The Pacific

[navychop]

Gotta little problem. Thought I'd set this. Doesn't seem so. So I did a search for "pacific" and got 147 matches. Some HBO-E, some Pentagon. ALL say "no information available" even for tonight at 11. Huh? I notice a lot of the movie channels are saying this.

As soon as Anthony B is done recording, I'll run a check switch. But is anybody else seeing this problem? Any ideas on how to catch up recording this series if the check switch doesn't work?

 

[navychop]

Nevermind. Got it on the other ViP722, and a check switch fixed the first Vip722. Guess I've gotta do a check switch or unplug with more regularity.

 

[ripnbigc]

Guadalcanal. There's a marine (retired, of course) at my church that spent most of Worl War II in the Pacific. From the few times he's spoken of the war, the jungle/island fighting was worse than those he fought for can imagine.

He's on of the gentlest, kindest, and strongest men I've ever met.

You can't thank him enough for his service to our country.:up

 

[jrp]

You can't thank him enough for his service to our country.:up

I've told him that on more than one occasion. He plays it down, but I think in his heart he knows it is true. I try to say thanks to active service members & vets, no matter when they served, every chance I get, and really regret when I don't have the guts to talk to them.

 

[dfergie]

Wow, gripping episode...

 

[dfergie]

Ep 3 coming up... neat blog here , from a link found at AVS here

 

[dfergie]

Another good one!

 

[TNGTony]

Well, I am starting to lose interest in this series. Last week was a soap opera and this week it was just plain boring storytelling.

How can a story so full of action, and personal drama be told in such an uninteresting way?

I know it really isn't fair to cotrast this series with Band of Brothers since it was a program about a company of men from boot to the end of the war and The Pacific is three stories told concurrently, but when E Company was suffering in the Arden for the Battle of the Bulge, you felt their emotions. The storytelling made you care what was going on even when bullits weren't whizzing by and trees weren't exploding. Not one bullet flew in the first episode of BoB, but you were rivited to the personal journeys these men took. I don't feel that with this series. I found myself completely uninterested in this pretty unlikable character who has eurolisis. I should be interested in his psyche, but the storytelling is so poor that I just don't care.

So then there's the action sequences. I don't know if I've been jaded by BOB and other recent war movies, but the sequences in The Pacific have been totally anticlimactic. You don't see the brutality of the Japanese attacks. You do not see anything but a wave of men coming in and the marines shooting everything that moves. Unlike BoB you don't feel the threat of certain death at the hands of the enemy. I feel like I am watching an episode of Combat with Vic Morrow and his indistructible troops conquering Europe by themselves, but grittier.

I know that this series is trying to convey one of the harshest fields of battle and how it affected the men who had to fight in it. I just find myself much more interrested in the naration by the veterans describing the action to come before the episode than I am int he episode itself. I find myself much more interested in the stories veterans tell me at the local American Legion Post than I am in this series so far.

I hope the storytelling improves drastically. I am very disappointed in the direction this series has taken.

See ya
Tony

 

[SamCdbs]

Agree with TNGTony. This story is going nowhere.

 

[Jeff0575]

band of brothers was a much better show

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[ripnbigc]

band of brothers was a much better show

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So far I agree.

 

[TNGTony]

I just watched PBS's American Experience "Victory in the Pacific". http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/pacific/

Soooo much better than this series so far!

 

[JimC]

I just watched PBS's American Experience "Victory in the Pacific". http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/pacific/

Soooo much better than this series so far!

I watched all 10 parts of WWII in HD from the History Channel a couple of weeks before The Pacific started - Blows the Pacific away even when considering I had to flip through commercials. Once I started, I couldn't stop watching, and even ordered the DVD (not Blu) for my Dad who served on Okinawa.
It seems they're trying to make the Pacific a story that appeals to women as well as men instead of just showing what happened.

 

[dfergie]

1 Episode behind, this series was made for the HT... sfx have been amazing.

 

[MikeD-C05]

I watched 3 or 4 episodes and quickly lost interest. A lot of violence , bombs etc. Not crazy about the characters at all.

 

[teachsac]

I find the series hit and miss. I enjoyed BoB much more and WWII in HD on the Hist channel was amazing.

S~

 

[TNGTony]

I think the problem with this series is the storytelling. After 8 weeks I still have to check my scorecard to see who is who and what has happened. I have not been able to make a connection to any characters so far so there is nothing to keep me interested to see what is happening to whom.

Band of Brothers followed a company through a campaign and the story was told from that single perspective. This series is disjointed because whomever addapted the three individual stories didn't seem to do a good enough job in entwining them into one cohesive narative.

I'm still watching and look forward to tonight's episode, but still disappointed overall in the series. I think it could have been much better.

 

[The Insider]

I lost interest and stopped DVRing it. Ill watch an episode here or there on-demand

 

[SamCdbs]

The nature of the story is part of the problem. BOB was, as much as any TV work, an actual story. There really was an E-Company who fought in all of those battles and which actually ended up in Berchtesgarten.

Now they were thus tied to this formula when doing this Pacific. The problem is that here we are looking at a much more complex battle order. They found a group that had several interesting battles, but there is no one company or unit that participated in a series of battles that the lay historian will have heard of in the way that happened in Europe. The war was also more difficult to cover because it featured Naval and air battles dis-similar from the story in Europe.

And the casulty rates were such that, to be realistic, such a company would have to be all killed off by the end of the series.

And, of course, the basic story of the Pacific is very different from that of Europe. The military, while the won the war, did not end up fighting its way into the enemy's home due to the A-Bomb.

To that end, a little fiction might have been in order here. A fictional group of Marines who show up at all of the major battles, and happen to be on board in the varrious Navy incidents, with brothers or childhood friends in the Air Corps, might have been more entertaining.

 

[dfergie]

I figured out who they were by the 2nd episode, I did like the nicknames given the last episode I saw... Sledgehammer, Snafu etc...