This episode goes deep into the psychological challenges faced by the bomber crews. The stark mathematical odds of survival stacked against them, with the juxtaposition of extreme danger followed by relative luxury, an existence which will last only as long as they remain alive, get captured, or hit the lottery and complete their 25 missions.
The interpersonal is examined and, when combined with the additional aerial scenes, powers this episode into the stratosphere. It hits the highest of marks because it uses the previous episodes to build to this emotional destination.
We are seeing the wholesale destruction of lives, and how the few who are still alive try to come to grips with how they have survived so far, while so many others they considered as good or better are either dead or captured.
The episode's coda is most powerful, not merely for this series, but for any television or movie presentation. It is entirely real, as it uses a precise narrative from Harry Crosby's autobiography.
The unflinching look into how these men battled, and tried to endure and survive, can be read in books, but those are incomplete experiences. This series is helping to fill in the missing pieces by showing us how it played out in full color action.
Missing still is the raw guttural instincts of experiencing the risk of death and maiming, but no series can achieve that. We can only go so far as seeing the characters play out the scenes of what took place in a real time and place where the extraordinary became routine.
By use of outstanding special effects production with engrossing characters, based very strongly on real people who tried and often failed to live through this madness, this series is getting us as close as possible to appreciating what these bomber crews experienced.
That is the moral lesson, and only the very foolish would fail to appreciate it.
The interpersonal is examined and, when combined with the additional aerial scenes, powers this episode into the stratosphere. It hits the highest of marks because it uses the previous episodes to build to this emotional destination.
We are seeing the wholesale destruction of lives, and how the few who are still alive try to come to grips with how they have survived so far, while so many others they considered as good or better are either dead or captured.
The episode's coda is most powerful, not merely for this series, but for any television or movie presentation. It is entirely real, as it uses a precise narrative from Harry Crosby's autobiography.
The unflinching look into how these men battled, and tried to endure and survive, can be read in books, but those are incomplete experiences. This series is helping to fill in the missing pieces by showing us how it played out in full color action.
Missing still is the raw guttural instincts of experiencing the risk of death and maiming, but no series can achieve that. We can only go so far as seeing the characters play out the scenes of what took place in a real time and place where the extraordinary became routine.
By use of outstanding special effects production with engrossing characters, based very strongly on real people who tried and often failed to live through this madness, this series is getting us as close as possible to appreciating what these bomber crews experienced.
That is the moral lesson, and only the very foolish would fail to appreciate it.