The fundamental narrative, specializing in pilots Buck Cleven (Austin Butler) and Bucky Egan (Callum Turner), also follows a winding path. It’s easy to see why you’d want to construct a story around best friends Cleven and Egan, with their harmonious nicknames and illustrious service histories. However, the facts indicate that halfway through the series, the 2 abandon their planes and are taken prisoner, radically changing the atmosphere and look of the series in a way that weakens the drama and reduces the emotional investment that the viewer has been constructing.
These events might have been shaped inventively, but “Masters” couldn’t handle it. Cleven’s initial disappearance occurs off-screen and, without explanation, he arranges a surprise meeting with Egan on the camp every few episodes thereafter; it might reflect real events, but on screen it feels manipulative and obvious. Neither this meeting nor their second meeting on the airbase has the emotional power it must have; these moments feel like checking boxes.
Contributing to the general sense of disorganization, the show doesn’t do a very good job of differentiating and fleshing out the members of its large forged, as airmen die by the tons of and replacements are brought in. Especially in flight scenes, behind oxygen masks and goggles it’s hard to tell crew members apart, which adds a layer of confusion that makes it difficult to spend money on their fates.
The unlucky thing about “Masters” is that it doesn’t do what it should with a few of its forged, the best way “Band of Brothers” showcased Damian Lewis and Ron Livingston. Butler and especially Turner are great performers and it’s great to watch them within the early episodes because the a hundredth arrives in England, prepares for battle and sets off on his disastrous missions.
Butler’s reserved charisma and Turner’s witty, good, yet prickly energy contrast in absorbing and moving ways, and you would like to see what toll their nightmarish bombings will take. (Nate Mann can also be excellent in a more one-dimensional role as dedicated alternative pilot Robert Rosenthal, who takes over the narrative gap after Cleven and Egan’s downfall.)
However, once they find themselves in German camps, where they act out famous scenarios involving radio smuggling and secret conspiracies, the life disappears from their performances and the series as an entire. Butler and Turner deserved higher, but Egan and Cleven, who died in 1961 and 2006 respectively, are given their rightful place within the scene that many viewers are probably most excited about: a biographical denouement that shows their true faces and details their post-war life. Even with Hanks and Spielberg involved, in the event you put history next to fiction, history normally wins.
