And then they decided to bring back that whole “battle fatigue” storyline they scrapped in The Great War, and have him hold a gun to his wife’s head just to give him an imperfection! Right, like that makes him any more believable.
There’s a real treat in store for fans who pay attention to the Cold War sequel. Two of those VP characters will fight it out in a Presidential campaign. I don’t want to spoil the ending, though.
nm
I just want to say that this is one of the best thread that has ever been on the SDMB.
What if the story of WWII had been placed in the hands of a competent writer?
…What would it look like?
**Ernest Hemingway
**
It was very late and everyone had left the pool hall except a tiny young man who sat in the shadows the leaves of the old live oak tree made against the moonlight. The two waiters inside the pool hall knew that the tiny young man was a little drunk, and while he usually was quiet and kept to himself, they knew that if he became too drunk he would pull out his M1 Garand and popping flies from a hundred paces, so they kept watch on him.
“He’s drunk,” one waiter said.
“What do you care?”
“He’s muttering about France.”
“Leave him alone. He used to have malaria.”
“He’ll stay all night. He should never have been awarded the Medal of Honor.”
The tiny young man rapped on the table with his beer stein. The younger waiter went over to him.
“What do you want?”
The tiny young man looked at him. “Another Placidyl.”
“You’ll be addicted,” the waiter said. The tiny young man looked at him. The waiter went away.
“Look at his perfect teeth,” he said to his colleague. “There is nothing as nasty as a tiny young man. He’ll stay all night and I’ll never get any sleep.”
The waiter took the bottle of Placidyl from the counter inside the hall and marched to the tiny young man’s table. He placed one pill on the table.
“You should never have been awarded the Medal of Honor,” he said to the tiny young man.
With apologies to Fingolfin.
Thread winner!
Well that’s just you not paying attention. Didn’t you notice that hilarious invasion of Greece bit set up the delay in Operation Barbarossa? If Duce isn’t a buffoon, Hitler beats Stalin. I could have done without the whole Crete thing. I mean, yes, let’s see what the British are doing, but did we really need to see them whenever they were fighting on the seas and the oceans?
Yeah, they dragged them into the Pacific story too. It’s not enough that we’ve seen them in France, in Norway, at Dunkirk, in the Battle of Britain, the Battle of the Atlantic, the Blitz, their own night bombing campaign (and a right old tear-jerker that was - seems like every single mission they were coming back with one plane in ten shot down, and that was the routine ones), Greece, Crete and North Africa - now we’ve got to see them all over again in Singapore, Burma, and a bunch of other places, not forgetting the Japanese prison camps like Changi and the slave labour on the railway. Someone clearly liked writing for stiff-upper-lip types with this weird master/servant dynamic between the officers and other ranks. Fairly solid rumour has it they nearly got written into the Winter War too. I mean… :smack:
James Stewart is a colonel in the series; general in later sequels although he didn’t get much screen time in these.
My Dad had a bit part playing a radio operator in the episode dealing with Iwo Jima and Guam. He told us the worst part of th filming was the fake explosions and gun fire going on for what seemed like months, then coming home with a bad case of “jungle rot” on his legs. It just turned out to be he was allergic to the fake blood.
They tried to attract those millions of soccer fans who are convinced that Italians are a bunch of cheats.
I suspect that Burma subplot was some sort of veiled political commentary. I mean that Aung San character, the Japanese quisling who switches sides right before the end of the war? That name doesn’t sound familiar?
I’m also reminded of the stunt casting of Ted Williams as a fighter pilot. It seems like a cynical ploy to bring in Red Sox fans. Evidently, though, it worked, since they did the exact same thing in the Korea sequel and even paired him with the eventual star of The Space Program.
There were also some annoying pandering in the “Home Front” sequences. A one-armed baseball player? That breaks any suspension of disbelief.
Not entirely unbelievable. In real life there’s Jim Abbott. Not only did he only have one hand, BUT he came to the major leagues never having pitched in the minors AND he threw a no-hitter.
The one-arm baseball player character isn’t nearly as improbable as the baseball player-spy character. Or, for that matter, the actress and composer who turn out to be inventors or the eccentric millionaire who builds the world’s larget airplane out of plywood.
One sports-related flaw I didn’t like, though. Remember how they decided to premier the Day of Infamy story right in the middle of a football game? Football wasn’t nearly as big a sport back then as baseball. I would have launched it a few weeks earlier, and used the World Series as the platform. That would also have made the Bob Feller cameo more meaningful.
Or how about how they tried to press the reset button on the whole French colonies thing? That played so poorly with test audiences in Asia that they had to launch several more spinoff series just to write their way out!
Just to nominate this as a major contender for Dopername/content juxtapositrion of the decade!
Thanks! Two acknowledgments in one thread, I’m honored!
On the other hand, look at the stuff they considered putting into the series but cut or de-empahsized as being too preposterous. If they had included giant aircraft carriers built of ice and sawdust battling it out in the arctic with cruise missiles and jet aircraft while Hitler thrust the Spear of Destiny at the sky, it would have been just too over the top.
Overall it was a pretty good show, really
They slipped the odd one in, though. This giant rocket-propelled wheel-bomb made a brief appearance in an episode or two, but it really belonged in a TV comedy.
Competent writer, my ass. They let him help write the Italian part of World War One, and look at what a plotless, depressing, pointless snafu that became. I will never figure out how they managed to convince the producers to greenlight a sequel!