What I’m Watching: The Pacific

The Pacific: Season 1, Episode 6 “Peleliu Airfield” (A-)

As this miniseries proceeds along, it shows no signs of letting up as its best installment yet brings out and highlights its strongest elements. This episode featured astonishing cinematography, including selected overhead shots and intense dramatizations of the conflict. The scene where one marine passed around his canteen and everyone took a small sip of water was extremely moving, but it was nothing compared to watching thee marines fight their way across to the airfield. It was an extensive sequence that took at least fifteen minutes and didn’t let up at all. While we’ve seen combat already on this show, we haven’t seen this kind of brutal warfare for such a lengthy and unabridged period of time. Keeping track of the characters becomes nearly impossible in that kind of scenario where even the marines can’t distinguish who is who, but focusing on Leckie’s quest to go back made it considerably less difficult and provided an anchor for the scene. His failure to complete his objective, resulting in hospitalization, made it even starker and more effective as a plot point. Seeing Leckie looking completely out of it, wounded and back in a hospital facility yet again, was powerful and intense. Back in the heart of the battle, the commander’s sarcastic woof provided an all-too-brief moment of levity, contrasted by the tragic brutality of the unfortunate death of a marine having a nightmare only moments later. The justification of his death by the marines was another particularly moving scene with showed that, especially in war, nothing is ever quite black and white.