Bloody Mess

Has anyone seen 'The Pacific' on HBO?

If you have, and you've stuck with it, you likely have a newly-developed, very bleak view of humanity. How else could you emotionally register the crazed, bloody mess shown to you each episode.

It's a bit like watching the season-ending blood bath in 'Spartacus: Blood and Sand' (Starz channel), only without the relief of knowing it's fiction.

I've been struggling to balance my personal view of my father's generation - the 'Greatest Generation', with what I've been watching on 'The Pacific', but have yet to make it work. On the one hand, I can understand how young men far from home, and faced with an evil combination of fear, horror, suffering, and boredom, could become emotionally numb. On the other hand, just how numb I had no concept until watching this series.

It would have been nice if the writers and directors had injected more camaraderie into the picture, like the earlier HBO production, 'Band of Brothers'. That series was nearly as violent and graphic as 'The Pacific', but felt somehow more palatable to watch. With this new series, I feel guilty - dirty even, for participating in the horror even as a spectator, never mind the actual violence depicted took place over 60 years ago.

Perhaps I've got it all wrong. Maybe we need to see a coarser, bloodier view of the theoretically 'good' wars our nation has fought. But can't we get the lesson served us with some humanity too?

We need light to keep the dark from overwhelming us. Seeing one of the soldiers plunk rocks into the blood-filled bowl that used to be an intact 'enemy' head was too dark for me, and the series has given us precious little light.

But I've kept watching, and I am beginning to dislike myself for doing so. My only excuse is I have kept hope that I would see more of the soldier's personalities, their yearnings and their dreams. Every such glimpse, however, has been followed by tragedy.

To be expected in war, I guess, but this is a film about a war, not the actual war.

Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks, producers of this show, could have given us some relief, like they did in the earlier 'Band of Brothers', but they took a different path. 'The Pacific' is like the first 20 minutes of Hank's 'Saving Private Ryan', only the shock lasts for hours, until it stops being shocking, and you just become numb.

As of this writing, 'The Pacific' has one episode left to air - one covering the marine's return home. It promises to provide some of those personal glimpses for which I've been hoping, even if they may be too little, and likely too late, to rescue this bloody mess.