The final episode of HBO's Band of Brothers reinforces the point that no matter how brave or how good at their jobs the men of Easy Company were, they were still just young men who found themselves in a world and a situation bigger than themselves. They were heroes, but they weren't saints. With the danger of combat essentially past, these men occupy Austria, while occupying themselves with looting and drinking. The episode makes it clear that these are understandable human reactions, but the situation leads to tragic violence and to death. Lewis Nixon (Ron Livingston) proves a worthy friend to Winters (Damian Lewis), offering him a postwar job with his family's company in New Jersey. But when Winters introduces Nixon to a vault full of Herman Goring's liquor, the look of hopeless surrender on Livingston's face informs the audience that Nixon is still at the beginning of a different battle. Joe Liebgott (Ross McCall), meanwhile, descends into tragedy, as his need for retribution leads him to the murder of a German man whom he's convinced, on scant evidence, was a labor camp commandant. The shooting of a member of the company by a drunken replacement from another company, and Easy Company's grim retribution, is some of the most unpleasant violence of the series, because it's all so needless. These stories poignantly point to a cost of war that can't be measured by casualty lists. The series makes an attempt at closure, with Lewis explaining what became of some of the men. But the cumulative impact of the program, including the invaluable interviews with actual survivors from the company that open most of the episodes, has made it clear that such closure was not possible for these brave men.
