TV Junkie: Weekend Pick

We know on Sunday that we can watch people bumpin' uglies on HBO as well as the randy exploits of a Hollywood posse on HBO as well as all the other junk on HBO because Sunday is an HBO kind of day. But I think that there's something else worth checking out that starts Sunday.

The much anticipated and hugely overhyped new series from Ken Burns, The War, starts on Sunday night at 8:00pm on PBS. I'm not a Ken Burns devotee, I don't always appreciate how he approaches his subject matter, and his style has rightly been parodied by everone from SNL to the Colber(t) Repor(t). I'm watching every minute of this series because I want to remember my own personal connections to World War II.

For a lot of people, perhaps even the majority of people who read LAist, World War II is something that an occassional movie, starring Tom Hanks, is all about. For an old guy in his late 30s like me, World War II is about my grandfather who was in D-Day, trying to get to the beach; it's about my other grandfather who was a forced conscript in the Hungarian army who never fired a shot but who went to a Soviet salt mine for 3 years; it's about my father-in-law who was in the Army Air Corps, blowing out his ear drums in high altitude training; it's about my grandmother helping sew uniforms for the Marines; it's about my Dad and his family waiting for the Russians to roll through town to loot and rape everyone; it's about my favorite uncle who, because he was a teenager and therefore could have held a gun, was sent to a Russian concentration camp and somehow survived.

All these great guys who are a part of me are dead but I hope to find a thread of something about them and their experiences in the many hours that Ken Burns will present to us this week.

The War, 8:00pm Sunday, PBS