With the ocean, too many sharks and one too many Cthulhu, but in this instance I refer to the HBO show and spiritual successor to Band of Brothers.
No matter how much I try to like this show, to feel the same sort of rich experience I had while watching it’s superior forefather, I simply cannot. There is a critical flaw. While some movies and shows get attacked for too much exposition, the Pacific has scant, and the result are a cast of characters whose names and lives are unknown to the viewer. It doesn’t help matters that a dizzying cast of supporting characters enter into the fray during one episode and are gone the next, blurring the line between who the viewer should care about and who is simply there for foil and detail.
Ultimately, as a viewer I don’t identify or care about the main characters, and I can’t say that this is a misunderstanding or prejudice on my part. The characters of Band of Brothers, and perhaps the actors as well (due to bootcamp) developed a thick camaraderie on screen, and I can’t say the same of the Pacific. The acting is adequate, I suppose, but the characters seem to be isolated figures moving through a video game world, without any real consequence or connection to the other characters around them. When one character’s brother dies at Guadalcanal its astonishing how little both the viewer and the brother appear to care, and little emotion or seriousness is conveyed on screen. I miss Band of Brother’s palpable serious undertone and tense mortality.
Even the action scenes leave something to be desired. Since you don’t particularly care about or know anything of the characters on screen, they become flashy and confusing affairs, where yelling marines cut down the Japanese in a series of seemingly disconnected and incongruous actions.
And sex scenes (EP 3)? Why does the Pacific need sex scenes? And graphic ones at that. I am a firm believer that graphic sex scenes belong in one genre: pornography. Why? The manner in which one has sex rarely adds to character or plot development. There are a few exceptions, Bad Lieutenant (the original, not the rubbish sequel) comes to mind, but in the vast majority of films sex scenes are simply a means for which to pander to the base cravings and lowest common denominator of the viewer ship. These scenes imply that the viewer is too stupid to realize what is happening once a naked woman enters the bed of a marine.
Ultimately the show does not live up to the standards its predecessor set, and while I continue to watch it, I only do in hope that it will capture a bit of the essence of that former series.