Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire snafu in the Pacific

I have changed my mind regarding HBO's "The Pacific" miniseries.

Originally my comparison of Pacific with the more polished and unstandable "Band of Brothers" was that BOB was the superior of the two by a wide margin. But the development of the Snafu character and the focus on Eugene Sledge in the last few epsidoes has changed that.

I do not know the name of the actor that plays Snafu (Merriell Shelton), but IMO he does a creditable job of bringing that character to life even if it's in a Hollywood type of way.

Those of us that spent time in the service no doubt encountered at least one snafu type character and were probably better off for the experience.

The actors that play Shelton and R.V. Burgin stand out IMO, are there others that you may have noticed?

Funny you mention Snafu. He was very unlikable when introduced but in this last episode I really started to like him. I knew Sledge survived the war but didn't remember the Snafu character and found myself hoping very strongly that he wasn't killed.

This last episode was one of the best two IMO, the other being the previous one focusing on John Basilone. The last three or four have been superior to the first ones.

It still badly needs narration to weave an overall fabric from the bits and pieces of the individual scenes. Sledge's book is superior in that it does just that. Perhaps (hoping here) they might re-think this when they put it to DVD.

Shelton (snafu) did survive. He is pictured later in life with Sledge in Hugh Ambrose's book "The Pacific".

I bought "The Pacific" along with "Helmet for my Pillow", "With the Old Breed" and "Hero of the Pacific" and managed to read them while the series progressed.

They gave me a better understanding of what was going on as at times the background music and noise drowned out the conversation.

Wonder how many Egyptians were living in the bayou's of Louisiana in 1941.

Casting an Egyptian as a Cajun is a bit odd, though his character has been one of the few in this with any sort of screen presence.

Snafu is stealing the series... whoever the guy is playing the part is exactly the right guy.

Impressive how he is subtly packing such an emotional range into such an offbeat character, and conveys as much as he does with just a few gestures.

Birdwatcher

Well I finally became interested enough to google the snafu character.

He (Shelton) is played by Rami Malek and while he may be of Egyptian decent he was born in Los Angles sometime in 1981.

Others seem to agree, he brings a level of believability to this off-beat character that is above the average of the rest of the cast. His delivery of the line "A little joke from a little man" was pure gold.

On the series itself. While it's a "Hollywood" production the producers went to a lot of trouble to duplicate the conditions that existed during that period in the pacific and in my opinion did a creditable job. Sometimes it's difficut to watch.

The best Mini Series on WW2 ever.