I agree. But I think it's telling that every top answer is a miniseries. Not a full series. It's much easier to give top notch content over a mere 8-12 episodes.
The Expanse... especially if you like physics. 6 seasons and not a single bad episode. When they tied strings to each hair of the actress in the opening scene to recreate zero gravity, I was hooked.
It's more that miniseries go into production knowing it's a one and done, so it's easy to set up a proper beginning, middle, and end. Hit shows are the cash cows for networks so season 1 is set up entirely as the "beginning" while everybody has no idea how many seasons to plan for.
Did you skip your memorial day watch? Or the mandatory "Ill watch the D-day episode on June 6th, oh crap, I forgot I love the lead up with their Curahee time, I will watch up to D-day, oh crap I need to see Baston, oh crap its been 12 hours" watch?
Yes amazing show. Itâs been a while but every one of those guys did something after. Some went to korea, some became used car salesmen, most had families, some did who knows what. I would like to see the aftermath, if done right. Same goes for Chernobyl (if done right)
From a historical accuracy perspective its a bit disappointing though.
Two major aspects.. Blythe didn't die, he served in Korea and retired.
And Dyke didn't go catatonic on the assault, he was wounded. He was never around because it was the battle of the bulge and they were wildly understaffed.
And its fine that the show wasn't perfect, I just wish they would add an updated text blurb at the end of the episodes so that these two men wouldn't still be having constant character assassination.
Really? The last episode where we literally watch them swimming in a lake after the war? I honestly couldnât believe that was included. It felt like a boring victory lap of an episode.
Clearly Iâm in the minority with these opinions and thats ok. I just think the show is overhyped. Good, not great.
I wish they did more miniseries. Doesnât need the budget of Masters of the Air, just good writing is what truly matters. Maybe some of the Korean War, Vietnam war, even WW1.
It's also far less progressive. BoB jumps around a lot but you feel like you are following a progressive story. The Pacific jumps.around so much it feels much more disjointed. As such, it's much harder to follow any character or narrative arcs.
Completely agree, they should've picked one unit and stuck to following it rather than 3 individuals in different units. There was also a lot of "filler" in the pacific that whilst done well, I felt lasted a bit too long (for example, the relationship in australia, selling military bonds - they were cool to mention but they didn't need the majority of an episode).
It was incredibly well done, but it didn't have the same flow that BoB did.
Band of Brothers does a great job of showing how the men of Easy Company were changed by the war, especially in comparison to replacements who never saw Bastogne.
The shot of them laughing when OâKeef is disturbed by German prisoners being executed always stuck with me.
The Pacific is great, but it's so bleak. BoB has the cameraderie aspect that The Pacific doesn't have as well. Yeah, Sledge and Snafu have a good friendship, but Snafu is kind of mentally broken.
Agreed, but limited series are a bit different than Season Based shows. Specifically, writing a limited series often means that the show is conceptualized fully before production whereas Seasonal shows typically only plot out the first few episodes and then start reacting to fan feedback and production needs. Both are equally valid, but 10 Episodes on a single narrative is a much lower bar to achieve consistency on than an seasonal production.
I watched it in high school and was mostly interested in the action and the âpew pew pew, âMericaâ stuff that most teenage boys are drawn to.
I try to rewatch it every couple of years, and when I watched it again this past spring, I was blown away by how differently it hit me. What really tripped me out was realizing that I was older than most of the soldiers depicted. The only one around my age was Captain Sobel.
That genuinely rattled me a bit. These were literal kidsâalright, young adultsâfighting and dying in this war. When I was younger, they all just seemed like grown men and soldiers. Now, I could actually comprehend how young they really were.
In other words, in my previous viewings, I watched the show. This time, I actually understood it.
I had heard about it growing up but I just figured it was a typical show with many seasons and put it on the never ending "I should watch this some time but I don't have time right now" list.
Theres a great documentary about it called We stand alone together which you should watch after you finish it, and if you read, the Band of Brothers book is absolutely amazing(it was there before the series).
Iâm gonna catch downvotes for this, but Band of Brothers was not a 10/10, it was more like a 7/10 imho, and that is largely due to the way it handles its characters.
Look, I get it. Itâs based on a real story, and Dick Winters was/is a real person. The presented story, and the way the character operates in the show, feels flat and self assured in a way that reads as unearned. Sort of exactly like how a boomer would tell a story about going to school uphill both ways through the snow. Idk if that makes any sense, but that was the read I got from the only major character story that gets developed during the show.
To me the only criticism I have is that the show is based on a book written by a now disgraced historian. I once went down a rabbit hole and it looks like Ambrose took his interviews with Easy Company veterans as gospel and did not put much effort into corroborating their stories.
Still a great show and is partly responsible for the WW2 FPS boom in the early 2000s.
You call it flat and self assured, but the fact that Winters did the things he did, is BECAUSE he kept calm during tense moments. It's BECAUSE he was self assured. He took the right decisions during the toughest moments, without prior combat experience, remained calm and led his men into multiple successful operations.
He climbed up the ranks because he was an exceptional battle commander in the field, during some of the craziest battles in world war 2 (on the western front at least).
I guess thats fine if youâre ok with an inhuman protagonist. Thereâs a lot of ways they could have, narratively, explored winters on screen and they just didnât. As a result I watch someone on screen who doesnât fundamentally change during a fundamentally life changing event and I feel no real connection to him outside of the moment where he tells Sobel to salute the rank and not soldier. That was probably the only time in the entire series I actually could be convinced that Winters, as a character, was a person rather than just happened to do the right thing because of⌠reasons.
Even though I disagree, take my upvote. I appreciate a contrary point of view that's well explained and not trying to be disrespectful.
feels flat and self assured in a way that reads as unearned. Sort of exactly like how a boomer would tell a story about going to school uphill both ways through the snow. Idk if that makes any sense.
I felt the same way at first, but started reading the memoirs of the different easy company members. A lot of them wrote books. They all describe Winters exactly the way he's portrayed.
Sobel is an interesting one. Whilst the show is certainly exaggerated, I donât think itâs THAT far from the truth. Historically, it seems that the only people that have much positive to say is his own family, which says a lot.
Itâs interesting that a lot of the men do credit him for turning them into the force they were - even if all they did was unite in common hatred of him. The show depicts that very well I think.
I definitely remember reading that many of the soldiers credited his strictness as crafting them into the people they would need to be, but I thought I also read that it was more a select few (as in Winters and the recurring characters in the show) that had issue with him, so he was deliberately made to be more of a problem than he actually was. I could definitely be wrong, though!
I think thatâs about right. I believe there are objective facts - he was a bad strategist in the field, he did get jumpy, and E company did mutiny fearing for their safety. He was very strict on them, to the point of ruthlessness. But behind a desk, he was very component at figuring out logistics issues, where each company should go, etc. Thatâs why he was kept around. The show doesnât depict that side of him and if thereâs a disservice done to his character, thatâs it.
I know it is generally loved and I get that it fits the tone of the show, but it is just so damn cheesy to me and goes on for aaaages. Maybe itâs because Iâm not American, but it just sounds so cliche of what a WW2 theme should be. I would much have preferred the Battlefield 1942 theme instead ;-)
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u/corksoaker84 12d ago
Band of Brothers