This is the eighth and final season of the show. It premiered in 2001 but there was a year and a half off due to a writers’ strike. There will be a movie made that takes place in Prague. It will not go by hours. I had written earlier this was the tenth season, but forgot about the writers’ strike. It really started in 2002 though the first episode was in 2001, just after 9/11. So it went 2001/02 then ’03, ’04. ’05, ’06, ’07, ’09 and this season.

In The Pacific next week, they head off to New Britain, an island that is part of New Guinea. It is just north of Australia in the Southeast Pacific. The Marines go to Cape Gloucester on New Britain. Theisland is held by the Japanese and is all jungle and a lot of rain. Intense combat pursues.

I thought I might give the link to the synopsis of Part 3. More of a tranquil show, though there is a three-day walk in Australia that is brutal  on the men. They have gone to Melbourne, Australia in January of 1943 from Guadalcanal where they get a break from the intensity of combat. There is some R&R, plenty of carousing, and a couple of love stories, but the brutal walk leads to some worn out and haggard Marines as they are preparing to ship off north to go to combat once again. The lieutenant gives the men a bag of rice and a bag of raisins and tells them they’re  three days from their girlfriends in Melbourne. The officer said the Japs subsist on this during battle, so the commanders are going to get them acclimated to this type of existence. It’s pretty brutal on the men’s feet. One scene has a Marine cutting Leckie’s blister with a knife. Leckie says it relieves the pain. Leckie is really in love with this Australian girl of Greek descent who tells him at the end of the show that she can’t be with him because she knows he will die in battle. Leckie is devastated. He has a confrontation with  Lieutenant Corrigan and gets thrown in the brig. He gets transferred to another job. John Basilone gets the Medal of Honor for his heroism at Guadalcanal, then is told he’ll be transferred back to the States to sell war bonds. He is crestfallen. It ends with John and his best friend, J.P., saying so long in a moving moment. It ends with  John landing back in San Francisco. Next week promises to be action-packed and intense as the Marines head North to New Britain to fight the Japs, an island that is jungles and rain. The Japs are hidden ready to surprise attack the First Division at any time. The tension is magnified next week.
The Pacific: