![]() Colbert isn't McNulty, Person isn't Bunk, Godfather isn't Burrell, Sgt. Simon calls "Generation Kill" a fictionalized version, to some extent, of Wright's travels with First Recon, but he also has this text he has to follow, and so the themes and characters aren't all one to one. While "The Wire" was inspired by true events in the lives of Simon, Burns and people that they knew, there was plenty of room to fictionalize as needed. The two biggest similarities similarities - both of them very present in Wright's book, and in no way transplanted in by Simon and Burns' worldview - are:ġ)A mission that, on paper, is noble - Who doesn't think drugs are harmful? Who doesn't think Saddam was a bad guy? - but that maybe wasn't the best use of resources and was certainly not well planned-out in terms of an end game andĢ)A command hierarchy where the people who understand the problems the best (the cops on the street, the Marines on the ground) have the least authority, while the people making the decisions are far removed from the action, and whose orders therefore bear little resemblance to the realities their men are faced with when carrying them out. Major Sixta - but the guys in that first Humvee are (with the exception of the turret gunner, who's a minor character at best) well-established even by the end of episode one.īut if the world that Simon, Burns, Wright and company drop us into can be confusing at first (mirroring, as they intended, the confusion that Wright felt at the time), it's a fully-realized one that's both thousands of miles away (literally and figuratively) from the Baltimore of "The Wire" and one that will feel very familiar to anyone who spent a lot of time watching McNulty and Bunk drink at the train tracks. Other characters will be important and/or interesting as time goes on - Fruity Rudy, Captain America, Godfather, Sgt. Fick (Stark Sands), lead Humvee team leader Brad Colbert (Alexander Skarsgard) and first Humvee gunner Trombley (Billy Lush) - you're good to go. (If nothing else, a scene where Tergesen is introduced to all the officers and told who reports to whom wouldn't have been the worst idea in the world.) But so long as you know the five people in the picture above - from left to right, lead Humvee driver Josh Ray Person (James Ransone), the reporter, second platoon leader Lt. Patterson (the leader of a different company in First Recon) may as well be brothers (especially when seated), and I don't think the miniseries uses Lee Tergesen's reporter character as much as it could to simplify things. Fick's incompetent immediate superior) and Capt. Admittedly, Simon makes things tougher than he needs to be in spots. ![]() With or without the study aids, by the time you get to the end of episode 2 or 3, I suspect you'll get it. ![]() But, like Simon and Burns' "The Wire," I think "Generation Kill" is a show that throws you into the deep end of the pool, and after some thrashing around, you discover that you can swim. ![]() Sure, it helped that I had seen the next three episodes after that, and that I had frequently turned to my copy of Evan Wright's wonderful book when I was feeling especially dumbsquizzled. (If you need the Who's Who assistance, Mo Ryan has all the relevant PDF files hosted on her site.) But I had an epiphany the other day when I sat down to rewatch "Get Some" and I realized that I wasn't remotely as lost as I was the first time. I had originally planned to devote a good chunk of this post to explaining who the hell everybody is, how the recon Marine command hierarchy is structured, what the terminology means, etc. "You know what happens when you get out of the Marine Corps? You get your brains back." ![]() Spoilers for the premiere episode of "Generation Kill" coming up just as soon as I get a sit-rep as to J-Lo's status. ![]()
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