Guadalcanal, October 1942. Having been abandoned by the Navy in August after its disastrous engagement with the Japanese soon after the landings, the 1st Marine Division have been defending the area around Henderson Field for two months. The tropical conditions are taking their toll in the form of malaria and dysentery, a situation compounded by near starvation due to the Navy's inability to re-supply them.
Meanwhile, the Japanese have been pouring troops onto the island in preparation for a counter attack to recapture their airfield, while their Navy and Air Force bombard the Marines' positions by night and day.
This episode focuses mainly on John Basilone's unit where the previous one largely followed Robert Leckie. Once again there are both positives and negatives here.
The good stuff - the naval artillery barrage and its aftermath, the raiding of the army reinforcements supplies and especially the battle of 24/25 October, where Basilone almost single handedly holds off the fierce onslaught by overwhelming Japanese forces are all expertly handled. The battle scene in particular is ferocious, chaotic and terrifying. The acting all round is very solid, even though some of the secondary characters are given too little to do. Most noteworthy is probably William Sadler, who as Col.Chesty Puller radiates real charisma.
However, all this is to some degree undermined by the rest of the episode. Once again, the running time is the major factor that adversely affects everything else. It's simply too short (43 minutes of actual drama this time) to satisfactorily convey everything that the creators are trying to cover. This results in minimal character development (something that the series' detractors have levelled at it continuously), narrow focus, no real sense of the sustained nature of the barrages and air raids, or any true feeling of how protracted and miserable the campaign for Guadalcanal was for the Marines.
I really don't want to compare this series to 'Band Of Brothers' as they're two very different beasts. However, to illustrate my point above consider the following :- The Bastogne episodes of that series covered approximately one month of combat, and were afforded over two hours of actual drama. The viewer got a real sense of the passage of time and the Paratroopers' suffering.
In 'The Pacific', Guadalcanal gets around 70 minutes over two episodes, covering a campaign which lasted four months for the Marines. It almost feels like 'bite size chunks' of Guadalcanal, so much so that when Lt. Corrigan announces to Leckie's group that they're leaving, my reaction was "Oh, is that it?". Imagine what they could have done with another hour of footage over the two episodes...
I'm left scratching my head as to why the creators didn't round out their portrayal of Guadalcanal far more, especially as it comes at the start of the series where you'd think they would really want to impress and grab their audience. As it stands, I'm sure the casual viewer would be quite confused and ambivalent by this point. Surely with a budget for the series of $200 million it couldn't be financial considerations? Also, HBO have always seemed to operate a policy of letting each instalment of these type of projects take as long as they require, unconstrained as they are by the strict time limitations of US network television. Whatever the reasons, it's very frustrating for, as with Episode One, the best of the footage that has made it to the screen is visceral, brutal and uncompromising.
Meanwhile, the Japanese have been pouring troops onto the island in preparation for a counter attack to recapture their airfield, while their Navy and Air Force bombard the Marines' positions by night and day.
This episode focuses mainly on John Basilone's unit where the previous one largely followed Robert Leckie. Once again there are both positives and negatives here.
The good stuff - the naval artillery barrage and its aftermath, the raiding of the army reinforcements supplies and especially the battle of 24/25 October, where Basilone almost single handedly holds off the fierce onslaught by overwhelming Japanese forces are all expertly handled. The battle scene in particular is ferocious, chaotic and terrifying. The acting all round is very solid, even though some of the secondary characters are given too little to do. Most noteworthy is probably William Sadler, who as Col.Chesty Puller radiates real charisma.
However, all this is to some degree undermined by the rest of the episode. Once again, the running time is the major factor that adversely affects everything else. It's simply too short (43 minutes of actual drama this time) to satisfactorily convey everything that the creators are trying to cover. This results in minimal character development (something that the series' detractors have levelled at it continuously), narrow focus, no real sense of the sustained nature of the barrages and air raids, or any true feeling of how protracted and miserable the campaign for Guadalcanal was for the Marines.
I really don't want to compare this series to 'Band Of Brothers' as they're two very different beasts. However, to illustrate my point above consider the following :- The Bastogne episodes of that series covered approximately one month of combat, and were afforded over two hours of actual drama. The viewer got a real sense of the passage of time and the Paratroopers' suffering.
In 'The Pacific', Guadalcanal gets around 70 minutes over two episodes, covering a campaign which lasted four months for the Marines. It almost feels like 'bite size chunks' of Guadalcanal, so much so that when Lt. Corrigan announces to Leckie's group that they're leaving, my reaction was "Oh, is that it?". Imagine what they could have done with another hour of footage over the two episodes...
I'm left scratching my head as to why the creators didn't round out their portrayal of Guadalcanal far more, especially as it comes at the start of the series where you'd think they would really want to impress and grab their audience. As it stands, I'm sure the casual viewer would be quite confused and ambivalent by this point. Surely with a budget for the series of $200 million it couldn't be financial considerations? Also, HBO have always seemed to operate a policy of letting each instalment of these type of projects take as long as they require, unconstrained as they are by the strict time limitations of US network television. Whatever the reasons, it's very frustrating for, as with Episode One, the best of the footage that has made it to the screen is visceral, brutal and uncompromising.