REVIEW: ‘The Masters of the Air’ Episode 5 — “Part Five”

The Masters of the Air Episode 5 is all about grief. Bucky (Callum Turner) opens the episode drunk. It’s clear that the deaths in the last episode hold emotional weight for the show’s narrative. For one, Buck Cleven (Austin Butler) was the Bloody Hundreth’s leader. His death is a realization of mortality for the men. For them, as the narration says, “If Gale couldn’t make it, who could?”

The Masters of The Air Episode 5 once again carries the whole weight of the war in every moment. They can be watching a movie or talking with friends who returned to base from the dead. All of it is always in the shadow of every single mission’s stakes. This episode also introduces another reality of war: collateral damage.

The Bloody Hundreth’s mission is to aim for the railroad yard in the city’s center and disrupt transportation, with their commander preemptively absolving them of guilt. If they don’t hit the yard, the surrounding houses are railroad workers. There is no mention of the families, no mention of innocence, just the approval to bomb without guilt. But the series doesn’t ignore the conflicting feelings that the airmen feel going up in the air.

Crank (Matt Gavan) is the voice of this opposition. He calls out the timing of their bombing. The fear of killing innocents. But Bucky speaks up and defends the choice to see all Germans as combatants. The civilians, to the airmen, are just as guilty. Crank responds, “None of the people we’re gonna bomb today shot down Buck.”

It’s a rare moment in WWII stories to see the German civilians as separate from the evil their country committed. The brief moment spent here contextualizes it and does so from the airmen’s perspective. Bucky feels pain for losing his best friend and wants revenge. Crank tries to be measured in his grief. That said, the mission at the center of this episode is personal retribution for those who knew Gale.

The Masters of The Air Episode 5 spends most of its runtime in the air. It is a mission-driven episode that doesn’t lose its characters in the action. Ultimately, the episode does an excellent job of showing how everything can go wrong and how no one may make it back. The time spent in the Flying Fortresses in the series has routinely been the best moments of Masters of The Air. They are terrifying, and bailing out never feels like survival for those jumping.

It also highlights the men in the planes’ supreme dedication to fulfilling their mission. Especially since they are dropping bombs over a populated city. The core tension of this episode is whether or not the mission will succeed and the looming question as to which crews, if any, will make it back alive. And for this mission, “Where are our boys?” is a line that shakes the entire episode.

Only Rosenthal’s (Nate Mann) plane returns to base. Rosenthal is in shock, and he is stoic. Three missions in three days have taken their toll. The fear of seeing everyone around you fall out of the sky is striking as Rosenthal and his crew sit in the back of the truck on the way to interrogation. One soldier proclaims that he is never going back up. The interrogation deepened the loss. Here, the men repeat “no record” when asked about each plane.

There is no way to confirm if there were parachutes. There is no way to know if their friends are dead or just MIA. The airmen have to recount their losses, and it’s striking. It’s the lowest we’ve seen the commanding officers and the crew. The last episode left the 100th hollow, and the events of this one have gutted them again. Buck was shot down first. Now, Bucky shares the same fate. The core ensemble characters are gone. This leaves Rosenthal to enter the show’s center.

Masters of The Air continues to be a superb series that focuses on its characters even in the most harrowing of battles in Episode 5. It can capture the balance that Band of Brothers had, but its rotation through characters feels too frequent. But at this point, that was the reality, and this episode captures that impact.

Masters of The Air Episode 5 is streaming now on Apple TV+.