Masters Of The Air Review: 4 Ups & 6 Downs

It's not that the voiceover in Masters of the Air was a bad decision - it's an important aspect of its predecessors, after all - only that in execution it never feels entirely necessary. 

The narrator of the story is Lieutenant Harry Crosby, a navigator with the 100th Bomb Group who guides the drama from one plotline to another, though often achieves this by explaining the things we're seeing, repeating things we've already been told (specifically dates and locations), and otherwise giving us little new to work with.

It doesn't help that, because of the show's scattered ensemble, Crosby is often removed from the other characters, on his own mission removed from that of his squadmates. Once again, we're asked to feel investment for a man who's little more than a plot device, and whose relationships with soldiers around him never feels entirely true. 

Crosby's narration does occasionally help us understand logistical things, though only rarely, but even at its most necessary it never becomes more than a lazy amount of tell-don't-show that the series wouldn't have been all that lost without.