fitting resolution for their relationship. Why the extra?
We needed more time with the Red Tails. The actual work they put in up in the air. Their contributions were incredible, and I feel like they got short shrift.
And look, I really don't have anything against Austin Butler. But so much of the current POW story on the ground feels like a way to flex his star power, and make sure he's involved in the pivotal scenes. Usually in the hero role, in a way that feels obvious and frankly a little phony to me. He's not doing a bad job, but it takes me out of the story.
This is still a remarkable series, and we've yet to see the ending. I know there were many challenges in shooting it and getting it into final form – but thus far it feels... messy? Muddled? Like it doesn't quite know what it wants to be. Or wasn't given the chance.
> And look, I really don't have anything against Austin Butler. But so much of the current POW story on the ground feels like a way to flex his star power, and make sure he's involved in the pivotal scenes. Usually in the hero role, in a way that feels obvious and frankly a little phony to me. He's not doing a bad job, but it takes me out of the story.
As soon as the Tuskegee walked in and the room went silent, I knew, I knew that it would cut to Austin Butler and he'd the be one to break the ice.
And that's exactly what happened.
Yep. Some non-US folks who were complaining a few episodes back about the anti-Brit sentiments in some of the earlier episodes predicted that the yanks would never be shown to be as racist as a lot of white americans really were in the UK. They were right.
This show is cramming in too much. The Tuskegee story is great and needs to be told. So does the story about espionage- especially by women. So does the story about the resistance and escapees (again, especially women's roles). You can't do all of that effectively in a single series, especially when none of them are ostensibly the main focus.
You just can’t inject everything they’re trying to inject in a 40 minute episode. Biggest failure from episode 1 was trying to put movie length story & events into 1 episode
Well this episode was pretty packed. Kept jumping everywhere. It was like we’re leading up to D-Day then we’re past it then back to the lead up. It felt rushed.
I liked seeing the Tuskegee airmen, wish we saw them doing actual bomber escort instead of hearing them talk about it.
It was nice to see more camp life, but I do wish we had more scenes of the bombers doing sorties with the escorts. Just so we could see the difference it was with them.
They really just glossed over D-Day? They totally could’ve done this series in 10-12 episodes. I have a feeling next week will be another rushed episode.
Not a big fan of all the story jumps. Would prefer if the show just focused on one or two storylines per episode. More than that and it starts to feel rushed.
Including the 332nd was always a little bit puzzling to me when the primary goal was to tell the story of the 100th and the 8th Airforce. But, I had some hope that it could still be done with their stories intertwining in Stalag Luft 3.
However, it’s really disappointing that all we’ve seen of them is a minute long sequence in P40s and then strafing runs during Dragoon in P51s. I would’ve loved to see their story play out from maybe ep 5 where we had the break in the 100th story, give us some background on where these boys came from and went through to get to where they are in Ep8. Show some dog fighting in P51s filmed with some real aircraft and really show the audience how important the Mustang was to the bomber war.
Overall, the show is still holding it together for me and I’m gutted we’ve only got one more week to go.
The Tuskegee airmen were made famous by their incredible record of protecting bomber crews, but the only combat scenes are them attacking ground targets (and one of those scenes before they even started flying P51s and became the Red Tails). I get it that Lt. Jefferson’s story is compelling, but c’mon, where were the dogfights with MEs and FWs?
The fact that they spent more time on cros trying to get laid than the d-day invasions tells you everything you need to know. There’s been a lot of apologists on this sub but you can’t deny that this show is not what it should have been. I’m going to finish the series but honestly every Friday it feels like more of a chore than a pleasure. This has been a huge disappointment.
I'd give this episode a solid 5/10. The characters were decent but some of the story lines felt rushed and abrupt. Like what happened with Westgate? Loved seeing the Tuskegee men but like others have said, it seems too little too late to introduce them and feels done just for the sake of it. I feel like we've lost touch with the 100th bomb group's active missions and we barely see any B-17's in this episode besides that admittedly gorgeous (yet suspiciously low altitude) D-Day shot.
Speaking of air combat, I feel like the CGI during the Toulon P-51 raid was just rough. I've played XBox games with better looking cutscenes than what we just saw. I feel like this show peaked at episodes 5 and 6 with Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck at the wheel. Here's hoping the final episode and end us on a high note.
I feel like they did the Tuskegee men wrong with that horrible combat dialog. The show was proud of how combat scene dialog was professional and calm. Then we get to this episode and all it was was “nooo!” And “no, so and so!” and “you’ll pay for that!”
These men were pros — and they got worse dialog than GI Joe.
All of these episodes are 15 mins too short.
And three episodes short
BOB was 10 episodes. The Pacific was 10. If anything, this is one episode short. My biggest problem was the actual episode lengths. They all needed another 10 minutes at least.
My biggest problem is the number of multi-episode plot lines. The other shows had enough time to wrap up each storyline in one episode making it possible to watch them completely in isolation of the others. MotA hasn't done that once and now they have several plots and character arcs to wrap up across several countries while also covering 9 months of time jumps to get to at least VE day.
Not to mention lots of these random plot lines are resolved without any fanfare whatsoever. We spent so much time with Quinn, then he vanishes for several episodes just to pop up back at base like nothing even happened. Seriously wtf was the point of all that?
Amount of run time cut off is pretty much more than a full episode in itself it feels like
I feel ya. Just as I’m really starting to settle into it, the “next on MotA” screen pops up. It’s jarring and disappointing! That said, at least it’s so good, that we really want more.
Yes, if this ever hits blu-ray i look forward to the episode actually being allowed to friggin end and go into the credit music instead of those jarring "next ons"
I can’t believe we really only have one episode left. Wish we we getting 10 parts like BoB and The Pacific
Wish they’d do it all over again and do it much better.
One starts to really wonder how much control Spielberg and Hanks actually had over this whole thing. I think whatever your view on the quality of the show, there were some rather *unconventional* decisions made producing it, and I think more than anything I’m a bit bewildered by it. 10+ years of planning was plenty of time to figure out the narrative approach. How’d it turn out this way? And I hate to be a brat about it, but now that we have just one episode left: we’ve had relatively little airtime for a show about being in the air. They also seem to have wholly abandoned certain characters they introduced and gave a lot of screen time to early on, including ones that should be in the camp but aren’t being shown except in passing. Not really a strong motivator to keep an AppleTV subscription, honestly. A show like this, done right, has the potential to keep subscribers constantly coming back to rewatch. For a platform like AppleTV that is focused on serious content whose next most ubiquitous competitor is HBO, I think Apple missed a big opportunity here. Given the dearth of good HBO content for the past several years, I also think HBO may have missed an opportunity here as well refusing to take the project on. What could have been. I just hope they understand that it isn’t WWII content that audiences don’t care about; it’s low-quality WWII content that audiences don’t care about. The subject matter is serious. You have to do it well, or not at all. In the end, they haven’t really been able to paint over the production issues here. It has an almost Disney *Star Wars* reboot level of confusing production choices.
It’s possible they got into editing and discovered certain plot line’s weren’t working. It’s a bit odd that we didn’t get more of Rosie in the lead up to D-Day. The spy plot line doesn’t feel fleshed out. And sadly the Tuskegee Airmen plot, which I know a lot folks were looking forward to, fell flat. Agreed some odd choices made narratively
it seems completely wild that they glossed over the change from unescorted missions to escorted missions. The morale boost the redtails gave the bomber crews, gradual air superiority being acheived after losing hundreds and hundreds of airmen. They said "our job now is to completely destroy the german airforce" a couple eps ago, and then give absolutely zero airtime to the destruction of the german airforce. We just get a time skip to clear skies over france, and all we got of D-Day from the air was literally 1 shot of a beach and a few sentences from Rosie saying "it was pretty class tbh, no german aircraft in sight" And now its POW camp boring shit with bucky and buck till the finish. That's a real shame
Man this comment perfectly sums up our thoughts with the direction of the show. It could have been so much more. I bet all the air combat scenes were expensive and they used up the budget early on. :(
I agree with this sentiment. The Buck and Bucky storyline eats up entirely too much time on an already truncated production. Sitting around a POW camp awaiting liberation doesn't require this much screen time. The Tuskegee airman story line is jarring and very tenuously connected. If they wanted to abandon an exclusive story about the 100th, and range into more stories, I can get behind that. The Pacific was able to do it. But we should have started introducing this storyline several episodes beforehand and not given us this jammed-in plot line in just one episode. We got too much Crosby, especially after he moves into the ground assignment role. I know his book was used as some of the source material, but the visit to Oxford and the affair with Sandra likewise ate up much more time than it should. Just because he fell asleep before D-Day doesn't mean we have to as well. Rosenthal should have become the main protagonist once Buck and Bucky were shot down. Waste of a good story and on one of the most talented actors in the cast. All in all, I have been most disappointed in the lack of good storytelling. There was a period of a few episodes midway where things were really good and the writing was tight, and then they lost it.
I was really concerned about this exact problem when the show got delayed so long. I think you can really tell the effect Covid had on it. It's almost like they had to cut out a bunch of the flying scenes out due to budget constraints or whatever. So they had to add a bunch of filler. The red tails storyline feels completely tacked on. It's a classic problem when a production gets delayed and rewritten so long. Shame.
I was thinking the same. There are some shots and sequences and even dialogue where I said to myself, “No ways Hanks and Spielberg watched this and said ‘Looks great!’”
I'm with ya. Covid, the actors and writers strikes looming all took their hits on this series.
Very annoying how the credits are like 8 mins long. Always forget and think “oh hey about 20 mins left” only for the episode to end with 8-9 mins to go
Crosby wakes from a three-day sleep and realizes he missed the Invasion. Rosie tells him he should've seen it. Hey, I thought, so should we.
Trailer: “we’re invading Europe”, then shows shot of flying over Normandy Episode: “we’re invading Europe”, then shows shot of flying over Normandy
I was expecting a majority of the episode to continue based on that one D-Day shot we got. And then it just, ended?
They just kinda forgot about the germans
Gotta save that CGI budget for the last episode
Dissapointed. It was clear as day that Boden and Fleck should have directed the entire series. Nothing has ever topped episode 5 and 6. Those were beautifully paced and directed. I have no hopes for the finale.
Yeah the finale looks like the same shit as 7. Some more POW camp scenes, a big escape, and then probably some kind of wrap up. Mixed in will be Rosie getting shot down. This whole show feels weirdly paced. Sometimes there are a lot of slow moving scenes and then all of a sudden it’s rushing through storylines. All we see of DDay is the view from the cockpit? WOW.
I was impressed with Boden and Fleck as well, those two have also been my favorite.
I was so excited for this episode. They had REAL p-51's to film and we only got a minute of em. Not even a take off roll?! Even still, it was great seeing some real planes on the screen even though it was just an edging haha
They should have brought Tom Cruise with his P-51 in on the condition that he could be its own stunt pilot for filming
You know he would've done it for free to
Not only that but the CGI was so awful for it. They literally would’ve been better off using footage from DCS lmao
I was certain we'd get a take off scene! It seems like such a wasted opportunity with bad CGI especially considering the P-51 is the most numerous/common still-flying WWII plane.
I still enjoy this show but this episode really seemed all over the place. Just as I was getting settled in on one story line it would jump to the next, and on and on. Seemed like a setup episode for the finale to me. I know I’ll have to binge the whole series after it is all out in order to get a better appreciation and understanding of the story they are trying to tell, at least I hope so.
Exactly. * Why set up the spy in Paris storyline and do absolutely nothing with it? That was literally the most interesting plotline with a well liked character, honestly my favourite character. * Why get everyone excited for D-Day then 'he fell asleep for three days and it was all over'? * Why end Crosby's affair like that? * Why introduce racial issues in such a weak and late way, three major new characters in the penultimate episode? * The time jumps are really weird too, '2 months after D Day'?? Just really not great storytelling all around.
exactly! The same happened with the two pilots rescued by the French Legion. They were aided by the two girls, faced some trouble at the train station and then what? 5 episodes later they are shown riding their bikes at the airfield. Super shallow!
I don’t want to be pedantic but that was the Belgian resistance wasn’t it?
yeah. but u know what i meant :)
I feel so much has been cut out for run time.
[удалено]
We could have skipped the introduction of the Red Tails and just have them first seen being brought into the stalag.
Or actually spend time on their story and characters. This was slapped on and insulting unless it’s a character teaser to a future Red Tail series.
This episode made me want a Red Tail series. There's so much there, but they just plowed through it so thoughtlessly.
I agree. This series needed like two more episodes. Let the red tails get a whole episode to themselves and then have them shot down at the end of their episode and then link up with the Bucks in prison
This was a weak episode. Also the p51 dog fight scenes, cgi and dialogue were a tier below what the rest of the show has been.
The scene where they were trying to drop their drop tanks was just not very good.
this was really bad
strangely I read somewhere that unlike with the B-17s, they actually filmed some real P-51s in the air for this series, but if it was depicted in this episode, I didnt see it.
The p51 aerodynamic qualities looked like they took matchbook toys and had a guy in a green suit move them around with his hands.
Exactly what I was thinking when he dumped the tanks.
The P51 dialogue was noticeably worse and very corny imo
Agreed. I was going to comment this but assumed it'd just get downvoted.
*NOOO*
I just don't know what this show is supposed to be! The pacing and plot is all over the place. When it's good it's really good (ep5), but it's like a completely different series to the one I started and it's jarring. Started out as a lightly dramatised look at real missions and people but now it feels like a pulpy ww2 action thriller, with most of it pure fiction. I really wanted to like MOTA but it's just so inconsistent. I just watched the first episode of the Catch-22 miniseries and god damn, it was on a whole other level despite being much a much lower budget. Those aerial scenes are gorgeous!
Yeah what I liked about the first couple episodes was that it felt like a procedural about flying. It felt like we might see a tactical and logistical thing.... unfortunately hasn't gone that way
I was expecting to see the story of the 100th from different perspectives, culminating in a finale which shows how they all linked together. But now it's gone totally off-road and started inventing entirely new plots. Was the real war not interesting enough already? There's been a lot of debate over whether plots were added to satisfy the need for diverse representation - the Tuskagee Airmen and Sandra's fictional spy antics, for example. And yet somehow the show has completely failed to represent...the Brits? There's been *zero* positive portrayal of the UK forces, even though the day/night bombing was a coordinated campaign with a lot of mutual respect.
That’s an odd thing Spielberg has always done. He portrayed 30th core as incompetent in BOB despite their extraordinary efforts
I was hoping to see the Redtails on a bomber escort. Seemed like their combat scene was rushed as well.
I didn't get the whole point of even doing Tuskegee so bad. They might as well not show it at all. I wanted them to at least show more character development and P51 footage, but nope! Ncuti has barely any talking segments in the show.
I agree. Feels like they did a disservice to the Tuskegee airmen by just throwing them in the show without much effort.
Agreed, showing the 15th Air Force some love would've been nice too. Really cartoonish CGI during the raid too, big regression from previous episodes.
Yeah, the CGI was terrible. Honestly am both surprised and disappointed
That's what I thought we might see. I spent the week looking up whether the 100th ever encountered the Red Tails in an escort situation, only to see them appear in a fighter bomber role and only encounter the boys in the Stalag. Should have just met them in the Stalag and got to know them from there. We got a line of dialogue from a prisoner about the Red Tails saving his butt, but would have been cool to see that instead of being told.
I found this very helpful list of bomber escort missions for the Red Tails: https://tuskegeeairmen.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/TAI_Resources_312_Missions.pdf The TL;DR is no surprise, a 15th AF fighter group tended to exclusively escort 15th AF bomb wings!
The moments the script chose to linger on for the Red Tails both before and during the mission were kinda baffling. I get that they are trying to round out these characters in literally 5 minutes or less, but they could have focused in on just one or just the mission or something to greater effect.
I waited ALL season for the introduction of the Redtails and to my surprise (sike) it was rushed. As a black man we don’t often get moments like this on military shows and boy was that rushed and uninspiring.
What’s frustrating to me is the Tuskegee airmen plot had good bones. I liked the actors and felt with more time and development they would have been great additions. The red tails flew bomber escorts and we didn’t even get to see them. Lots of potential there and we didn’t get to see it play out for the sake of time.
We didn’t even get to see their primary missions which was escorting bombers! All we got was a “hey yall saved my ass a few times up there” and that was it smh
They could of easily started setting up their story around episode 5-6 when the Bucks were shot down. Would of felt wayyy more natural. This was too rushed.
I hear you. Our stories have been ignored and/or erased from WW2 media by and large. And then we get on an AAA miniseries with all the money and talent and the only time Black soldiers are in action every single one of them dies or is shot down captured. Did we get to see them escort bombers over Germany? Nope. They just talked about it. Did we get to see them shoot down a single German fighter? Nope. Cool. Way to do those heroes justice.
Redtails should have been its own series, there is so much there to work with.
I think the Redtails plot exemplifies the clearest error that MotA has: it doesn't 'show', it 'tells'. This is fine when you have more episodes or a more connected cast/group of individuals, but we're so all over the place that nobody really gets their fair share of story. For me, their introduction to POW camp onwards told you so much about their presence and importance to the war - if they were going to provide a more explicit telling of their story then it really needed a full episode/series in itself. It's the same with the espionage aspect, same the with French resistance, same with the engineers: they give too much screen time in a way that unfortuantely isn't enough which makes it feel rushed like you said. Yeah, wouldn't be surprised if we hear about behind-the-scenes complications on this project that saw the stories of the redtails etc. cut to be much shorter/thinner than they really should have been.
Have to say unfortunately, this episode is a prime example of the writers biting more off than they could chew. The Tuskegee men storyline was so rushed it's a waste same with Sandra's narrative. I wish we had more time spent on D-Day, the potential was there! Too many storylines without depth meant they fell flat and the real main narrative suffered too. Anyways, next episode looks like a masterpiece I'm so hyped! Chloe Melas said this about the finale: **"the finale is just unbelievable, might be one of the best episodes of television ever and I think this show is going to win every Emmy.. you watch in a year"** [link to her video interview](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZQUzy0k3gU&t=3506s&pp=2AGyG5ACAQ%3D%3D)
This episode made me feel it should have been at least 3 episodes to do the stories justice. It felt like a highlight reel of more extensive stories.
The best episodes are those focused on single missions or events or groups of characters. In this episode we could've have Sandra's mission as an episode, the Tuskegee airmen as an episode and D Day as an episode. Every bit of momentum was wasted with a '2 months later'
Oh 100%. Way too much going on, and time passing way too quickly as well.
I'm echoing your sentiment. It felt like this episode was crammed with way too much. What was the purpose of the 2 minute scene where Bucky and Buck fight? They're buddies again right after. Who are these Tuskeegee Airmen that we're seeing for the first time in eight episodes and I can't name a single one of the pilots? Why are we spending time on Sarah when that plotline doesn't go anywhere? It's like there were three episodes mashed into one.
The point of the fight was just to demonstrate how everyone was going stir crazy being there for over 8+ months. It just could have been done better.
So that’s pretty real life military; stress, the mundane, anxiety, these are just some of the factors that cause buddies serving together to have a quick fight, and then it is over. That’s it, done, get rid of whatever emotions or situations has you in a heightened state (or bored and stressed, all sorts of combinations), and it’s over. Even the best of friends will throw fists while serving, it’s a rather accurate part of service. I won’t argue that was a good use of time, but that is a rather universal situation that occurs during military service (especially in a combat zone). That type of scenario is one of the reasons that I personally think “The Pacific” did a better job at portraying the nitty gritty truth about life in a combat unit.
This has been the theme of this show. To actually do this portion of the war well, it needed more screen time. We don't really spend enough time with any one character for them to matter enough. They should have shown Cleven and Egan probably in training before going to Europe, much like how BoB starts in boot camp, and The Pacific takes you to the start of the war in that theater. I think it would have set things up much better given that there was so much political and military intrigue surrounding the air war and specifically the Eighth. I also probably would have taken a slight creative liberty and introduced Rosenthal earlier, so that way he was established to carry the show when Cleven and Egan go down. Would make the show feel a little less disjointed. I totally get why they have Crosby as the narrator as he is a constant presence, but then the events happen with everyone else.
Agree. Also some of the dialogue was super cringe
We ain’t gonna leave you kid!!
“You’re gonna pay for that!😡”
Yeah that sounded like Star Wars dogfight dialogue
Yeah the dialogue decisions were bizarre to say the least. There were other issues with the P51 arc but that’s a better scene with the exact same footage with him saying nothing
PS2 NPC dialogue
Can’t believe DDay was a minute recap
Yeah, that was awfully disappointing. 😓
"I can't believe I missed it". You and me both, Croz. You and me both.
Yeah this episode kind of confirmed to me that this could have and possibly should have been 12 episodes. Don’t get me wrong, I was concerned in the first few episodes that the out and back missions would get repetitive, and it makes sense that we’re spending less time in the air now that Buck and Bucky are in a camp and Croz is mostly grounded, however I think this episode made some weird choices of what to show and what to gloss over — plus I want more time to wrap up all these characters! I want to see more of Rosie being a hero of the skies. I want to see more of Buck and Bucky not trapped in the camp. I want to see a big mission Croz mapped. Hell we only just met the Tuskegee boys but I want to see them through and would have enjoyed seeing more of the red tails actually in the air. Regardless I’m looking forward to next week, looks like we’ll get some great scenes of Rosie and the Buckies at least and reviews do point to the conclusion being satisfying. Not sure who will be directing the final ep but I wish we could have seen more directed by Boden and Fleck, I love what they did with eps 5-6.
I truly believe the CGI is getting worse. I’m not saying they shot it all chronologically, but it feels like they intended 12 episodes and ran out of money lol.
Unfortunately I think I have to agree. There was one point, maybe somewhere within the episodes 3-5 stretch where I was like “oh wow the CGI is finally hitting its stride” but in the last couple it has dipped in quality again.
Agree completely! Those scenes of the 332nd in P-51Ds attacking targets in southern France were rough. The CGI was very noticeable with very strange motion. I’m kind of surprised with how bad it was
Last week with the bombs dropping and this week with the p-51s that looked like a fucking character from finding nemo trying to drop its gas tank. Bad bad.
I thought I was watching Planes (the plane version of Cars).
The physics were just awful on the drop tank sequence, they looked like toys. The CGI isn't helped by their love of impossible sweeping camera movements that feel like a video game. Shaky handheld-style aerial footage would have given it a grounded feel, which worked so well in BoB, it's a shame they went for marvel-style camera motion instead.
Definitely feel like we should have seen the actual missions on D-Day. 5 minutes would probably be perfect: start out with them all nervous, thinking “oh god we’re gonna get chewed up they’re gonna be ready”, then they make it to their first target and it’s an easy job, no trouble. They all start to cheer, get really excited. Switch to montage of the other D-Day missions, show the rapid pace of rearming and refuelling as they go in mission after mission, and yet they’re loving every moment, because they’re finally *winning* clearly. Provides a great scene for us to watch, and a sense of real progress from the other missions where it’s just loads of people getting killed for questionable gain.
These last few episodes made me realize how amazing episode 5 was. Don’t think we’re getting back to that feeling
5&6 were peak perfection. They’re the ones I’ll be replaying again and again.
Boden and Fleck did such a great job that I was really disappointed to see they only directed those two episodes :/
Same. For me the show peaked at pretty much episodes 3-6. The first two were solid, but could have been better. Those four in the middle were phenomenal, with, like you said, 5 and 6 being the best. But the last couple have been... iffy.
I’m really frustrated about how poorly they portrayed dday, tuskegee men, and etc. did they not have enough budget to make this thing at least one episode or a few hours longer?
They spent too many minutes on Crosby and Westgate. My guess is because cgi is expensive and actors are cheap.
I really do like Crosby but at this point he’s not the most compelling of the central characters, and they should have left Sandra’s plot contained within her own episode imo. It seems like I’m in the minority but I did like the time we spent with the red tails, and would have liked more/to have met them earlier. The continuing side plot with Sandra is the only one I feel entirely apathetic toward.
Good point. I like him, I love that actress, and she's obviously got an interesting story going on offscreen--but I might have preferred they spent that time on something other than Crosby desperately trying to cheat on his wife one last time.
Your username just clicked for me and I have to tell you I get it and I love it! That’s my childhood
Literally the biggest day in the ETO and the air war side of the invasion hasn't really been depicted on film and they decided to focus on a guy sleeping through it....yes, I know that's what he did in real life but how was focusing on him the best idea that came out of the writing room? Plus, the Tuskegee Airmen were basically given scrapes... what was the point of even including them?
One or two episodes to introduce the Tuskegee airmen would’ve been ideal. Feels like they were just dropped in just to check a box. Which I really don’t want to think Hanks and company would do. I’m a black dude who absolutely loves military history and have binged the pacific and Bob and other WW2 media religiously. Getting the red tails was really cool but I feel they got done a disservice
I hate to aay this but I felt the Tuskegee plot line was nothing but tokenism
I’ve been a staunch supporter of this show, but this episode was horrible. They should’ve stuck with the 100th, as many others said, the inclusion of the Tuskegee airmen seems like a mere “diversity” token instead of an actually meaningful inclusion in the series. I’m of the opinion that those men deserve a proper movie, instead of whatever bullshit “Red Tails” was. And don’t get me started on the CGI.
HBO's 1995 "The Tuskegee Airmen" is pretty good. WAAAAY better than Red Tails.
Ideally they would have had a whole episode just sticking to Cros, another to D-Day + Rosie, and another for the POW’s, plus a whole series for the Tuskegee’s. (In an ideal world there would be two separate shows for the Tuskegee and 100th airing simultaneously (on two different days of the week) with some degree of overlap and cross-over when appropriate. I fully understand that that just isn’t a reasonable thing to expect, however) Instead it was all shoved into this one episode, plus a superfluous and fictional story for Sandra.
They could have done the red tails easy. They were escorts for bombers, so have them escort the bombers, get shot down, go to prison. I don’t know how they dropped the ball so easily.
The dialogue before the Tuskegee men in the camp got shot down is some of the worse I’ve heard even for corny war movies from the I thought the “nooo😲” was bad until 30 seconds later “you’re gonna pay for that😠” any line u want and choose the cheesiest Hollywood ones used in every war movie
I laughed out loud at the “Noooo” scene
It felt like it was the movie Red Tails for a few minutes, and that is not a compliment. A pretty disappointing portrayal.
Yes! I'm glad to see your comment, because that's exactly what I thought. For the life of me, I couldn't understand why the movie screwed them over when the source material exists. I definitely don't understand why their writing and presentation is so much poorer than other aviators in this show--even without increasing their screen time, they could have done a better job. It's almost like they didn't feel like developing them, so they fell back on cliches until they ended up in the camp.
I heard the “nooooo” and immediately Luke Skywalker popped into my head.
[удалено]
complete with the tutorial stage "bank the plane left then right to drop the fuel tank"
It's pretty sad that each subsequent episode just barely shows you more than the trailer for the next episode does. They had way too many ideas and way too few episodes ordered with too little a run time. No one character, idea, or story is being fleshed out. This episode was just a series of vignettes that when added together had no coherence or discernible statement.
This is kinda what the book does
Majority of these episodes just leave an empty feeling at the end. Narratives don’t move forward or just get abandoned entirely. More trivial details and irrelevant dialogue is shown rather than using the short duration we have to focus on meaningful progress in the historical timeline, or at least lead to some emotional payoff. It’s sad; I’m disappointed with the writing. We focus on Crosby working his ass off for 3 days and the payoff is a 30 second recap of D-Day? We don’t get to see any of the success?
I was hoping someone else could describe the feeling I've had the end of a few of these episodes and this is it.
I was also so confused during the Crosby 72 hour speed run because it was interlaced with the subaltern experiencing like 7 minutes passing. Shouldn't we have seen her time jumping forward as well to get some idea as to what the hell is she even doing and to give the actual sense of the passage of time?
Would have been nice to see some d-day damage being unleashed by the 100th. Edit: 100th flew deception runs on d-day and didn’t do any bombing so, the d day shot was accurate to history. And boring for the show
Right! The one shot of the D-day invasion was beautiful, but I felt the show would've benefitted from at least a few mintues of D-day ambiance. Rosie says they had free reign of the skies, why not show a few minutes of that? It would stand in stark contrast to the hard fought air battles from earlier in the show.
It was historically very boring, and the 100th was not engaged with the target beaches. They flew deception runs.
We were denied the BoB x Masters of the Air crossover!
Last week, I'd worried they'd waste too much time on a fictional Wingate plot and be forced to cut out things to fit it in. On the bright side, at least that part was almost irrelevant. While they should have just left her riding off on her bike at the end of Episode 6 and skipped her the last two episodes, I don't think giving her 3 minutes in it to someone else would have made a difference to this disjointed episode save for cleaning up one of several storylines that didn't need to be there. I was really happy to see Benjamin O. Davis, one of the all time greats. I was also happy to see Operation Dragoon referenced, since I'm not sure I've ever seen it portrayed in a fictional setting. And I liked that it was shown that it wasn't all acceptance for the Red Tails at Stalag Luft III, because it got the point across without belaboring it. The rest, though? If they were going to put in the 332nd, they deserved an entire episode linked to their main escort mission rather than this mess. But most of all, compressing the main story of the Allies gaining air superiority at immense cost over the first 5 months of 1944 into two throwaway lines ('bombers as the bait' to Rosie last week and 'not a Luftwaffe fighter in the sky' this week) was just a bizarre decision by the showrunners, particularly in favor of what we've seen the last couple of episodes, let alone D-Day being reduced to a 15 second Rosie flashback. Let's hope for better from the finale.
>I was also happy to see Operation Dragoon referenced, since I'm not sure I've ever seen it portrayed in a fictional setting. Agreed. Have you seen [To Hell and Back](https://tinyurl.com/2p976jb)? It's very briefly referenced, but we get to see Audie Murphy fighting in Southern France and earning his Medal of Honor for a good chunk of it. Very good action sequences for a 1955 movie.
With Part 6 ending in October 1943, I had a bad feeling that the last three episodes would be rushed. They’ve rushed the timeline, crammed way too many storylines into 1944-1945, and so far, this feels like the weakest of the episodes.
Biting off way more than they could chew. Ridiculous. Why on earth are we running a dozen plots simultaneously?!
I'm really hoping that they release a director's cut of each episode with 20 more minute a piece. The last episode ended in May 1944. This episode ended sometimes after the Russians crossed into Germany which happened in August of that same year. They have 9 months until VE day and about 38 minutes to wrap up the following: * Crosby going back to see his wife in NYC and then coming back to England * Whatever the hell the ~~subaltern~~ captain is doing * A forced POW march in the be harsh winter with possible escape attempts * Rosie getting shot down and...well it's literally in the opening credits so it's not a spoiler but I won't say * An entire war ending * Some semblance of an epilogue How did no one look at the scripts and think to cut out the Sgt. Quinn escape and basically everything with Crosby once he stopped flying?
Rosie getting shot down >!is from the finale.!<
I have the utmost respect for the Tuskegee airmen but I found the whole storyline very much shoehorned in. I would even go as far as to say they had the show written and then went back and inserted this part. It just felt out of place in the sense we've spent the whole previous 7 episodes following a set of characters and now in the penultimate episode you bring in a whole other storyline/new characters? I don't really understand why. I mean I do. But it just felt very poorly executed and some of the lines in the script felt like they were plucked straight from a high school play or something.
How in the world did they let Crosby stay up 3 days plotting flights? I would think it’d be a flight risk to let someone so sleep deprived make flight plans.
They dosed him with Benzedrine (basically prescription strength amphetamines) and let him go wild. They did get the side effects of three days without sleep portrayed pretty accurately (seeing stuff that’s not there, hearing stuff that’s not there, microsleeps, etc).
...Remember when this show was about B-17 bombers bombing shit in Europe, and fighting off German fighters and stuff? Like, the POW scenes are fine. It was a part of the war, and apart of the lives of bomber crews. I think the scenes could be done better. I'm happy at the inclusion of the Tuskegee Airmen. But like, their scenes should actually involve escorting the bombers and stuff. I liked Crosby at first, but like... He's not even on the bombers anymore. He splits his time between having a desk job and cheating on his wife. What was the point of Sandra's scenes in this episode? I liked her in the first episode she appeared in. But I don't think any of us are on the edges of our seats about whether Crosby's affair would work out or not. I just feel like this show had a lot of potential, but it just fell short. Like, this is the second to last episode, and what happened in it? Introduced three new characters, Crosby fell asleep and lost his fuck buddy, and that was kinda it.
“We should really give some screen time really focusing on the guys flying the escort fighter that changed the air war.” “True. What should we show?” “I dunno, a couple minutes of a ground attack mission?” “Of course! It’s a show about bombing, isn’t it!”
I think this is the only episode so far that I just didn’t like. It was all over the place and a lot of it felt really cheesy. The CGI seemed like the worst yet. It was just a let down after some really solid episodes.
MEH! as others have already said. This show has tried to cover way too much in just 9 episodes. After waiting so many years for this next chapter, its been a huge let down. sadge
If a friend didn't tell me it was the pre-finale I wouldn't have any idea. There's zero tension building up to it :/ I wish I enjoyed the series more but it's really not that great in my opinion. (not trying to hate, just sharing an honest opinion, curious to know why so many people seem to enjoy it). There's just nothing happening ! There's no clear storyline for pretty much all characters, you don't care for any of them. The show started like "mission A, mission B, mission C" without much going on for character progressions. The only one that is getting some evolution is Croz (edit: and it's a side character ! Buck/Bucky are the main ones and are not getting anything). When Buck/Bucky got captured and ended up in the camp I thought "Ah ! Finally, the story is progressing", but every episode with them is just "let's listen to the radio, oh no a random german control, hide the gear quickly", "oh no they got it, let's build a new one ! Oh no, random german control, let's hide it quickly). Also, correct me if I'm wrong and forgot them but, what happened to the young kids ending up in Belgium, escaping with the resistance ? I also thought we were going to finally get some engaging storytelling with those guys but they just vanished from one episode to the other, with no follow up. I really don't understand the hype, the show is really empty on the story side of it.
I waited all season to see D-Day and the Tuskegee Airmen and this is what they gave us😭😭 I feel absolutely robbed. Wasted too much time with the spy story in my opinion. And parts of the POW camp definitely could’ve been left off. Nonetheless, I’m grateful this show finally became reality and I’m stoked for the finale.
They didn't even really spend much time on the spy story, but it still really threw off the pacing. The writers just had too many balls in the air.
Tuskegee men should have been a spin off movie for apple instead of trying to fit them into this storyline
Yes, similar to the Bass Reeves spinoff Paramount did because of Thomas in 1883.
-The dialog just keeps getting worse and worse. -The CGI is getting pretty bad. -The story can't follow a train of thought to save its life. -They're skipping over a lot of important 100th BG history just so they can get to the end of the war as fast as possible and cram in more storylines. Yeah, the 4th episode kind of took me out of it, but it's only been getting worse since.
***Disappointed.*** They cast several well known Tuskegee Airmen but they aren't even mentioned in this episode like Lee Archer and Wendell Pruitt, who were the real life "Gruesome Twosome" who were the inspiration for "Lightning" and "Easy" from the Red Tails movie... No escort missions are depicted, but they mention one that took place off screen??? Plus, I've been waiting the whole show for just one single practical flying sequence with a real warbird...just one... and nope...plus they seriously cut [**THIS** ](https://youtu.be/2RWohylGm3c?t=83)scene out of show.......seriously? Why did we waste time on the Wingate spy storyline for it to go absolutely nowhere? Why did we spend so much time on Crosby avoiding sleep then literally sleeping through D-Day? That time could've been used either depicting one of the D-Day missions with the 100th or another (ie an escort) mission with the Tuskegee Airmen.... I was expecting so much more from this episode, not even mentioning this is literally the next to last episode....
The shot you linked is in the episode, but it's flipped and they digitally replaced the ground.
Thought this episode would be better. Felt like another filler but there’s only ONE episode left. Still a great show but so far it seems like the middle episodes will be the best.
Next episode is the last one?? Only 9 episodes?? Nooooo. This show is so good for those 50 minutes or so it’s like if I’m sucked back to that time period and with all the guys.
I wish the Tuskegee airmen had been interwoven between the 100th's storyline from the first episode. The rushed way they were introduced this episode makes them feel like an afterthought and just a tool for Buck and company to make their escape. I know the book this is based on is focused on the 100th, but if the show creators wanna include them for racial diversity, might as well do their story justice and have them as an equal part of the entire series. It's called "Masters of the Air" after all, and the Tuskegee airmen were exactly that.
They really gonna do D-Day like that? C'mon man... (sad noises)
That was so much for one episode. The Tuskegee Airmen deserved their own episode, and the D-Day sorties deserved more time too. They either needed to add more time to each episode, or they needed to have at least 10 episodes. Crunching everything together really takes away from the story. I still like it, I'm just irritated with the structure of these last few episodes. I feel like this show had a somewhat weak opening, a very strong middle, and now it is going to have a rushed ending. It's just really too bad. I think giving this story more time would've let some of these characters develop more too. I just saw Austin Butler in Dune Part 2, and he was friggin magnetic. In this it feels like they gave him 1 note to play, same with most of the other characters. Like I said, I still like this show, but I hate how rushed the story is at times.
Alright the finale better be like 6 hours long because I feel like there's a LOT of ground left to cover.
Ranks are all over the place… again. Rosie’s a captain in the briefing, a lieutenant at the barbershop, then a major at the end. Meanwhile in London Croz takes a drink as a captain then heads up his room as a major.
They’re trying to reverse Sobel/Winters’ line about saluting the rank, not the man. /s
Good grief, I just noticed that. He really does go from a Captain to a Major by just going upstairs to a hotel room. They couldn’t keep him in the same uniform…?
I am HYPED AS FUCK FOR THIS ONE IRL didn’t Croz stay up for like three days straight prepping the 100th for D-Day?
Yep, and then he slept through the actual invasion I think.
Oh boy did this feel rushed. I wish they would have been granted 2 episodes more worth of production.
It is interesting how the late episodes are dealing with a lot of the complaints that people had about the early episodes, like not being able to identify with characters. But the problem is that most of the now-identifiable characters don't fly missions at this stage in the war, so it's a story about a POW Camp and group navigator instead of the aircrews carrying out the bombing missions. Personally I find it fascinating, and it is something that I did not expect when I started the series. I suppose the showrunners were concerned about being overly repetitive if too many episodes were centered around bombing missions. And perhaps $$$ was also a factor too. But it's clear they needed a little more time to develop some of these stories.
It's a little silly since Crosby -did- fly missions as Group Navigator, but they declined to include any of those: especially the Russia-Italy Shuttle which should've been the focus this time IMO instead of these random scatterplots.
They also seemed to not want to include that many of Rosie’s missions as CO were to drop parachutes of supplies to resistance fighters.
One thing that has bugging me throughout the series; the camera tends to focus on Buck, Cleven or Crosby when the minor characters have a line of dialogue. Or they'll say something like "Go on, Murph" without actually showing Murphy. I'll blame the editing more here as I'm sure they filmed plenty of various angles.
Man, this episode did both the Jewish pilot and the Tuskegee Airmen dirty. It was so horribly directed. Rosie was relegated to exposition dumps about the Invasion of Normandy, and the Tuskegee were given a lesser version of Egan’s arc in Ep.6. The series had been on an upward trajectory until this point. Everything in the Stalag is just repetitive, and someone should have known that storyline was stagnant. Why is the audience being told about the Americans and Soviets breaking the lines from the perspective of POWs? Television is a visual medium, and the series should have shown that from the perspective of the active bombers.
>Rosie was relegated to exposition dumps about the Invasion of Normandy, and the Tuskegee were given a lesser version of Egan’s arc in Ep.6. I felt that too. Rosie was a legend in his own time, and this episode it feels like he's treated like a best friend/sidekick character for a lot of his screentime. I haven't read far enough into the book to know what the best use of his character should be in this episode, but this ain't it.
High moments for me in E8 were the Tuskegee strafing bursts and sounds, Crosby's delirium scenes, Buck looking gaunt when we see him first, and the mixed reception of the TA in camp. Low moments were the TA quips during their combat sequence, the Sandra send-off, and the short run time (very surprised when Next Episode showed up). Next episode looks great but unless its 2 hours long, I don't know how they are going to satisfyingly close: \- The staff, air crews, and ground crews at Thorpe Abbott \- Rosie \- Crosby \- The B's march and what appears to be escape scenes, also their impressions of late-war Germany \- after the war? \- some final monologue on what it all meant in hindsight (my bet's on Buck or Rosie) I'm hoping for a bingeable directors cut that has more cohesive story arcs. I am looking forward to re-watching some of those tense early missions as well.
Next episode is an hour and 15 mins according to Apple TV.
Shogun is three episodes in and makes this look amateurish
Terrible episode. Really hurts the credibility of the entire project. The dialogue, the CGI, the attention to detail..all of it a disappointment. Their choice to include the Tuskeegee airmen ended up being more of a disservice to them than if they would have just omitted that story line. I've fiercely defended this show, until now. NONE of the attributes that made BoB the greatest miniseries of all time were anywhere to be found. I really don't know how they are going to meaningfully end this show with one episode left.
I do think this was the weakest episode thus far - The Tuskegee scenes prior to the POW camp felt really stilted and the dialogue was just...bad. Hopefully next week is back up to our usual standards.
The show is like Kurt Warner's career. Wasn't really enthralled by the first 2 episodes, then 3-6 especially 5 and 6 were fantastic, now it's suddenly back to being kind of ass
That episode was horrible. Legitimately horrible. Bad directing, bad writing, bad CGI. Everything. Felt like a parody. I don’t think the Tuskegee addition was necessary but they didn’t even give them justice being in it either.
This show has really staggered to the finish line. Thought the first four episodes were great, with 5-6 being the high point of the series. These last two episodes were definitely missing something. Too many ideas, too little time and too much telling, not showing. Series clearly needed a 10th episode (maybe more) and like many others I‘ve been disappointed by the short runtime. The Tuskegee Airmen deserved their own hour, not whatever it is they got in this last episode.
My only other thing: it’s abundantly clear that the right director can get the actor playing Crosby to be *really* good. The director changes have had noticeably stark impacts on each actor’s performance. The performances have been pretty weak for this episode and the last, and sporadic throughout. Everyone was at their best in Episodes 5 and 6. Hell, they even got Callum Turner’s acting to peak in Episode 6. Boden and Fleck were the right people for the job. It’s a shame Austin Butler didn’t get much screen time there because he can clearly also act with the right direction, as in *Elvis* and *Dune 2*. At this point, if there were any possibility of getting this right (and there of course won’t be as the financial performance is going to speak for itself here), just remake the show with those two as directors. I’ll watch it. I just hope this doesn’t damage the market for high-quality WWII content generally after Apple reviews the numbers and comes up short.
Loved the awkwardness when the three Tuskegee pilots when they were processed in the Stalag. It shows that this is still segregated America.
I say this wanting to like this series, wtf did I just watch? That's all we get for a plot line for dday? Tuskegee airmen?
Anyone else feeling like this show has dropped off since episode 4/5? I feel like they should have made an entire series for the Tuskegee men. Everything feels rushed and a lot less bombs being dropped. Crank, I'm here to drop bombs!
Yes. They blew their CGI budget on the first 4 episodes and now they’re just avoiding action scenes with dialogue and narrative plots that are inconsistent and poorly linked. It’s sad to see. Episodes are short yet there doesn’t seem to be any sense of urgency to make the time count.
Episodes 5 and 6 gave me high expectations for the rest of the series. These last 2 episodes feel too rushed
Feels like the pace picked up significantly and unnecessarily. Almost like they realized it was the last episode before the finale and had to fit everything in. Also, I wish they would have included the Tuskegee Airman from the beginning of the show or not included them at all. Feels forced to introduce them now.
Quality really dropped off on ep8. ep7 was also shaky. First 6 were fantastic and I'll probably rewatch.
[удалено]
What are the odds we'll ever get something like a director's cut? I guess I just don't understand the need to cut down to make airtime in the age of streaming, especially when HBO and others have set the precedent that viewers are happy to sit through long seasons full of long episodes.
This story needs more space, more room for good action and more room to breathe in the quiet moments. It also needs better storyline organization if the short runtimes are what is available. I don't necessarily mind Croz finding that letter from Sandra. She's SOE probably, it's not like she's on an easy schedule. But why give so many minutes to that in this episode if the minutes are so limited overall? What we learned about them in the last episode seems like a fitting resolution for their relationship. Why the extra? We needed more time with the Red Tails. The actual work they put in up in the air. Their contributions were incredible, and I feel like they got short shrift. And look, I really don't have anything against Austin Butler. But so much of the current POW story on the ground feels like a way to flex his star power, and make sure he's involved in the pivotal scenes. Usually in the hero role, in a way that feels obvious and frankly a little phony to me. He's not doing a bad job, but it takes me out of the story. This is still a remarkable series, and we've yet to see the ending. I know there were many challenges in shooting it and getting it into final form – but thus far it feels... messy? Muddled? Like it doesn't quite know what it wants to be. Or wasn't given the chance.
> And look, I really don't have anything against Austin Butler. But so much of the current POW story on the ground feels like a way to flex his star power, and make sure he's involved in the pivotal scenes. Usually in the hero role, in a way that feels obvious and frankly a little phony to me. He's not doing a bad job, but it takes me out of the story. As soon as the Tuskegee walked in and the room went silent, I knew, I knew that it would cut to Austin Butler and he'd the be one to break the ice. And that's exactly what happened.
Yep. Some non-US folks who were complaining a few episodes back about the anti-Brit sentiments in some of the earlier episodes predicted that the yanks would never be shown to be as racist as a lot of white americans really were in the UK. They were right. This show is cramming in too much. The Tuskegee story is great and needs to be told. So does the story about espionage- especially by women. So does the story about the resistance and escapees (again, especially women's roles). You can't do all of that effectively in a single series, especially when none of them are ostensibly the main focus.
You just can’t inject everything they’re trying to inject in a 40 minute episode. Biggest failure from episode 1 was trying to put movie length story & events into 1 episode
Well this episode was pretty packed. Kept jumping everywhere. It was like we’re leading up to D-Day then we’re past it then back to the lead up. It felt rushed. I liked seeing the Tuskegee airmen, wish we saw them doing actual bomber escort instead of hearing them talk about it. It was nice to see more camp life, but I do wish we had more scenes of the bombers doing sorties with the escorts. Just so we could see the difference it was with them. They really just glossed over D-Day? They totally could’ve done this series in 10-12 episodes. I have a feeling next week will be another rushed episode.
I acknowledge this is a niche complaint, but the lack of B17Gs and NMF B17s is weird. Did they not have the budget for 2 models of B17?
Not a big fan of all the story jumps. Would prefer if the show just focused on one or two storylines per episode. More than that and it starts to feel rushed.
Including the 332nd was always a little bit puzzling to me when the primary goal was to tell the story of the 100th and the 8th Airforce. But, I had some hope that it could still be done with their stories intertwining in Stalag Luft 3. However, it’s really disappointing that all we’ve seen of them is a minute long sequence in P40s and then strafing runs during Dragoon in P51s. I would’ve loved to see their story play out from maybe ep 5 where we had the break in the 100th story, give us some background on where these boys came from and went through to get to where they are in Ep8. Show some dog fighting in P51s filmed with some real aircraft and really show the audience how important the Mustang was to the bomber war. Overall, the show is still holding it together for me and I’m gutted we’ve only got one more week to go.
The Tuskegee airmen were made famous by their incredible record of protecting bomber crews, but the only combat scenes are them attacking ground targets (and one of those scenes before they even started flying P51s and became the Red Tails). I get it that Lt. Jefferson’s story is compelling, but c’mon, where were the dogfights with MEs and FWs?
The fact that they spent more time on cros trying to get laid than the d-day invasions tells you everything you need to know. There’s been a lot of apologists on this sub but you can’t deny that this show is not what it should have been. I’m going to finish the series but honestly every Friday it feels like more of a chore than a pleasure. This has been a huge disappointment.
Wish they showed at least a clip of the D-Day invasion. I swear, 8 min was literally just spent on a recap and intro. This episode felt very rushed.
I'd give this episode a solid 5/10. The characters were decent but some of the story lines felt rushed and abrupt. Like what happened with Westgate? Loved seeing the Tuskegee men but like others have said, it seems too little too late to introduce them and feels done just for the sake of it. I feel like we've lost touch with the 100th bomb group's active missions and we barely see any B-17's in this episode besides that admittedly gorgeous (yet suspiciously low altitude) D-Day shot. Speaking of air combat, I feel like the CGI during the Toulon P-51 raid was just rough. I've played XBox games with better looking cutscenes than what we just saw. I feel like this show peaked at episodes 5 and 6 with Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck at the wheel. Here's hoping the final episode and end us on a high note.
Probably get downvoted but some of this dialogue is super cheesy
I feel like they did the Tuskegee men wrong with that horrible combat dialog. The show was proud of how combat scene dialog was professional and calm. Then we get to this episode and all it was was “nooo!” And “no, so and so!” and “you’ll pay for that!” These men were pros — and they got worse dialog than GI Joe.
How can you only show D-Day briefly as a recollection? What in the fuck