Masters of the Air's Meatball Better Not Get the Ghost Treatment

Crowning the best TV dog this early in the year might seem foolish, but it will take a lot to top Masters of the Air’s Meatball. What other dog gets to slow dance with Austin Butler? Not only does the inclusion of the husky in Apple TV+’s WWII epic give the 100th Bomb Group an adorable mascot, but this canine is inspired by one of the real airmen “kidnapping” a husky during a fuel stop on the way to England. Meatball’s introduction in the premiere includes some added backstory, as Captain Benny DeMarco (Adam Long) says he won the pooch in a game of craps. Somehow, along the way, Butler’s Major Gale “Buck” Cleven becomes the de facto owner of this dog, which begs the question, who will look after Meatball now?

[Spoilers for Masters of the Air Season 1, Episode 5.]

Okay, the first person to raise this issue is one of the local Thorpe Abbotts kids who hang out at the airbase when they probably should be at school. The reason for this Meatball inquiry comes at the end of the fourth episode, when Buck’s plane does not return after a mission with huge losses — they didn’t get the nickname the Bloody 100th for nothing. A couple of observations: Surely there is a Meatball guardian chain in an environment this precarious, and while Buck’s plane does go down, this occurs off-screen, and there is no way they are killing off the movie star and one of the leaders of this bomber group in this manner. Yes, Lieutenant Curt Biddick (fellow Oscar nominee Barry Keoghan) died in Episode 3, but there is nothing ambiguous about how he went out.

Back to Meatball, because his duty of care is something I am now preoccupied with. In that first episode, Buck takes an immediate shine even if he complains that Meatball “wouldn’t stop howling” during the trip from Greenland. Before their first venture into the fray, Buck semi-jokingly asks DeMarco whether the husky is “saddling up” with them. After all, Meatball wore an oxygen mask on the flight over. It occurs off camera, but this nugget is revealed when Major John “Bucky” Egan (Callum Turner) asks, “You took this baby above 10,000 feet?” The mask cost DeMarco $3, but it is worth every cent. Thankfully, animal peril is off the menu as Meatball is more of an officer’s club dog, and every decent watering hole should welcome pups.

Working in this fraught environment means not getting to say goodbye, but if Meatball is never to see Buck again, then at least they will always have that final dance. Meatball still manages to be the center of attention at a bash celebrating 25 missions for one crew who now gets to go home. Sure, there is a bevy of beautiful women who work for the Red Cross; however, Buck’s one-woman guy status means he hasn’t been seen on the dance floor. Instead, he lets BFF and party animal Bucky step into the limelight — not that Bucky would ever sit quietly to the side. (Yes, writing about a Buck and a Bucky does require some thought to keep them straight.)

While Buck turns down Bucky’s offer of painting London red, rather than presenting the teetotaling Buck as a perpetual early bedder (a frequently used insult when I was at university if you dared go to sleep pre-midnight), he does socialize with the guys and dominates an indoor cycling race (please, keep Meatball away from these antics) and then the sweet serenade with man’s best friend. Should I have seen this moment as a foreshadowing of something terrible about to befall Buck?

Perhaps, but the goofy smile on my face hasn’t disappeared after watching this scene [redacted] times. Buck kisses Meatball on the top of the head and asks if he wants to dance before scooping him up. “I’m telling Marge,” Bucky teases. But this doesn’t stop Buck from making his way among the other couples, moving to the slow song played by the band. For the record, Butler told Total Film that this scene was “very cozy.”

Now, Meatball commits an acting cardinal sin, briefly staring down the barrel of the camera, but this somehow makes the scene even more disarmingly adorable. I had only just made Anatomy of a Fall’s Snoop top dog, and thankfully, there is room for two very good boys in the number one spot (my in-laws’ Norwich Terrier, Cavendish, is still number one in my heart). Now, one week after Buck’s plane went down, there’s no Meatball in sight. Somehow, the events of Episode 5 are even more catastrophic, and the men on the only plane to make it back will need a therapy dog more than ever. But is Meatball about to go the way of Ghost in Game of Thrones?

As a husky, Meatball is part wolf, and of all the dire wolf puppies from the first episode of HBO’s fantasy series, only Ghost survives to the end. However, Jon Snow’s (Kit Harington) animal protector is nowhere to be seen in the final season, and I am still bitter about this. Sure, they had to spend a lot of CGI budget on the dragons, but Ghost deserved his place in the final battle. Thankfully, Meatball isn’t a combat animal, and yet, like Buck, he is sadly now MIA.

New episodes of Masters of the Air drop Fridays on Apple TV+. Join the disucssion about the show in our forums. 

Emma Fraser has wanted to write about TV since she first watched My So-Called Life in the mid-90s, finally getting her wish over a decade later. Follow her on Twitter at @frazbelina.