quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:
HBO. Don't waste your time. I wish I hadn't. Pisses me off to invest time in a series, only to discover that it's pretentious, incomprehensible SHIT.

I canceled HBO after they dumped "Deadwood"... it was fairly clear that they didn't understand what good writing after they canceled what my wife called "Hillbilly Shakespeare..."

I'm actually surprised you'd thought HBO execs would know good writing when they saw it after they cancelled Deadwood, Para...

"Pain or damage don't end the world. Or despair or fucking beatings. The world ends when you're dead. Until then, you got more punishment in store. Stand it like a man... and give some back." - Al Swearengen

-Tom

quote:

Originally posted by BullseyeShooter:
I really took offence to the chaplain’s scene.

Yeah, that was a bit overdone. The entirety of that came from the following portion in the book: "The chaplain has no takers in Colbert's [Iceman] team when he approaches to offer his counseling." Not a service. Counseling. This follows a quote from the Chaplain, a Lt. Cdr. Bodley:

quote:

Many of them have sought my counsel because they feel guilty. But when I ask them why, they say they feel bad because they haven't had a chance to fire their weapons. They worry that they haven't done their jobs as Marines. I've had to counsel them that if you don't have to shoot somebody, that's a good thing. The zeal these young men have for killing surprises me. It instills in me a sense of disbelief and rage. People here think Jesus is a doormat.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Zcar,

I will go out on a limb here and most likely stick my foot in my mouth in the process....

Being a Marine makes you self-reliant. You are a Warrior, you are a MacGyver, you solve your own problems. You have an internal locus of control.

To turn to religion might be construed by those guys as a sign of weakness.

No Marine wants to be seen as weak. At least not a 1st Recon Marine in Iceman's team.

In addition to that, I think there is an underlying quiet tide of anti-evangelism in the military.

It's kind of a knee jerk reaction to all of the evangelism the the main stream media has been hyping up in the military.

Also, in some respects, military members have a beef with the government kinda skirting their idea of the separation of church and state in that the military pays for chaplains.

And as was pointed out in that episode of Generation Kill, the chaplain doesn't carry a weapon, so what good is he as a Marine?

At least that's what I have picked up off the Rumor Mill...



I'll go put my Nomex flame suit on...

quote:

Originally posted by jhe888:
I don't know what to make of this show.

The dialogue is confusing, and the story is hard to follow. For the first two or three episodes I was willing to think that I was just slow, and that they were trying to make a point about the average front line soldier having only fragmentary information and partial understanding about the bigger picture.

But whether that is the reason for the way the story is presented, or if they are simply not good writers, it does make it hard to watch.

I want to like this show. Either I will have an epiphany soon, or I won't be able to keep watching.

I think some of the point is that these are Force Recon Marines, not your everyday unit, and they are used to having everything and knowing everything, plus doing high speed stuff. Now they are are just driving around and not HALO jumping or fast-roping out of the sky.

quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:
I've watched every second of every episode up to this point. I gave this trainwreck every chance, because I wanted to be entertained by some good drama surrounding American soldiers kicking ass.
This thing is BORING. B-O-R-I-N-G. Most of this series has so far consisted of Marines standing around their Humveees, speaking cryptically and giving each other long, intense stares. I do not believe for a second that the reason I cannot understand what the fuck is supposed to be going on is that I'm a civilian.
I can follow a convoluted story line with the best of them. I'm watching this fucking thing with closed captioning on so that I get all the dialogue. This fucking thing is incomprehensible. I see that David Simon was involved with writing several episodes??? I'm going to assume that those episodes have not yet aired. This convoluted cluster fuck piece of shit has wasted enough of my fucking time.

Thanks for the critique, para. I've got all episodes on my DVR and had been planning on watching them. Somehow I knew the series would never be the equal of HBO's "Band of Brothers." Now I can dump all the episodes tonight and free some DVR space.

quote:

I canceled HBO after they dumped "Deadwood"...

quote:

it's pretentious, incomprehensible SHIT.

Exactly what a lot of people accused Deadwood of being. I never saw a show that seemed to divide people's opinions in such a way. People either loved it or loathed it. So much so it looked like they wanted to spit everytime they spoke the name of the show Deadwood.

quote:

Originally posted by Ian111:

quote:

I canceled HBO after they dumped "Deadwood"...

quote:

it's pretentious, incomprehensible SHIT.

Exactly what a lot of people accused Deadwood of being.

Well, I do not number among those people, because in my opinion, Deadwood is one of the best things ever put on TV. Superb dialogue, Hillbilly Shakespeare, as someone called it, and the show was not lacking for action.

"Rome" was another outstanding series on HBO.

Don't get me wrong. I loved Deadwood. I thought the show was brilliant. But when it premiered I was sort of involved in SASS and the bunch I hung around with all uniformly hated it, as if the show was pissing on John Wayne's grave. That all the characters were a bunch of lowlifes and not a singe noble character to root for. That they all talk in some strange Old English language that they say is totally inaccurate. I was the lone defender of the show. I remember I got into a lengthy argument with some guy who used to work on TV westerns. As if that's all the credentials one needs to speak with authority on the subject.

So far the complaints about Generation Kill seem more to be about its alleged inaccuracies and the difficult terms and acronyms they use than it being pretentious.

quote:

Originally posted by jager1:

quote:

Originally posted by jhe888:
I don't know what to make of this show.

The dialogue is confusing, and the story is hard to follow. For the first two or three episodes I was willing to think that I was just slow, and that they were trying to make a point about the average front line soldier having only fragmentary information and partial understanding about the bigger picture.

But whether that is the reason for the way the story is presented, or if they are simply not good writers, it does make it hard to watch.

I want to like this show. Either I will have an epiphany soon, or I won't be able to keep watching.

I think some of the point is that these are Force Recon Marines, not your everyday unit, and they are used to having everything and knowing everything, plus doing high speed stuff. Now they are are just driving around and not HALO jumping or fast-roping out of the sky.

Heck, in the book you learn they'd only scrounged up the Hummers a few weeks earlier and very few were even certified to operate one. I know the driver in the team they focus on wasn't.

Just completed the book and it was a good read.

Im a little late here, I was back east finishing up OCS for the Marine Corps, but I'll sum up my thoughts on the show...

From what I have seen, the first 3 or 4 episodes, it is exactly like the book. In fact, a lot of the dialogue is verbatim. I read the book right before I shipped off in June and it really wore on my nerves.

For everybody here who either read the book or watched the miniseries and thinks this is how it went down, I emplore you to read these:

The ops chief's rebuttal
http://coinside.blogspot.com/2006/05/generation-kill-full-rebuttal.html

The Bn FAC's rebuttal
http://commentaryongenerationkill.blogspot.com/2008/06/...generation-kill.html

The operations Chief's (known in the book as Casey Kasem) is very good. He even has videos to prove his points.

quote:

Please refrain from putting profanity in your thread titles

I believe you posted this, yet you use profanity in this thread's title.

Put another notch in the Double Standards tally.

quote:

Originally posted by Dinosauer:

quote:

Please refrain from putting profanity in your thread titles

I believe you posted this, yet you use profanity in this thread's title.

Put another notch in the Double Standards tally.

Unwise.

quote:

Originally posted by Dinosauer:

quote:

Please refrain from putting profanity in your thread titles

I believe you posted this, yet you use profanity in this thread's title.

Put another notch in the Double Standards tally.

Gutsy move Mav.

quote:

Originally posted by Dinosauer:

quote:

Please refrain from putting profanity in your thread titles

I believe you posted this, yet you use profanity in this thread's title.

Put another notch in the Double Standards tally.

Do you like this forum? Do you want to be able to post to it? If so, I suggest you refrain from bothering me again with this shit. There is no "double standard", because there is no standard for me here. Now go play in another thread before I swat the gnat buzzing in my ear.

Freakin' newbs are worse than non-house trained puppies. Won't go on the paper, keep gnawing on my slippers, and trying to hit me over the head with my own rules.

This is like what, 3 or 4 people with less than 2 months on the forum second guessing you Para in the past few days? Some people need to shut up, post less and read more. Learn a little about the forum they are posting on. Not smart at all.....Who else will get Dis-membered??

BTW, isn't this the same unit that Nathan Fick wrote about in One Bullet Away, only based on a different book??

I agree w/ Para--what a gigantic waste of time. I've DVR'd all episodes, and watched the last episode (6) last night. I kept wondering when it was going to get better, and I realized there was only 1 more episode to watch...

Yup--severely disappointed with the show--I mean, Marine Force Recon! I don't know if they are revealing how FR was (mis)utilized, or are trying to give us a boring soap opera in the desert...I'm kinda glad onlt 1 more episode--once I commit to a show, I commit fully--only 1 more wasted hour on GK...

Yes, same unit Capt. Fick wrote about in his book.

The unit involved isnt Force Recon, but Battalion Recon. I wouldnt go so far as to say they were misutilized in the march to Baghdad, rather just used differently.

Evan Wright's aim with Generation Kill was to try and portray the war from the LCpl's view point..Not much difference from the aim of "Jarhead".

My problem is that Wright took the incessent bitching of young grunts and contrived that as genuine issues in the fleet. For instance, the issue with not enough batteries..an issue obviously at the Battalion level, yet these guys decided that it was their Company Ops Chief's fault. As a result, possibly the most decorated Marine in their unit is painted out to be a shitbag by Wright.

The lesson here is next time send Bowden.


EDIT: Hey Para, is this your site? I have to admit that as long as I have been here either posting or lurking, I have never stopped to think about who ran the show till now.

quote:

Originally posted by Chills1994:
And as was pointed out in that episode of Generation Kill, the chaplain doesn't carry a weapon, so what good is he as a Marine?

There are no Marine chaplains. All chaplains serving in Marine units are Naval officers, just like there are no Marine medics, nurses or doctors.

Not wanting to talk to the chaplain and offering him disrespect are two different things. As mentioned before chaplains are commissioned officers due the same respect as any other servicemember of their rank. Much like the myth of the Marine One crew chiefs who refused to salute Slick Willie military servicemembers, especially Marines, do not decide for themselves how they treat superiors. It is decided for them by the regulations and traditions of their service.

Lastly, respect for chaplains in the military is much higher than you think even among non-religious personnel.

quote:

Originally posted by Dinosauer:

quote:

Please refrain from putting profanity in your thread titles

I believe you posted this, yet you use profanity in this thread's title.

Put another notch in the Double Standards tally.

Wow. Got a death wish, buddy? His house, his rules, his decision when to break them.