Great battle scenes, pedestrian writing : The Pacific

Part 8 of HBO's "The Pacific" continues the pattern well established in the first 7 parts of the series: absolutely stunning battle scenes, more frightening and visceral than just about anything you've seen on film or TV, but absolutely pedestrian writing and character development when the action stops. It's as if there are two writers, two directors - and I think that was the case for part 8. As to the plot, in this part Sgt. Basalone, the hero of Guadalcanal, asks for assignment back to the Pacific - surprise, surprise, we could see this coming 7 hours ago and have wondered why they wasted so much time with him selling war bonds, totally uninteresting. While at the training base, he falls in love with a woman Marine and they marry, walk on the beach, talk about kids, and so on. This s really material of the lowest order and can anyone doubt what they're setting us up for as Basalone disembarks for Iwo Jima? The IJ battle scenes, however, reach the high standard of the rest of this series - of course you have to compare them with the Eastwood IJ movies, but though much narrower in scope - we follow just one company and never see the overall battle strategy - the effect here is more immediate, as it's always from the Marine's POV. One interesting facet of part 8: we see for the first time the Marines in training, as Basalone leads a company at Camp Pendleton. That's a break with convention; I was surprised that we never saw the main characters go through any training, they just went right to war, and it's a surprise to see it so late in the series. We've seen this stuff before, e.g., Full Metal Jacket, but I always find the training interesting to watch for some reason - maybe because I know that's about as far as I'd have gotten.