The Pacific ep. 3: Melbourne

Last night I watched ep. 3 of The Pacific, entitled "Melbourne". Yes, it's been a few weeks since I've written about this miniseries. No, it's not just because my blog has been backlogged. I actually haven't watched the shows in almost 4 weeks. Frankly I'm finding this show much less compelling than Band of Brothers, which inspired it.

Episode 3, "Melbourne", is frankly an example of why this show is much less compelling than the other WWII miniseries. In this episode, the marines are stationed in Melbourne, Australia. to recover from the grueling Guadalcanal campaign shown in the previous 2 episodes and to wait for the US to produce & deliver enough weaponry for them to take on the next campaign. If that reads like it should be the crawl text in a quick montage that introduces the next combat-heavy episode, you're catching my drift. The problem is, that's the whole episode.

A few character-driven stories do occur here. Sgt. John Basilone, one of the viewpoint characters, is awarded the Medal of Honor. In case you don't know, it's the highest award for the US military. Two other viewpoint characters, Bob Leckie and Sid Phillips, both find girlfriends in Melbourne. While these could be compelling vignettes that convey larger issues rather than just character drama, the writers kind of whiff on that idea.

• The story of Bob Leckie's romance goes on way too long, particularly in that it reaches an abrupt and very unsatisfying dead end. Plus, the sex scenes are gratuitous to the point of feeling wrong.


• Sid Phillips' romance story errs in the opposite way. It's so short, basically just one scene, it's like, why even bother?


• John Basilone's story could have been fleshed out a bit more. The writers only gloss over the character drama of the Medal of Honor recipient realizing that he needs to act like a war hero now; he can't go all drunken-cowboy around Melbourne like his buddies anymore. And he's being sent back home to sell war bonds. There's the opportunity for some serious Captain America energy here, portraying the soldier's frustration with being assigned a responsibility he thinks is way less important than what he can do by leading a squad in combat. But again, the writers only gloss over that.

Will I continue watching the miniseries after this? Well, I already did. I was bored last night and not ready to go to bed, so I clicked through to episode 4. I figured, maybe this one will get back to actual war. 🤣

The Desert View Overlook

North Las Vegas Travelog #14
Somewhere outside Las Vegas - Mon, 19 Feb 2023, 11am

Today's our last day in Las Vegas/North Las Vegas. Our plan for today, before we fly home in the evening, is to do some hiking and car-touring north of Las Vegas, in the Desert National Wildlife Refuge. Nothing is really set in stone, which is good because we weren't sure what the conditions would be like or what trails the rangers would recommend. When we stopped at the refuge visitor's center this morning, in fact, we found out there really isn't that much hiking. It's basically jjust a nature trail around the center, which is down in the uninteresting part of the desert.

We popped out of the refuge (we'll go back later in the day) and went for a scenic drive up in the mountains around Mt. Charleston. Not having things set in stone allowed us to do that. Up at elev. 8,200 ft. we reached the Desert View Overlook.



It's snowy up here! We started seeing patchy snow on the drive from around 6,000' elevation. Up here over 8,000 there are deeper drifts. Some families with younger kids were coming up here just to play in the snow.

The mountain in the background is Mummy Mountain. At first I thought it was Mt. Charleston, the highest peak in the range just west of Las Vegas, but it's not. Mt. Charleston is behind Mummy Mountain from this angle. And you can't see it because they're of similar height. Mummy Mountain reaches 11,333 ft.; Mt. Charleston reaches 11,812 ft.



There's a short, paved trail from the parking lot down to an overlook from. "Wheelchair accessible," the official descriptions all note. Except rifght now it's buried under packed ice and snow up to 2 feet deep. We carefully picked our way partway down it.



This third picture is what they really expected us to look at when they named this place the Desert View Overlook. It's a view of the actual desert! One of the signs here explains that different people see different things when they look at the desert. Natives see their ancestral land, geologists see history, the military sees a great place to drop bombs (yes, the sign said that). Surprisingly, "Screw the desert, look at this awesome snowy mountain instead!" was not one of the examples. But, hey, the desert view is nice, too. And not in a way that makes me think of dropping bombs.

BTW, the mountains in the distance, including Sheep Peak and a bit of snow atop Hayford Peak, are 30+ miles away. One great thing, and sometimes one disorienting thing, about the desert is the incredible sight distance.