The Pacific

[Nebu]

Also.  How the hell do you get away with having a penis and not watching BoB at least once?  Your answer will determine the status of your man card.  There are marathons on every national holiday on regular TV and the History Channel.  I've seen it like 12 times.

I own it.  Got it for $40 and consider it one of the best purchases of a set.  Then again, I'm a huge WWII historical nut...

[HaemishM]

I didn't have HBO when it came out and I haven't sought it out since it came out on DVD. It's on my list of things to do one of these days.

[Musashi]

Very well.  Your man card is safe.  For now.

[Johny Cee]

If you liked this, you'll like BoB even more.

This. 

BoB flowed more from story to story and you felt like you really got to know the players as well as their interpersonal relationships much better.  BoB wasn't quite as gritty, but certainly told the story of the European theater well. 

Without having seen The Pacific:

BoB is a completely different narrative, since it directly follows Easy Company from beginning to end.  The Company is the main character, though a couple of the actors do come close to "main character" status.  The fact that Spielberg and Hanks had a pile of research, a well polished popular history book by Ambrose, and many of the actual Company members to draw from meant it was going to immensely more nuanced.

Even then, check out reviews of BoB on Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic...  there are quite a few negative reviews because the narrative style substantially deviated from the standard TV/miniseries style of a few major POV characters.  Many negative reviews focused on the point that there aren't really sympathetic main characters the viewer can invest in for the entire miniseries.

This style makes BoB a great series to rewatch, though...  On subsequent viewings, you pick up the little details and nuances that you missed the first time around.  A great example is Guarnere returning to the company and asking if anyone has heard of Lola's in Paris, and then a couple of episodes later in the Battle of the Bulge complaining about "pissing needles" and there was no penicilian.  Or the colorblind LT that on different occasions asks his Sgt to tap him when it's time to jump.


The Pacific follows a couple of main characters through different battles, and focuses on the POV main characters who were active in different times and portions of the war.  Necessarily, that means you have to bounce around between different settings, introduce different secondary characters, and have a different narrative focus.  



Overall, BoB is very comparable to the Wire.  They both have a diverse cast of ensemble characters that are loosely united by an overall theme.  This also means that many people, who are more comfortable with a tight narrative focus on a couple of sympathetic main characters, may not find it enjoyable viewing.

[Trippy]

Many negative reviews focused on the point that there aren't really sympathetic main characters the viewer can invest in for the entire miniseries.

[WoopeeTuralyon]

It was more...brutal... than Band of Brothers, I'd say. And more of the characters who were focused upon died; there were constant replacements and deaths of replacements too

[Merusk]

Very well.  Your man card is safe.  For now.

No it's not.  It's on TNT every few months as well as other Turner networks.  Hell, it was run on Memorial Day weekend AND the 4th.

Even my wife's sat down and watched it and she likes Twilight.

You going to take that, H, or were you seeking out sparkly vampire emos?

[tgr]

I didn't really get the more brutal bit. I felt it was just glossed over way too much, and about the only thing we got to see were a few corpses they dug up here and there, a bit of mud, and tons of thousand yard stares. I can't help but think that the bastogne episode in BoB did a better job of conveying the misery they felt.

I mean, part of the hellhole in the pacific were (if I'm correct) the constant rain, constant mud, constant lack of clean clothes etc etc, and the series to me just didn't manage to properly convey that to me. I've no real idea why, it just didn't.

[Musashi]

It was because you didn't get to spend that much time with each of the individual stories.  There was a setup, a fight, and then the episode was over.  And then four episodes later, that arc was over.  It forced it into compartmentalized formulaic crap that didn't even come close to living up to the weighty narrative of its sources.  Read the books, and skip this piece of shit.  And shame of them for fucking this up.

[Johny Cee]

Many negative reviews focused on the point that there aren't really sympathetic main characters the viewer can invest in for the entire miniseries.

Ugh.  I looked up reviews for Band of Brothers a couple of months ago, and was sure it was either rottentomatoes or metacritic but neither page has any hits for it.

From wikipedia:

Robert Bianco of USA Today said the series was "significantly flawed and yet absolutely extraordinary — just like the men it portrays", rating the series four out of four stars. Bianco noted that it was hard to keep track of and sympathize with individual characters during battle scenes.[25]

Tom Shales of The Washington Post was not as positive, stating that though the series is "at times visually astonishing", it suffers from "disorganization, muddled thinking and a sense of redundancy". Shales noted the lack of presence from the cast: "few of the characters stand out strikingly against the backdrop of the war. In fact, this show is all backdrop and no frontdrop. When you watch two hours and still aren't quite sure who the main characters are, something is wrong."[26]

A major complaint from TV critics, when BoB was released, was they couldn't tell who was who and who they should care about.  This is the flaw of show that has a revolving POV character, as some people prefer or NEED to have a single or limited number of POV characters to invest in.  

The Wire is obviously in the same category.  A couple of actors stand out (McNulty and Omar) but the story is spread out over dozens of characters, which means you have to appreciate the overarching theme and storytelling to appreciate the show.  I'll freely admit that I didn't like the second season of the Wire that much (the docks) because I couldn't stand many of the dockworkers or Carver/Herc (Carver was EXCELLENT in the later seasons), and stopped watching during the middle of the fifth season because I couldn't stand the awful newspaper storyline (doesn't help that I worked in the newspaper industry on the business side for a few years right out of college, so I thought the whole newspaper angle was preachy author tract bullshit).

[tgr]

A major complaint from TV critics, when BoB was released, was they couldn't tell who was who and who they should care about.  This is the flaw of show that has a revolving POV character, as some people prefer or NEED to have a single or limited number of POV characters to invest in.  

To me, this was the problem one of the major problems with The Pacific, not BoB. I never had that problem with BoB.

Edit: Clarifying where the problem(s) were.

[Arthur_Parker]

HaemishM please go watch BoB, it's really annoying just saying you will one day.

[HaemishM]

Very well.  Your man card is safe.  For now.

No it's not.  It's on TNT every few months as well as other Turner networks.  Hell, it was run on Memorial Day weekend AND the 4th.

I refuse to watch something like Band of Brothers on TNT - you know what with cutting out all the cursing and such, there's no reason to do such a thing. Also, I don't watch TNT enough to see trailers telling me when it's coming on. I'll rent the DVD's at some point.

Also, my man card is safely tucked away in my wife's purse where I like it. 

[Engels]

HaemishM please go watch BoB, it's really annoying just saying you will one day.

^
This

[tgr]

http://www.amazon.com/Band-Brothers-Blu-ray-Scott-Grimes/dp/B00129H7VS/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1279312791&sr=8-2

Go go gadget creditcard man.

[Merusk]

Very well.  Your man card is safe.  For now.

No it's not.  It's on TNT every few months as well as other Turner networks.  Hell, it was run on Memorial Day weekend AND the 4th.

I refuse to watch something like Band of Brothers on TNT - you know what with cutting out all the cursing and such, there's no reason to do such a thing. Also, I don't watch TNT enough to see trailers telling me when it's coming on. I'll rent the DVD's at some point.

Also, my man card is safely tucked away in my wife's purse where I like it. 

Pretty sure TNT doesn't censor it, but since I've dropped cable because it's an expensive waste of time I can't be certain.  I know History doesn't when they show it because that's where I first caught it.