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Sep. 5th, 2012 02:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickMedia consumption for the week: Strike Back (seasons 1 and 2).
Season 1 was delightful. I am apparently capable of watching endless amounts of ruthlessly efficient violence. Our guy in Season 1 does not have much of a personal life -- an estranged-ish wife, a daughter who is angsty at him most of the time. I particularly enjoyed the extensive and capable violence in Season 1 coupled with its relative lack of annoying and boring relationship subplots. It was kind of nice to see professional killer dude professionally killing and then going home to his non-life. Refreshing, even. Two thumbs up.
In Season 2, they kill the guy from Season 1. Like, in the first episode. I rather liked the guy from Season 1. Damn it. We get new guys, two of them. Guy #1 (Stonebridge) is the more by-the-book dude, has wife, has baby in the offing, is reasonably responsible. Guy #2 (Scott) is the reckless womanizer.
Guy #1, as you might expect from a stable career soldier, has a personal life. His personal life is annoying and subplotty. His wife whines too much. When you marry a soldier, a lot of what you find hot/worthwhile/attractive/rewarding about the soldier will become a pain in the ass once you're enspousened him because marriage does not automatically shift duty-honor/whatnot to YOU instead of to the government. He may argue (and believe) that it is important to stop terrorists or whatever to make the world SAFE for his FAMILY. Girlfriends who upgrade to Wife with these sorts of men need to know, up front, that they are not going to be priority #1. Guy #1 is banging a blond chick at his work, too, which is totally inappropriate. You don't shit where you eat. Ever. It's a surprising thing, the affair, and I would not have expected it of Guy #1. Don't know how he convinces himself that it's OK.
Guy #2, Scott, the reckless womanizer, treats the world as an amusement park full of LBFMs and LWFMs and LYFMs and so forth. He does not discriminate. However, it's OK because he's not coercive or particularly an ass about it. The lines are cheerfully over the top, delivered with a knowing smirk, and he does take "No" for an answer. I could see this being icky if he were gaming married or innocent women, distasteful if he pressed the suit too hard, but he doesn't do that. He plays the game with other playas for mutual entertainment. It's fine by me and even charming in a slutty sort of way. He has some ethics and doesn't bang work chicks (and calls Stonebridge out for banging his work chick). Regrettably (to my way of thinking) he never bangs Grant (his boss) before she buys the farm. (Grant is hot for him. Totally.) The lack of banging, while totally in line with the characterization for Scott that we're given, is a pity because Grant is the hottest chick in the show. She is smokin' hot.
Season 2 is largely focused on Latif (terrorist dude, possibly Latiffe, or La'Teef or something) and efforts to get better intel on him, find out who he's working with, find out what he's working on, get organized about capturing him, etc. On the side, we have the mole in M20 and relationshippy subplot with Stonebridge and so forth. There's a lot of shooting and so forth -- this is a military drama thing, so you have to expect that stuff and I'm on board with the shooting, anyway.
Cinematography: Nicely shot, particularly if you like nipples in profile. (I kid, I kid. It's a cinemax production and thus likes to show us teh boobies.) It could do with more sexualization of the firearms footage, though. I think I'd like that. And why the hell can't we have cameras that ogle the dudes in the same way that we have cameras that ogle the chicks? WHY CAN'T WE HAVE THIS? WHY?!?!? Equal-opportunity ogling is not unreasonable, damn it. Fucking male gaze.
On the military... Colonel Grant wants soldiers who do what they are told, follow their orders to the letter. She says as much to (cheerful and reckless womanizer) Scott when she hires him. I expect that most leaders-of-armed-forces want soldiers who do what they are told . Taking orders is part of what soldiering is all about. You can't get anything done with a pack of fellows who interrupt mission briefings to ask how come they have to kill everyone in the village, set fire to the place, and then poison the wells afterwards.
However, at the end of season 2, we discover that Grant is not at peace or settled with her prior involvement in Trojan Horse (a morally skiffy operation that was suppose to be just planting "evidence" of WMD's in Iraq to "justify" the war there, which morphed into making ACTUAL WMD's to ACTUALLY put in Iraq and then losing track of them later) despite the fact that it was apparently something she did on orders. She thought it was wrong. She did it anyway because, yo, it was what the government wanted.
Now, the job of a soldier is to do what the government wants the soldier to do. However, quite a lot of what we ask soldiers to do is wrong. In Strike Back (Project Dawn), Scott and Stonebridge steal vehicles on an as-needed basis. Sometimes there are even vehicle owners running down the street after them, yelling "That's my car!" in foreign, so you know the car wasn't just sitting there and conveniently abandoned. Scott and Stonebridge shoot people, a lot. There's blood spatter and gore and stuff. It's definitely not "Well, we were providing covering fire but not actually killing those guys" shooting. It's more the killing sort. We get to see the killing. The boys burn down buildings that do not belong to them and they blow shit up, frequently while it still has other human beings inside of it. If they were doing all that crap in, say, Philadelphia, they would totally be criminals. But, since they're doing it in Sudan or Kosovo or wherever, to, mostly, "bad guys", it's... OK? Or since they're doing it on behalf of their government, it's OK?
But it's not really OK, because if it were, then Colonel Grant wouldn't be so upset about her involvement with Trojan Horse. Operational security for that (relatively skiffy) piece of work meant that she had to burn good men (Porter, Scott) that she knew personally were blameless. And then, there, you're suddenly not doing bad things to bad men. You're throwing perfectly good men under the bus to protect and preserve your somewhat skiffy objective.
I'm pretty glad I am glad I am not a soldier. You need more constant faith in the government than I am able to muster in order to be a soldier.
Season 1 was delightful. I am apparently capable of watching endless amounts of ruthlessly efficient violence. Our guy in Season 1 does not have much of a personal life -- an estranged-ish wife, a daughter who is angsty at him most of the time. I particularly enjoyed the extensive and capable violence in Season 1 coupled with its relative lack of annoying and boring relationship subplots. It was kind of nice to see professional killer dude professionally killing and then going home to his non-life. Refreshing, even. Two thumbs up.
In Season 2, they kill the guy from Season 1. Like, in the first episode. I rather liked the guy from Season 1. Damn it. We get new guys, two of them. Guy #1 (Stonebridge) is the more by-the-book dude, has wife, has baby in the offing, is reasonably responsible. Guy #2 (Scott) is the reckless womanizer.
Guy #1, as you might expect from a stable career soldier, has a personal life. His personal life is annoying and subplotty. His wife whines too much. When you marry a soldier, a lot of what you find hot/worthwhile/attractive/rewarding about the soldier will become a pain in the ass once you're enspousened him because marriage does not automatically shift duty-honor/whatnot to YOU instead of to the government. He may argue (and believe) that it is important to stop terrorists or whatever to make the world SAFE for his FAMILY. Girlfriends who upgrade to Wife with these sorts of men need to know, up front, that they are not going to be priority #1. Guy #1 is banging a blond chick at his work, too, which is totally inappropriate. You don't shit where you eat. Ever. It's a surprising thing, the affair, and I would not have expected it of Guy #1. Don't know how he convinces himself that it's OK.
Guy #2, Scott, the reckless womanizer, treats the world as an amusement park full of LBFMs and LWFMs and LYFMs and so forth. He does not discriminate. However, it's OK because he's not coercive or particularly an ass about it. The lines are cheerfully over the top, delivered with a knowing smirk, and he does take "No" for an answer. I could see this being icky if he were gaming married or innocent women, distasteful if he pressed the suit too hard, but he doesn't do that. He plays the game with other playas for mutual entertainment. It's fine by me and even charming in a slutty sort of way. He has some ethics and doesn't bang work chicks (and calls Stonebridge out for banging his work chick). Regrettably (to my way of thinking) he never bangs Grant (his boss) before she buys the farm. (Grant is hot for him. Totally.) The lack of banging, while totally in line with the characterization for Scott that we're given, is a pity because Grant is the hottest chick in the show. She is smokin' hot.
Season 2 is largely focused on Latif (terrorist dude, possibly Latiffe, or La'Teef or something) and efforts to get better intel on him, find out who he's working with, find out what he's working on, get organized about capturing him, etc. On the side, we have the mole in M20 and relationshippy subplot with Stonebridge and so forth. There's a lot of shooting and so forth -- this is a military drama thing, so you have to expect that stuff and I'm on board with the shooting, anyway.
Cinematography: Nicely shot, particularly if you like nipples in profile. (I kid, I kid. It's a cinemax production and thus likes to show us teh boobies.) It could do with more sexualization of the firearms footage, though. I think I'd like that. And why the hell can't we have cameras that ogle the dudes in the same way that we have cameras that ogle the chicks? WHY CAN'T WE HAVE THIS? WHY?!?!? Equal-opportunity ogling is not unreasonable, damn it. Fucking male gaze.
On the military... Colonel Grant wants soldiers who do what they are told, follow their orders to the letter. She says as much to (cheerful and reckless womanizer) Scott when she hires him. I expect that most leaders-of-armed-forces want soldiers who do what they are told . Taking orders is part of what soldiering is all about. You can't get anything done with a pack of fellows who interrupt mission briefings to ask how come they have to kill everyone in the village, set fire to the place, and then poison the wells afterwards.
However, at the end of season 2, we discover that Grant is not at peace or settled with her prior involvement in Trojan Horse (a morally skiffy operation that was suppose to be just planting "evidence" of WMD's in Iraq to "justify" the war there, which morphed into making ACTUAL WMD's to ACTUALLY put in Iraq and then losing track of them later) despite the fact that it was apparently something she did on orders. She thought it was wrong. She did it anyway because, yo, it was what the government wanted.
Now, the job of a soldier is to do what the government wants the soldier to do. However, quite a lot of what we ask soldiers to do is wrong. In Strike Back (Project Dawn), Scott and Stonebridge steal vehicles on an as-needed basis. Sometimes there are even vehicle owners running down the street after them, yelling "That's my car!" in foreign, so you know the car wasn't just sitting there and conveniently abandoned. Scott and Stonebridge shoot people, a lot. There's blood spatter and gore and stuff. It's definitely not "Well, we were providing covering fire but not actually killing those guys" shooting. It's more the killing sort. We get to see the killing. The boys burn down buildings that do not belong to them and they blow shit up, frequently while it still has other human beings inside of it. If they were doing all that crap in, say, Philadelphia, they would totally be criminals. But, since they're doing it in Sudan or Kosovo or wherever, to, mostly, "bad guys", it's... OK? Or since they're doing it on behalf of their government, it's OK?
But it's not really OK, because if it were, then Colonel Grant wouldn't be so upset about her involvement with Trojan Horse. Operational security for that (relatively skiffy) piece of work meant that she had to burn good men (Porter, Scott) that she knew personally were blameless. And then, there, you're suddenly not doing bad things to bad men. You're throwing perfectly good men under the bus to protect and preserve your somewhat skiffy objective.
I'm pretty glad I am glad I am not a soldier. You need more constant faith in the government than I am able to muster in order to be a soldier.
