It took me long enough to get to Band of Brothers and it was well worth the wait.

Somehow I missed this mini-series despite watching it win awards all over the place and hearing people talk about how amazing it was. The fact that it premiered two days before September 11th, 2001, might have been a factor in why I wasn’t interested in seeing it at the time.

In reading some articles about it back then, HBO lost 26% of their viewers for the second episode even though they showed it without any commercials out of respect for the events on 9/11.

I think watching it at the time would have been difficult. Heck, watching it now was a solemn experience, one that evoked all kinds of emotions.

I’m not going to go into too much detail about the series, but I do want to make one thing clear about it:

This was the best mini-series I’ve ever seen period. It actually is probably one of the best productions I’ve ever seen, be it TV or cinema.

I’ve seen a lot of war movies, but being only 33, the recent films stick with me more than the old classics. But even though this isn’t a film, I rank it with Schnidler’s List and Saving Private Ryan as my top 3 favorite war movies/series (although The Pianist was unbelievably good) of all-time.

It might have even been better then both of those. It almost defies words to describe how brilliant it was.

Band of Brothers just felt so real, so raw, so THERE. You lived with these guys in every single moment, felt their pain as if you were right beside them.

I think my home theater system also helped, because the blasts of artillery and whizzing bullets sounding all around me totally set the mood.

The characters were awesome, the acting just damn good. So many guys were in this series that you’ve seen in many other places, but I’ll bet they will always remember Band of Brothers as the most important work they have ever done.

Damien Lewis was particularly great. I love the show Life, but if I’d had seen Brothers before seeing Life, I’d probably like it even more. He was just so good. Leadership oozed from him in every scene.

There were two things in the series that really stood out to me, besides Lewis’ performance.

The first was the interviews with the actual members of the 101st Airborne Division who are still alive to this day. What they lived through out there, and to be alive today to talk about it, is unbelievable to me.

Lastly, part 9 of the series shows us the first scenes of a Jewish concentration camp. I had gotten so sucked into the first 8 parts being solely about Easy Company and their battles and deaths, that I just didn’t see the Holocaust stuff coming. It snuck up on me and whacked me over the head.

Schindler’s List showed us that horrific part of Hitler’s regime in a way we’d never seen it before. Yet in Brothers, the way that it also “sneaks” up on Easy Company themselves casts a whole new light on it. It was devastating and sickening to see, but so very important.

This series was an amazing experience for me, I’m so very glad I got to finally see it and I’ll never forget it.

Mike’s Rating: 10 out of 10

I haven’t talked about Life much, other than an earlier blog about it being picked up for a full season, which is great news.

But I’ve never stopped watching it and it’s really grown on me. I liked it right off, especially Damian Lewis who plays the lead role of Charlie Crews. His personality and delivery are top notch and highly entertaining.

They couldn’t have cast someone else for that role and given the show the same feel or flavor. No way.

This past week gave us a two-part fall finale which was really, really good. The entire season has been great, but a lot of the pieces of the puzzle fell together in that final one on Wednesday and they told the story in such a brilliant way.

Crews of course was in prison for 10 years, framed for the murder of his friends. While he’s a good cop with a new found “Zen” attitude in solving crimes, he’s real motivation behind returning to the force is to find out who framed him and who killed the family.

The clues started falling into place. It turns out Jack Reese, the father of Crews’ partner Dani Reese (played by Sarah Shahi), was part of the big conspiracy that included a huge pot of stolen money from a bank robbery.

So in the finale, Crews finds out who the killer is from a contact he has in prison and heads out to get the justice he has been dying to obtain.

This is where the show just separates itself from others in what it does. Crews tosses his Zen tape out the window, because he’s done needing it now. He’s about to succeed on his quest and to hell with Zen.

But he shows up to the house of the killer, Kyle Hollis, a reformed man and now a preacher, to find the TV on and one of the guys’ sermons playing on it.

It gets more disturbing when Crews turns off the TV, and hears a girl’s voice asking him to “turn it back on.”

That’s the intense draw of this show to me. I really haven’t seen anything predictable happen yet. Granted, the overall “framing the good cop” story has been done, but this show always leaves me loving the twists and turns it takes, mostly because I don’t see them coming.

Others are of course looking for Hollis, because they know he’ll talk to Crews who is hot on the trail. Jack Reese had Carl Ames killed earlier in the season, and now Hollis is next. Since they didn’t find him, they shoot his daughter instead and Crews calls the ambulance that saves her life.

She turns on him, but that’s besides the point.

They don’t find Hollis and Crews gets to him first. And the mind-torture begins. Crews makes Hollis believe that he doesn’t want anything more than revenge and thus Hollis cracks eventually. It happens during a digging of a hole that would presumably be his grave.

But we know from earlier that a Zen practice is to dig a hole and fill it back up.

We find out some more info on Crews’ incarceration as well. He tells Hollis about his first 6 months in solitary, and then the next 6 months and then wont talk about the following 6 months.

18 months in solitary. It’s no wonder the guy is out for revenge, yet he brings Hollis in anyways, along with his confession.

The police department gives Crews a standing ovation when he enters with Hollis, a sign that he’s probably back on their good side, no longer under suspicion. He’s cleared his name.

Or has he?

He needs to bring Jack Reese in, but the tables get turned at the last minute. The daughter of Kyle Hollis is none other than Rachel, the girl that escaped the murders that Crews was framed for.

And that’s where it ends. Dani still has no clue her father is involved, although we can tell she thinks he’s probably capable of any kind of evil.

The show just has it’s own way of doing things. From the way scenes are shot, and the music, and the writing, and the acting from Damien Lewis, this show is one of the better additions this season.

Hopefully we’ll get to see the end of this debut year for Life and find out what else or who else if involved in the conspiracy.