![]() The image of Winters charging alone across the field, and then the men of Easy following in the thickening red smoke, is one of the series' most hauntingly beautiful.Īfter that, we deal with Winters' struggle to accept that he's now part of the Army bureaucracy, forced to do paperwork while Moose Heyliger gets to lead Easy on Operation Pegasus, then unable to do anything after Heyliger is wounded by friendly fire and replaced by "Foxhole" Norman Dike, who seems woefully unprepared for the challenges ahead. Still, that battle at the crossroads is pretty amazing, and illustrated just what an amazing leader - not just a master tactician, but a guy willing to lead a charge rather than following one - Easy lost after it. Some of that may be by design - trying to depict how bored and out-of-sorts Winters was once he got that promotion he didn't want - but it means that "Crossroads" is lacking a vitality that's present throughout all the other episodes of the series, even the relatively low-key finale, "Points." "Can We Do This?" has a couple of great Mercury and Gemini recreations (I'm always fond of the Alan Shepard mission in particular), and "Crossroads" is bookended by two terrific sequences: Winters leading the charge on what would turn out to be his final combat mission with Easy, and the men of Easy trying to stock up on ammo from the shell-shocked troops retreating from the Ardennes.īut the middle section of the episode, while important, feels a little flat. Now, that isn't to say these episodes lack memorable moments. Here, it's "Crossroads," which spans the period from the end of Easy's time in Holland - and, more importantly, the end of Dick Winters' tenure as Easy's commander - through Easy being deployed, undermanned and undersupplied, to the town of Bastogne for what will be known as the Battle of the Bulge. With "FtEttM," it was the opener, "Can We Do This?," which gave all the backstory on NASA in the pre-Apollo days. In each case, though, he took one for the team, selecting a transitional episode that may have been necessary to the larger story, but that almost certainly wouldn't be remembered as one of the series' high points. ![]() "Band of Brothers," like "From the Earth to the Moon" before it, was a labor of love for Tom Hanks, and I imagine he could have had his pick of directing assignments for both series. We're up to episode five of our look back at "Band of Brothers." Spoilers for the fifth episode, "Crossroads," coming up just as soon as I do my John Wayne impression.
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