Saturday, May 3, 2008

Review of Carrier

One of the military blogs linked to the PBS series, "CARRIER" and online you can watch the full length videos of episodes 1-8 . That is what I have been doing for the past few days. Riveting. I can usually knit and watch videos on the computer at the same time. But, during the chapters on jets landing on the carrier in high seas, while the deck is "pitchoing," I could not knit. Too intense. Wow.

I can't believe the NAVY let it all hang out in this series. The liberal slant of the PBS folks love showing the young sailor that has no clue as to why we are at war. And to spend a whole episode on "religion" but I have not seen hide nor hair of a hospital nor medical doctor so I guess Navy sailors are one hundred percent healthy all the time.

And they "ground" a pilot for running out of gas and landing at the airport in Bagdad?? Dang. What if he had crashed? Would his career be over? It is not like he lost the plane.

The funniest spot was a sailor visiting a camel park petting the camel on the head saying he had finally found someone in the middle east that liked Americans.

So sad when the pilot learned his wife had miscarried. And what is with the jerk sailor who keeps calling and emailing his knocked up girlfriend. Why won't he marry her? Wouldn't that be the responsible and honorable thing?? He gets so irritated when she does not email him every week. As if she is running around on him pregnant.

Did the Navy think they were getting free recruiting?? PBS loves to point out over and over how all the recruits are poor and middle class.

4 comments:

Bob said...

Dear, let's not mislead people into thinking we lead exotic lives filled with relentless knitting and computer watching. The truth is much more mundane.

joyce said...

I saw the final two episodes. I then scrolled through the "making of" portion of the website. Wonder why they did not talk about the hospital. Wonder why some stories just drop out. And that poor mom getting divorced, and her coming on the tiger cruise, then they are not, then they are. Yikes

Anonymous said...

"The liberal slant of the PBS folks love showing the young sailor that has no clue as to why we are at war." What is liberal slant about it when someones expresses his/her honest opinion? There are all kind of people in the military: good, bad, ugly, pro-war, anti-war....just like in the real world. It's also truth that most lowest ranking personels in all branch of the military are coming from poor/low middle class. It's funny that often the so called neocon, pro-war, mancho-man wanna-be type of persons/family are never in the military. They just wave flags and "pro" in their comfort home far away from danger, and let the poor slobs (in some cases, the poor immigrants without US citizenship) do the dirty jobs.

Anonymous said...

Your review is pretty accurate, but I did notice a couple of things I wanted to point out if you don't mind. I have been in the Navy for quite a while and on deployment a few too many times. I can honestly say that carrier is pretty accurate in what they did portray. It is only when you know first hand from experience what they did not portray that you truly know of the "liberal slant" as one of you readers phrased it. Where is all of the good that individuals accomplished? Or any of the good for that matter? College courses completed for free, degrees earned, awards earned, rank gained, growth and leadership achieved and so on? Undoubtedly, someone accomplished something worthwhile during that deployment besides the one Marine guy? All in all, "Carrier" was pretty close, but could have been a little more even handed about the ups and downs that a deployment brings. Oh, and if you saw the last episode, that pregnant chic was running around on that guy, and even told him to his face once he returned, no doubt breaking his heart, and maybe even worse, ripping his ego to shreds without a single hesitation or appearance of any remorse. Poor guy, and what a total bitch!