I just finished One Bullet Away so its fairly fresh. To my memory Captain America comes up once in passing. Fick language is sadder than it is comic. He believes America is unable to deal with combat stress. The phrasing is quite guarded and like much of the book Fick is reluctant to criticize those around him although that attitude does change.
Well, there you go. I blame the anthrax vaccine for my memory issues.
I finished it last week so its near the top of my mind. To be honest though he moves through it quickly and he places less weight on it. I paid attention only because I’d read Wrights book. Fick notes that command was aware of America’s incompetence and that they shuffled him into administrative position after the war.
Speaking of books, I’m halfway through the list you suggested.
Again thank you,
Eliot
Was that about him? I thought that was about his company commander (“Encino Man”), who is referenced often in guarded but critical terms. I guess the concept of an O-3 platoon commander was just too foreign to stick before the tv show forced me to carefully break down the jobs.
Speaking of books, I’m halfway through the list you suggested.
Again thank you,
Eliot
Good to hear. I hope it helped.
I could be conflating the two. I’ll check tonight.
Good to hear. I hope it helped.
It did, I have a better sense of it at least. I found The Old Breed particularly relevant despite the period and the changes in culture. He wrote very clearly describing the failings of his officers and made your point about responsibilty. Who is qualified to risk the lives of others?
Is that a rhetorical question? I didn’t mean to imply that no one was qualified, or that it’s an impossible goal in my opinion. Just that it’s useful to understand the perspective of those on the ground when they believe, rightly or wrongly, that their lives are being wasted. For me, Sledge’s book was interesting because of the brutal honesty he used to assess himself, his peers, and his superiors, as well as his enemy. I guess it’s interesting to see what different people fixate on when they read it.
For me (and I think it’s pretty much by the book), there is an intersection between leadership by example, competence, humaneness, and a devotion to mission accomplishment that occurs at different points for different successful officers and ncos I’ve seen. Obviously, the last takes precedence, but always with a balance. It’s hard to pin down sometimes why people are successful in military leadership capacities, but often easy to tell when someone is unfit for the job and why.
Brilliant conclusion. Would love to know who/what/where on the closing monologues.
I liked the ending but jeez all the “bad” people were practically cartoon villains by the end.
What makes you say that? Captain America was pretty fucking terrible, but his conduct is no factual departure from what was recorded in the book. Encino Man continued to be mindless and thickheaded, which was consistent with his conduct during the entire series. If anything, Sixta was humanized a little this episode, as we got a brief glimpse behind the cartoony Sgt Major facade.
I thought that using the marine’s camcorder footage as the final montage made for a masterful coda to the series. Something I’ve noticed here and elsewhere is that considering how great it is, Generation Kill is quite hard to talk about. I think one of the reasons for this is that there is so much diversity among the characters’ behaviour and responses: they are by turns racist, tolerant, brutal, trigger happy, sympathetic and contemptible. This makes them, and by extension the series, very hard to neatly sum up. The final montage does a brilliant job of illustrating both the insane range of their experiences and the characters’ differing reactions, from the marines’ general camaraderie, to Colbert’s aloofness, to Trombley’s sociopathic love of violence. Whoever it was that didn’t see much difference between James Ransone’s performance in The Wire and here needs to watch this scene again: the ambivalence about what he has just taken part in is written all over his face.
Great ending.
Interesting interview of Evan Wright.
Kind of sad that the impression I get from the mini series and this interview is the lack of occupation plan. How things could have been different in Iraq.
Yea, the constant grooming standard harping made sense there for a moment. They were right in the beginning - keep them mad, not so they’ll fuck shit up once they’re unleashed, but so they don’t fuck each other up during the downtime. That wink was great.
Serpentine!
final notes:
Captain America was pretty fucking terrible, but his conduct is no factual departure from what was recorded in the book.
I would even say that their portrayal in the book is even worse - at least the other men’s opinion of them and/or lack of respect.
I thought that using the marine’s camcorder footage as the final montage made for a masterful coda to the series.
Apparently, that montage is partly made up of real footage taken by the men of First Recon. Can’t seem to find the article where I read this fact.
If I remember correctly, the football fights did not take place in the book, but there was a lethal shooting of a marine by another marine following some sort of ruckus.
You might be thinking of [URL=“What's Alan Watching?: Generation Kill, "Bomb in the Garden": Iceman vs. Captain America”]this.
That’s it, thanks - I need to bookmark that site.
The home movie, by the way, was a mixture of footage shot by the production and stuff shot by the actual First Recon Marines during the invasion, much of it scrounged up by the real Eric Kocher.
p.s.s. from the above site I see that The Shield is about to start its final season - someone should start a thread on that (and remind me where it left off).
In addition to the nod that Sixta’s harping about the grooming standard was a management trick and not some sort of OCD run amok, the meeting that Wright had with Godfather was absolutely brilliant work. That scene was the series acknowledging that it was a narrow view shaped by Wright and his key sources(apparently Colbert, Espera, Kochner, and Fick). If Wright had been embedded with(to? in? eh, whatever) Encino Man, maybe Fick would’ve been a sniveling and ambitious coward who thought he was better than everyone else because of his academic background. It’s never cut and dry, and Godfather did not get the complete picture.
I also liked to see the real Kochner get a line in this one. Good old David Simon stunt casting.
The football fight is mentioned in the new afterward of the newer edition of the book.
There’s a newer edition? Looks at Amazon package with books GK was based on
Sonofawhore.
I know, man. The new afterward was written while the show was in production (post production?) so in addition to the usual epilogue stuff there are a few interesting tidbits about the interaction of the cast and the real 1st Recon guys who were brought in as consultants.
It’s an issue in the series. He’s fond of “denying means of transportation to the enemie”, i.e. shooting the AK at random vehicles they pass by here and there, vehicles that otherwise appear to be in working condition. But he isn’t always shooting at vehicles.
In a nod to the discussion earlier in the thread concerning the Doc and his status as being outside the proper chain of command (well, maybe I’m not saying that right), the Doc calls Captain America out on it pretty seriously at one point, criticisming Captain America because (1) he doesn’t call out his targets and (2) the fire is otherwise identical to enemy fire, so nobody can be sure if the sound of a sudden AK burst is Captain America or an actual threat. He openly threatens CA. I don’t know if the book portrays this, but the scene is only between the doc and CA.
Wait, was it the Doc, or was it the team leader under Captain America? I thought he said it (the scene was right after the scene where Doc calls out Encino Man for being incompetent, so perhaps that is the source of confusion).