The Pacific

Another great war show. Unlike Band of Brothers, this one trades the "company as a whole" lens for a handful of individual, Sledge, Leckie, Basilone, and mostly benefits from it, even if some stretches (most of the Australia episodes) feel like filler. What it really nails, though, is showing how much more brutal the fighting against the Japanese was compared to the Germans. Part of it's the environment, jungle rot, disease, and terrain that grinds men down before a single shot is fired. But the bigger difference is ideological. The Japanese were fighting for a god, a living Messiah, which is what you're seeing behind the banzai charges, the refusal to surrender, the civilians jumping off cliffs at Peleliu and Okinawa. The Germans were serving a chancellor. That gap in what each side was willing to die for is what makes the Pacific scenes hit so much harder than anything Band of Brothers showed in Europe.