A List Of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago

NO OMEN BUT HIS COUNTRY'S CAUSE: For much of the first half of Episode One of The Pacific, uncleverly entitled "Episode One," the show lives up to its title, both as a noun and an adjective. Once we get through the ritual (but still affecting) goodbyes and the familiar scenes of nervous men cabined on overcrowded ships, the Marines are put ashore on Guadalcanal expecting what would later come true at Normandy, but instead find a tropical paradise occupied, at least at the beaches, only by other Marines. The Marines move inland, through a lush forest where the stillness begins to become a burden, until finally they find the first of what I imagine will be a long series of tit-for-tat savageries. And then, the pacific part of the Pacific having been dismissed, there's the battle (confusing, as always), and the aftermath, and the letter-home voiceover.

In other words, Band of Brothers. It's not a comparison the series is resisting. The episode opens with the BoB-style interviews with veterans (after Hanks's From the Earth to the Moon-style voice-over), then cuts into what is either the BoB theme or something identical, with the swelling strings that disappear into a somber french horn riff. But who would want to distance oneself from BoB, a series that deserves its place alongside the greatest seasons of HBO's modern dramas? If the goal of this series were to be 3/4 as good as that one, it would be enough.

And yet, there was at least one surprise -- a view of a Japanese soldier that was none of the three stereotypes one tends to see in war movies (crafty villain; cartoon assassin; noble adversary), performed jarringly naturalistically. So that was nice.