Masters of the Air Fails to Take Emotional Flight on First Viewing

Polished Veneer, Missing Soul

I just finished watching Masters of the Air, ostensibly the third installment in the loose trilogy of Band of Brothers and The Pacific.

Masters didn't hit like either of those other two august miniseries.

While Band of Brothers was initially difficult to keep up with who was who, the storyline was fairly straightforward. Of course, the more history of the European theater one knew, the easier it was to keep up with Band of Brothers. And, upon many subsequent viewings, one could remember who was who, especially as actors in the series when on to be in other productions and were more than just unknown faces. And it helped that Band of Brothers followed only one company in the 101st Airborne, so even though there were a lot of faces, it was more or less the same faces for each of the ten episodes.

The Pacific, by contrast, followed three different men: Robert Leckie, John Basilone and Eugene Sledge. These men were never in the same place unlike Easy Company of the 101st Airborne in Band of Brothers. Tracking who was where was more difficult in the first few viewings of The Pacific, but again, once one got familiar with the actors and remembered what was going to happen next in the story, it became easier to track the action and the characters.

With Band of Brothers, one bonds with the characters and gets caught up in their camaraderie which caused the viewer to mourn losses as the men of E Company lost their lives. Similarly, with The Pacific, once one knows the characters, we are elated with their love stories, empathize as the men suffer.

But with Masters of the Air, there was no such connection on first viewing.

Like both Band of Brothers and The Pacific, it was difficult to track who was who. And like the previous two installments in the loose trilogy, I suspect I’ll become more familiar with the actors and the characters.

But on a first viewing, I wasn’t that invested in the characters.

That’s not to say I was never invested in the characters. I certainly empathized and felt the loss when crew were shot and killed as the 100th Bomb Group flew their missions. But otherwise, I was trying keep up with who was who as well as try to understand the timeline of the story. Workin from memory, it seemed like the first several episodes took place in ‘42 and ‘43 and therefore felt like it was “early” in the war–certainly from an American fighting perspective. This is also the period of the war that I’m least familiar with, which mean I was doubly struggling with the material.

From memory, the characters I do remember are Rosy, Bucky, Croz and Buck, but I think Rosy and Bucky have merged into a single character in my head.

Croz is the navigator who got air sickness and was ultimately promoted first to navigator for the entire (lower-case “g”) group and then to some desk job helping plan the missions despite the fact the first handful of missions he navigated (at least in the series) he didn’t do a great job of navigating.

As I said earlier, I can’t keep Rosie and Bucky separate in my head. I know one of them eventually wound up in a POW camp with Gale “Buck” Cleven, but I can’t remember which was which.

The character I empathized with the most was Austin Butler’s character of Gale “Buck” Cleven who was called Buck for most of the series. That’s probably because he was the only actor that I recognized in the series, Butler of Elvis fame.

The Red Tails have a large cameo in the miniseries. Apparently the Red Tails flew fighters that protected the 100th Bomb Group. Some of them wound up in a POW camp with the 100th and the Germans did not segregate the barracks by race.

The introduction to the Red Tails felt a bit forced, almost as if it had a DEI stench to it. I’m not saying they didn’t belong in this production or that they weren’t part of the US Ary Air Force’s story; I’m saying that the presentation felt a bit inorganic. Perhaps that says more about the political climate the miniseries was made in than anything else.

Despite losses during missions, the story of the 100th Bomb Group didn’t feel that dangerous. Or said differently, I was never on the edge of my seat hoping that this or that character would survive. Frankly, the series was a bit boring, especially once inside the POW camp. I kept waiting for some dramatic action to take place that never did. I’m not complaining that there wasn’t gratuitous action: if the history was more a story of anxiety and a waiting game than it was action, so be it. But as a piece of entertainment, I was frankly bored with most of the POW camp scenes.

Oddly, Masters is only 9 episodes long whereas both Band of Brothers and The Pacific were 10 episodes long. I’m not sure why there wasn’t a continuity in episode count between the three series, but there wasn’t.

Me being me, I’d like to read the book the series was based on: Masters of the Air MTI: America's Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany by Donald L. Miller. Hopefully it would answer questions that I have that the series didn’t address or at the very least tell the story in a more emotionally relatable way. Perhaps with your help, I’ll be able to purchase a copy of the audiobook/e-book and will be able to report on my findings later.

Masters of the Air is as well-produced miniseries, no doubt about it. It was a Playtone/Amblin’ production meaning that, just like Band of Brothers and The Pacific, both Tom Hanks and Stephen Spielberg were producers on the series. Graham Yost who wrote two episodes of Band of Brothers and was a producer on The Pacific and Justified was also a producer on Masters. So there was some heavy-hitting talent bringing this series together. You can see the production value on the screen and hear it in the sound mix. But for me–at least on a first viewing–Masters of the Air was a well produced miniseries of “meh”.

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