I rewatch Band of Brothers every 18-24 months like clockwork.
Each time, I wonder if I’ll love it as much as I always have, and I’m never disappointed.
A big reason for that is the first episode, “Currahee.”
Band of Brothers is HBO’s iconic 2001 limited series that follows the true story of Easy Company, part of the 101st Airborne, from training through D-Day and its entire World War II campaign in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany.
“Currahee” covers the training of Easy Company over a roughly two-year period from 1942 right up until D-Day on June 6th, 1944.
The pacing is chef’s kiss great
In revisiting “Currahee” this time around, I’m particularly impressed with the pacing. This is the first chapter of an epic war story with a massive cast and ground to cover, and yet the pacing is both crisp and seamless.
We feel immersed and embedded in Easy Company from the jump, almost as though we’re fellow paratroopers in training starting out with the boys in Toccoa, Georgia.
It teaches us how to watch it
Now fully immersed, we quickly become attuned to the setting and what concepts are at the heart of their training.
For example, Currahee is the mountain the men are forced to run up and down repeatedly – three miles up, three miles down – as part of their grueling training regimen.
We also get a sense of the hierarchy of Easy Company. By focusing on Captain Sobel (David Schwimmer) and two of his Lieutenants – Dick Winters (Damian Lewis, in one of my favorite all-time TV roles) and Lewis Nixon (Ron Livingston, another actor I always have time for) – we get an intuitive feel for who the officers are versus the rest of the men.
David Schwimmer ain’t no sweet natured guy named Ross here
It’s impossible to overstate how important and effective Schwimmer is as Captain Sobel.
The men hate Sobel, and we as the audience hate Sobel. There are zero Nazis to hate in “Currahee,” so we get to fully focus on Sobel as the “enemy.”
Let’s be frank: Sobel is a complete dick. He seemingly hates his men right back, and takes nearly sadistic pleasure in making army life harder on Easy than for any other company.
This is exemplified by the scene where he tells Winters he’s going to deliver a “welcome change” of a spaghetti lunch followed by light classroom instruction, followed by a smash cut of him leading his company of puking men up Currahee yet again without warning – three miles up, three miles down.
But here’s the other thing: Sobel is also damned effective at whipping his men into an elite paratrooper unit that will become a small but crucial part of helping the Allies win the war. This dynamic is only intensified upon rewatching “Currahee.”
On top of all of this, the ironic and kind of funny thing – and, again, it’s incredible that this is all based on the true story of Easy Company – is that Sobel was thoroughly incompetent when it came to actually leading his men in the field.
As the episode progresses, we see the massive disconnect between Sobel the brutal but effective taskmaster and Sobel the bumbling Army Captain. A nice button on this storyline occurs when Colonel Sink (the exquisitely cast Dale Dye) shrewdly bumps Sobel over to running a parachute training school, which is precisely the right role for him (though I don’t envy the real life “non-infantry types,” doctors and chaplains, who had to suffer through his school).
As this is happening, we also see how quietly effective Winters is with the men even under Sobel’s ill-fated regime.
It’s simply nuts how great the production is
This is true for Band of Brothers as a whole – the look and feel of every episode is stunning. It never fails to blow my mind that this HBO limited series from a full quarter of a century ago looks as realistic as any World War II movie or TV show I’ve ever seen.
This aspect adds to its immersive nature. Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg are the show’s executive producers, and it ranks among the best productions they’ve ever been associated with.
The cast is littered with stars
Even with so much going on, we get glimpses of future stars, American and British both, among the huge cast.
For example, in my current rewatch I clocked Stephen Graham playing an American soldier, Myron Mike Ranney. I had long thought of the British actor most from playing Al Capone on Boardwalk Empire, but he achieved a new level of fame last year from creating and starring in the brilliant, harrowing Adolescence.
And then meanwhile Simon Pegg, he of Three Flavours Cornetto fame (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, The World’s End) also pops up in “Currahee.”
Much of the main cast too has mostly gone on to significant acting careers themselves.
We get just the right amount of comedic relief
This is a war story, but it’s also the story of a group of young men. There’s naturally going to be joking around in the margins, and “Currahee” handles it in a deft and effective way that balances the drama and helps to make the episode thoroughly entertaining.
Naturally, much of the comedy involves Sobel. The funniest moment comes when George Luz (Rick Gomez, brother of Joshua Gomez, one of the stars of Chuck) impersonates Major Horton while on a training exercise in England, fooling Captain Sobel – who is out of his depth as per usual at this stage – into cutting through barbed wire in a field to get the platoon moving after being informed that that dog just ain’t gonna hunt.
Once again, the comedy all serves a purpose: binding the men more closely together ahead of D-Day and the invasion of Europe.
Find out where Band of Brothers ranked among Pop Thruster’s best 100 TV shows ever.