[IamZeke]

Anyone watching this new TV show?

It's like they are trying to recreate MASH show for Afghanistan.

It's mainly about the misadventures of a couple field medics at a forward operating base. There is funny, and ugly, and preposterous, and maddening all at once. A black dramedy.

While I think they are getting these guys into crap too fast and too often to be remotely realistic, this kind of stuff happens albeit at thinner slower scale.

It's pretty good show for now if you forgive for the pacing of the calamities.

It might hit a tailspin if the ridiculous goes too far, but this might also end up being a classic. It has background material for ages to draw from.

I'm giving it an early thumbs up.

 

[old doc]

I probably won’t watch.

 

[rustednail]

depends on what else is on

 

[Jojo]

I watched the first 2 episodes but I'm done.
I didn't expect MASH and I didn't expect realism, its made for TV afterall, but I just couldn't get into it.
After the first episode of Tommy (lady LA police chief) on CBS, I thought it was worth watching another episode, the jury is still out on that one.

 

[IamZeke]

depends on what else is on

I probably haven't watched anything other than news and the rare football game when it was actually aired in over a decade.

I watch my regular days or months later. Unless it is one of my favorites or a brand new show I mostly binge watch the whole season when it ends.

Computers and internet cuts that cord.

 

[Comcamguy]

I work at the 68Whiskey schoolhouse. The show has a couple of decent element in it, buried in a steaming pile of rancid dog crap. Pilot episode of the medics trying to make money trafficking heroin was enough for me, but I watched a few more episodes. Only got worse.

 

[IamZeke]

I work at the 68Whiskey schoolhouse. The show has a couple of decent element in it, buried in a steaming pile of rancid dog crap. Pilot episode of the medics trying to make money trafficking heroin was enough for me, but I watched a few more episodes. Only got worse.

I'm pretty sure that most military doctors had a lot of hate directed at MASH when it came out.

Gomer Pyle was on when I was a youth and joining the Marines later didn't make me suddenly hate the show because there was no way Gomer would have lasted a day in the real Corps.

The central characters/plots are not remotely supposed to be normal. They are supposed to be excessive parodies or satires.

If you were measuring their morality then you likely didn't get the premise.

Sometimes you just have to enjoy the joke.

What you look at for accuracy is what the normal folks around them do.

 

[Drill That Oil]

I was very disappointed. It’s not at all like they advertised and the acting is horrendous

 

[patcash]

In the real world, one good senior NCO would straighten that unit out in short order.

 

[IamZeke]

In the real world, one good senior NCO would straighten that unit out in short order.

Notice the lack of a good senior noncom in both MASH and this show?

Officers and enlisted don't mix. Even civvie TV watchers know this. Troops sneaking around officers is age old trope in both the real military and on film. It's the real noncoms that glue it all together and keep it from being a comedy show.

Maybe shows about exaggerated troop escapades can't have a competent senior noncom. Either none or parodies of them are necessary.

Think of shows like McHale's Navy, F Troop, Gomer Pyle, MASH, and this one.

No competent Top or CPO knocking things back into place because that keeps men alive. They also ruin a lot of fun.

 

[Bagherra]

I got about 10 minutes into it and turned it off...

I didn't know it was supposed to be a comedy...
As a former Black Hawk crewchief (with MEDEVAC experience) with a couple tours under my belt, I was kinda ****ed off about it...

 

[IamZeke]

The war is just one of the antagonists here.


The two principal characters have huge hurdles to overcome. The black sergeant is trying to make crazy amounts of money to pay the hospital for his mother's cancer treatment before they repo the family home. The white corporal is guilt driven for killing his dad, who was molesting his sisters, so he tries to fix everyone's desperate problems.

You can't watch this one superficially. There are several deep character plots that are evolving.