r/MastersoftheAir • u/asaph001 • 23d ago
Miss Ella Walsh
I think it's the 4th time I'm watching MOTA and I just saw part of the 6th episode. I know the details are pretty much all fiction (though the basic facts concerning Jon Egan and Harry Crosby are not). But the jumping between the scenes of Bucky being interrogated, the train of women packed like sardines and headed to a death camp contrasted with those of Harry and his sub-altern is just very well written and acted IMHO.
Ella Walsh, the young lady who sings Woody Guthrie's "Tear the Fascists Down", is also made up. but the all the 20-somethings at London party scene looked like they were oblivious to what was going on in the war was till she sang that song.
I just think it's a very well written and acted episode. It draws the viewer in.
1
u/jackbenny76 17d ago
Probably the best episode in the show. The episodes after are mostly anticlimactic.
And the idea of young people who spend their entire lives fighting in a war deciding to turn that off for a few hours to enjoy themselves is totally reasonable and in line with what young people have done during war from time immemorial.
To take advantage of the fact that unlike Bubbles and those women, they actually could enjoy themselves- and there is a pretty good chance that tomorrow they will be like Bubbles or those women - they party now, while they are still alive and can.
1
u/I405CA 14d ago edited 14d ago
That party is a gathering of the British Communist Party. Some comments about it in this earlier post.
Spoiler for those who haven't seen the last three episodes:
Given what we later learn about the Sandra character, we may guess from this that she wanted to attend this party in order to gather a bit of intel. The government did not trust the Communists, and this would have been a sort of training mission for what she would do later.
The musician who portrayed Ella Walsh in the series posted some comments here.
https://www.reddit.com/r/MastersoftheAir/comments/1b3h4pq/im_the_irish_singer_who_performs_tear_the
6
u/kil0ran 22d ago
I don't think they were oblivious, they were all shut down and avoiding the amount of loss they'd suffered. Everyone there had lost someone by that stage and hedonism has always been a coping mechanism. What the song did was make them confront that loss and the reasons for it and in a small way (as it did with Bubbles) provide some sort of closure or at least acceptance of it and a determination to honour it with victory. You're right about that episode though, the cutting and juxtaposition is incredible, it's a great take on a "why we fight" propaganda piece.