The third installment of HBO’s miniseries “The Pacific” brings new dimensions to the show and loses none of the ones it has firmly established so far. The episode also provides the viewer with an opportunity to sit back on the couch (my roommate spent the first two episodes quite literally on the edge) and partake in some new, less morbid emotions.
The 1st battalion, 7th Marine Regiment (1/7), after leaving Guadalcanal in victory at the end of episode two, sail to Melbourne, Australia to regroup, recoup and resupply. Melbourne means not only much needed rest from combat, death and horrible living conditions, but also means the presence of women — women who have had little exposure to men since Australia joined the war effort to fight the Japanese in places like Burma and Thailand.
Episode three gives us a good glimpse into the nature of love in wartime and yet another perspective on the loss experienced at the same time. The episode fittingly opens with broken soldiers sailing into a joyous crowd of strangers and ends with the same soldiers departing from the same crowd, this time made up of mourning lovers.
Love, it seems to say, is full of risk. And war — injustice.
Perhaps my only complaint with the first two episodes, to compare them with the first two episodes of “Pacific’s” sister show “Band of Brothers” (perhaps an unfairly high standard), was the lack of character development. By the end of the first two “Brothers” episodes, we knew well the names and personalities of the major characters. The same could not be said of “The Pacific.” Episode three, however, more than makes up for that shortcoming, dealing exclusively with the stories of three different Marines who battled on Guadalcanal.
Not only do we get to know our characters, we join them.
A cinematic experience is a good experience in as much as we, well, experience it — or, more specifically, in as much as we experience the characters’ own experiences. As far as I am concerned, this episode was as good as it gets in this arena.
Watching episode three, our condo cheered as PFC Leckie ran after a trolley to ask Miss Stella to join him for a walk, and our hearts were broken when she later breaks up with him out of fear he will die in combat. We felt for Sgt. Basilone as he obeyed the order to leave his unit and return home to assist the public relations campaign, and we shared a drink with him (not literally of course) as he enjoyed civilization with his comrades for the first time since the hellhole of Guadalcanal.
Above all, we felt real sorrow as the 1/7 left Melbourne, knowing that next week we would have to join the characters as the love, joy and humanity at its best would once again be lost to blood, death and humanity at its worst.
