Most of that comes from the writers painting themselves into a corner with the Final Five. They freely admit that they had no idea who those five characters were going to be once they started that storyline. Once they did that, they had to rivet on a bunch of different stuff farther down the line to try and make sense…

It's not an old comic book, where the characters have to explain everything in one or two panels. Or where they jump through the air and give a long soliloquy before they land.

SPOILERS:

Weird watching Ben McKenzie try and channel Russell Crowe's Bud White. Everything from the close-cropped haircut to the loud whisper of a voice.

There's been a lot of talk about Homicide (at least on Vulture) lately, and honestly, Lee reminds me of Tim Bayliss.

In some cases, that's absolutely true. But I've also thought that the show provided lots of opportunities to show where authority was absolutely wrong, from Helo refusing to commit genocide to Lee disobeying orders any number of times to the Adama/Cain assassination race to the bottom to Roslin's willingness to cut…

The show usually paints Teddy and Daniel as polar opposites, but here it gives them a nice bit of common ground. Both of them suffered heinous attacks, and both are prescient enough to see the repercussions of pressing charges, so they bear it alone.

Exactly. He was just supposed to sit there and be guilty, since they've all decided that he is. Instead, he got up and gave a eulogy for one of the only people who kept reaching out to him. It was moving and honest, and that just made them hate him more.

Ditto on Jon's scene. It was so satisfying to watch him put paid to the very Southern mindset of "well, he was convicted, so he must be guilty, and my mama said so too."

One word: Tank.
James Garner and C. Thomas Howell, baby.

Absolutely. And those tones reflect the audience at the time as well.

Absolutely. It starts wide and gets claustrophobic. Outside of Leckie, Sledge, and Basilione's tiny circles of friends, everybody else is cannon fodder.

True—there's Gunny Haney and Ack-Ack, and the series doesn't go well for either of them.

Definitely a good point, Todd, about The Pacific being harder to watch than Band of Brothers. There's no Winters-esque father figure to root for, and most of the episodes run at Bastogne-level intensity.