I'm finally catching up on my TV watching a bit (busy TV season this year, with many new premieres and such, things that kept me from catching up too quickly) and am getting through the last few segments of Ken Burns' The War which aired on PBS not long back.

I wondered why the DVR that I recorded the series on (Windows Vista box running Vista Home Premium with Media Center setup on it) only recorded a few episodes during the second week the series was airing and finally realized why when I started watching the last few episodes.  Burns stretched the last few episodes, or possibly split up the first several episodes, either way, the first few segments were done as 1 hour (give or take) segments while the last few were closer to 3 hours in length.

In the case of one of the later episodes, "A World Without War," I'm left feeling that the episode should have been split into two segments and perhaps expanded a bit in either of those two segments.  Not trying to nit pick, but it seems almost as if Burns rushed towards the end after a lot of heavier material at the beginning of the episode, and then also realized that there was some heavy materials in the end of the episode too.

Burns does a great job with the materials he covers, though I've said before there are times when he tends to repeat materials a bit much from one segment to the next, but he still does -- in my opinion -- a good job of covering the topics he chooses.  Next to him, the best I've seen, and perhaps better than Burns in some way, has been Tom Hanks' very well done From the Earth to the Moon series, and another series that I believe he was invovled with on HBO: Band of Brothers.  I think the pacing on those series was better done, and the materials covered slightly better thanks to less repitition and episodes that were more easily able to stand on their own (though Band of Brothers is certainly not a series that one would easily watch just one episode of without feeling a need to watch segments before or after in the series).

I think I have one segment of The War left 'in the can' and I hope to watch it soon.  I'd give the series fairly high marks, though it certainly has plenty of issues that can be picked upon.  Why Burns choose only 4 towns to focus on is one, though he explained some of that decision making process and provides some sensible reasons when you get that information.  There's also the fuss that was made about not enough respect and recognition being paid to Hispanic and other segments of the population that contributed to the war efforts, and yes, Burns didn't necessarily delve as far into the contributions made by minorities as he could have, but, at the same time when you see the whole of the series and realize how Burns approached The War you realize it was more about the impact of the war, and the participation in the war, by people from 4 towns in the U.S.A.  Once you get to that point, you realize that demanding that all minorities be represented is pretty silly.

Anyway, I do salute PBS and Burns for coming out with this series.  I wish it had been done about 20 years, to perhaps 30 years earlier, when more of the greatest generation was around to see it and participate in it, but late is a heck of a lot better than never.