Despite its transcendent moments, like the majority of last week's episode, The Pacific still has its down turns. The handling of John Basilone's story is one such problem. Aside from the fact that there is no reason to show Basilone looking out of place on the war bond trail again, we never really spent enough time with him on the battlefield to get a sense of what frustrates him so much. Every courageous maneuver made by every soldier in the series is depicted in as heroic a manner as possible, so Basilone's barefoot fight on Guadalcanal doesn't look that incredible, even if it was. That's probably part of the point, but it also steals a lot of the power from his Stateside disaffection. Placed next to scenes of real wartime horror, Basilone's abstract anger seems petty. What's worse, visiting him at the Shriner lodges and driving ranges of his existential anguish diminishes the narrative of entropy that comprises most of the episode.

In the final days of the costly battle on Peleliu, all the hardest and best men fall while those who march onward lose bits of their souls along the way. As has been the case for the past few weeks, Eugene Sledge's experience has been the most compelling. Sledge has evolved right in front of our eyes, transforming from a naive country boy into a focused Marine in an excellently directed, well-acted series of believable events. The latest stage in his development is considerably more disturbing. Over the course of Part Seven, Sledge loses several friends, witnesses more than his fair share of insanity and is given enough reason to lose faith in humanity that he crosses over into a new level of personal darkness. Before the miniseries is over, Sledge may very well have a lot to answer for.

Running through the hills of Peleliu, clearing out the hundreds of Japanese bunkers dug inside them, the Marines around Sledge show as much wear and tear as Leckie's buddies in the first half of the series. They're tired, paranoid and harbor an increasingly sadistic attitude toward their enemies. Sledge himself almost succumbs to the same attitude, first adopting the philosophy that "you can't dwell on it" then visibly threatening to go over the edge from apathy into malevolence. He stops just shy of cutting the gold out of a dead Japanese soldier's teeth, but that's only after Snafu advises him against it. The official reason is "germs", but it's clear that Snafu just doesn't want Eugene to lose the last bit of what makes him good.

There was a really interesting moment in one of the quiet periods in between battles. After seeing Gunny, the token Tough Old Guy, lose his nerve, one of the younger Marines comments that he was "one of the old breed", that if a guy like that can't hold it together then the 20-something softies don't have a chance. The funny part is that for those of us who grew up around living World War II veterans, those young softies were the "the old breed". There was a lot in this episode about wars of the past, stretching all the way back to the American Civil War. Part of the mythos of war stories is that every generation of soldiers starts out as young softies, only growing into that hard-as-steel Old Breed after surviving the worst. Just as it's tragic to watch the old guys show weakness, it's tragic to watch the young guys turn vicious.

Best Moment: The bunker assault. It was brutal, unpredictable and tense, just like I imagine attacking an occupied bunker would be.

Notes: I'll admit, I couldn't help chuckling when Snafu started tossing bits of rock into the quite open top of a dead Japanese soldier's head, but I felt damn queasy about it.

Episode Rating: 4.5/5- If the Basilone scenes were excised, it would have been another great episode. As it is, Part Seven was just good.