Summary

• "Part Three Melbourne: Felt like filler, too many storylines that took away from the main focus and left audiences disconnected."
• "Part Four Gloucester/Pavuvu/Banika: Disted episode lacked emotional investment, messy and turned off returning fans."
• "Part 8 Iwo Jima: Controversial episode with false ment, undermined significance of battle, messy storytelling."

Ranking the episodes of HBO's Brand of Brothers' Easy Company, The Pacific differs from its companion series in more than just the setting.

Contrasted with the easily glorified action of the European Theater, The Pacific is considerably darker, clearly laying out in no uncertain just how brutal the close-quarters island-hopping campaign against the Japanese Empire was. On top of that, protagonists Robert Leckie and Eugene Sledge, while certainly war heroes, are depicted as less perfect soldiers than the idealistic Easy Company. This difference in tone, when combined with more of a big-picture focus on the war as a whole and some uneven pacing issues, creates a greater discrepancy in quality between episodes than Band of Brothers.

10 The Pacific Part Three

Melbourne

Focusing on the 1st Marine Division's shore leave in Australia, this episode doesn't quite hit the mark for a number of reasons. The choice to jarringly detour focus from the war to a series of short romance vignettes was a controversial one, splitting the story in too many different directions as Leckie and John Balisone's personal lives are explored further. With Stella not even being based on a real person, this episode mostly felt like filler, putting the whole reason audiences stayed invested in The Pacific on the backburner.

9 The Pacific Part Four

Gloucester/Pavuvu/Banika

As the tongue-twister title might hint, the fourth episode of The Pacific is one of the most disted. Sledge and Leckie are miles apart, as one trains and the other gets his first taste of the horrific combat of the Pacific. This episode certainly doesn't shy away from the bloodshed and brutality of the Pacific Theater, but it doesn't do a good enough job earning the emotional investment of the audience, dramatically killing off unknown characters left and right without the character development to earn a reaction. The body count mixes with Leckie's bedwetting sub-plot like oil and water, resulting in a messy episode that officially turned away many returning Band of Brothers fans.

8 The Pacific Part Eight

Iwo Jima

A controversial episode, this installment's title gives somewhat of a false ment, as the majority of the runtime focuses on John Basilone's life at home, romance with Lena, and return to combat. While the chaotic fighting in Iwo Jima pulls no punches when it finally does come, the relegation of such an important battle to an action sequence squeezed into the last ten minutes of a single episode doesn't win The Pacific any favors. The soap-opera antics of Basilone's life undermined Iwo Jima's significance in the series, even if the brutality of the battle was made unquestionably certain.

7 The Pacific Part One

Guadalcanal/Leckie

Band of Brothers was an incredibly tough act to follow, and The Pacific's first episode being one of its weakest made this all the more apparent. Starting with real-life archival newsreel footage documenting the Pearl Harbor Attacks, it's not long before the viewer is quickly thrust into the action in Guadalcanal, the series perhaps beginning a touch too over-eager to get straight to the fighting. The first episode simply didn't do a good enough job introducing audiences to John Basilone, Eugene Sledge, and Robert Leckie, and they wouldn't feel truly familiar for many more episodes to come.

6 The Pacific Part Two

Basilone

Whereas the first episode may have had too many moving parts and not enough time, Part Two wisely makes the decision to focus on John Basilone in Guadalcanal, providing a compelling portrayal of his unit's struggle to fend off the Japanese troops that had them outgunned and stranded. This episode is the first to drive home how truly epic the battles of The Pacific could get, with every dollar of the strained budget felt on-screen. However, it's also the first episode to highlight the series' problem with pacing, wrapping up the lengthy campaign neatly via time skips and missing some critical character development in the process.

5 The Pacific Part Ten

Home

Rather than end the entire series with the Pacific Theater's bloody finale at Okinawa, The Pacific made the laudable choice to provide viewers with some falling action, with some true-to-life depictions of just how hard re-adjusting to home life can be. Not only that, it emphasizes the brutality soldiers in the Pacific faced in particular, with a European veteran remarking "You Gi-rines, you got nothing but jungle rot and malaria". Still, the series' finale being so quiet somewhat worked against its legacy, refusing to go out with a bang and inviting comparisons to Band of Brothers.

4 The Pacific Part Five

Peleliu Landing

Halfway through the series, a break in the heavier action is taken for some much-needed character building. John Baslione's fame for his actions back home is a nice payoff to the horrors he endures earlier on, and Leckie's reunion with his company leads to some great character interactions. The sorest spot of the episode is Sledge's hazing in the mortar unit, harassing viewers with a slew of new faces, not the least of which being Merriell "Snafu'" Shelton. Just as the soldiers of The Pacific begin to somewhat acclimate to the tropics, so too does the audience finally have a good sense of their personalities, only to be introduced to new characters seconds later.

3 The Pacific Part Six

Peleliu Airfield

Peleliu Airfield could be considered a prime example of what makes The Pacific great, painstakingly re-creating the drawn out fight for the vital location. The genuine uncertainty of Leckie's fate with those not familiar with his tale hangs in the air, as the U.S. Marines struggle to even find potable water in the sweltering jungles of the island. The only things that hold this episode further down in the rankings is the clear concern of Leckie as a named character over the scores of unnamed Marines who perish, going against The Pacific's goal in creating a true-to-life, chaotic reenactment of World War II.

2 The Pacific Part Seven

Peleliu Hills

So far, many episodes of The Pacific have done a great job with the visual spectacle and hopeless terror that was the Pacific Theater in World War II, but Chapter 7 combines this chaos with chilling character examination. The kind-hearted Sledge's psyche is stretched to its breaking point, bearing witness to unspeakable horrors at Bloody Nose Ridge. In one of the most grueling and compelling scenes in the entire series, he protests the callousness his fellow soldiers have developed, trying to stop Shelton from stealing the gold fillings from an injured soldier while he's still alive. The heartbreaking score of this episode only makes the rampant loss of humanity depicted all the more poignant.

1 The Pacific Part Nine

Okinawa

The true climactic finale to the series and depiction of one of the most infamously bloody battles of the entire Pacific Theater, the penultimate episode of The Pacific is by far the strongest. The staggering production value of the battle serves to highlight the meaninglessness of the horrors of war, as civilians find themselves in the line of fire just as much as the soldiers do, the final nail in the coffin to Sledge's transformation from an idealist into a bitter cynic. The spread of Snafu's madness like a plague among the soldiers alone makes this an unforgettable episode, the bloody crowning jewel of The Pacific.