The WWII miniseries debate is one of those evergreen bar arguments that never actually gets settled, and Cons decided to settle it anyway. Band of Brothers at 1 is the safe, correct, universally agreed-upon answer. Everything after that is where people start throwing chairs. Cons didn't just rank them, he measured the gaps in geological units.
The full ranking, complete with Grand Canyon, Mississippi River, and Earth-to-Mars distance gaps between tiers.
In my humble opinion, 1. Band of Brothers A Grand Canyon-sized gap 2. Generation Kill The width of the Mississippi River 3. The Pacific The distance between Earth and Mars 4. Masters of Air Masters of Air was so horribly acted, had zero plot due to the nature of what they covered, and was so bad I stopped watching
Putting Generation Kill at 2 ahead of The Pacific is the spicy part of the list for most people, but the real headline is Masters of the Air landing in last with a caveat that he didn't even finish it. The Apple TV+ show had a massive budget, the Spielberg/Hanks pedigree, and Austin Butler fresh off an Oscar nomination for Elvis. It still landed with a thud, and apparently Cons isn't alone in tapping out partway through.
WSD calls Cons a doofus and then immediately co-signs the take, admitting he bailed on MoA too.
@CaptainCons You're a doofus, but you're also correct here. I actually didn't even finish MoA it was so god awful
When the in-house heckler agrees with you, you're probably onto something. The bigger swing came in the follow-up, where Cons widened the scope from one bad role to a full referendum on Austin Butler as an actor. That's a heavier take than just ranking a show last — that's saying the Elvis run was the ceiling, not the floor.
Cons escalates from trashing the show to questioning whether Butler can act at all.
not only was Austin Butler bad in Masters of Air I don't think Austin Butler is a particularly good actor at all
Whether you ride with the ranking or not, the Band of Brothers > everything else hierarchy is hard to argue with, and Masters of the Air being the weak link in the Spielberg/Hanks WWII trilogy is becoming consensus rather than a hot take. The Austin Butler slander is where the real debate lives now.