Masters of the Air

Note: this post contains spoilers about the Apple TV series, Masters of the Air.

I watched Masters of the Air over the last few weeks. I had much the same reaction to the series as most of the criticism I read, which was that it felt a bit disjointed because it kept having to focus and refocus on different characters. Also, it was notable how some situations had more inherent drama than others.

It feels a bit absurd making these criticisms, however, because the reason it was hard to follow was that characters kept dying, in a way that mirrored the high casualty rate of the bomber group at the center of the story. Similarly, it feels absurd to criticize the series for losing momentum when some of the airmen got captured on the ground in Germany and were sent to prison camp. I’m sure the airmen in question also felt that they lost control of their narrative, at the time!

The question is then how much this is the fault of the writers, or whether it counts as a fault if you are accurately capturing an aspect of the history you are trying to convey. I found it interesting that the series essentially did not work, because the reasons it did not work highlight the artificiality of most other war movies or series. If that is intentional on the part of the writers, then maybe it is brilliant, in a way.

The most effective part of the series was Episode Five, where many many bombers set off, and only one returns. You watch crew after crew get shot down—with men who have names and individualized characteristics amid a sea who don’t—and it is devastating that only one of those groups survives. It’s probably during that episode that you realize that the show is focusing on the few characters left standing because they survived this incident. As in, the show has Survivorship bias as a main theme. We know who Crosby is because he was given a desk job, and therefore survived to write the book on which the story is based. We know who Rosie is because he was the one pilot who makes it back when everyone else dies or parachutes out of their burning planes. We know who Egan is because he has time to get out of his plane and was taken prisoner—and then narrowly misses getting shot while trying to escape.

The impressive or at least thought-provoking thing about the show is that you somehow understand that it is at least somewhat accidental that these are the people you are focused on. One critic’s complaint is that three Tuskegee airmen are introduced in the last few episodes and are not given the same wrapped-up narratives as the white main characters. But again, oversights like this feel at least somewhat related to the perspective from which you are viewing the story. Egan and his friend Cleven spend a lot of time in prison camp with the Tuskegee men, and then… go back to their own bomber group when they are released and don’t see the black pilots again.

The series as a whole mimics the ordinary airman’s point of view. Yes, there are a lot of people you can’t quite keep track of, many of whom die. Again, this confusion does not work super well dramatically, but maybe really does give you the flavor of what it is like to be in a theater of war with a very high casualty rate?

I’m sure a number of decisions the series makes don’t work on their own terms, dramatically or in conveying information about the war. It is certainly uneven. But I tended to give the creators the benefit of the doubt, because I thought they were breaking the fourth wall deliberately—giving you a sense of the raw history out of which the well-crafted dish of your typical war movie is made, and doing so on purpose. That one episode of death and destruction at the heart of the series worked absolutely perfectly, which is a feat, even if the structure around it was not without its flaws.