I love this show. James Spader and William Shatner were made to do this show. This last episode was a great one, and the closing argument made by Alan Shore (James Spader’s character) really hits the primer….
Private Elliot was told he’d serve a year. He was told he wouldn’t see combat! Okay! Unexpected stuff happens he did see combat. Fine! But, he was sent into combat with insufficient backup, he was sent in to perform duties for which he was never ever trained! He wasn’t given the most basic of equipment. And then after his tour of duty was finally up they wouldn’t let him leave. He never assumed those risks by enlisting. Over extended, under equipped, non-trained. He never signed up for that. And now he’s dead. An aside from his sister, nobody seems to care. We talk about honoring 10 the troops. How about we honor them by giving a damn when they’re killed! Our kids are dying over there! In this country, the people, the media, we all just chug along like nothing is wrong. We’ll spend a month obsessing about Terri Shivo. But dare we show the body of a fallen soldier? The most watched cable news station will spend an hour a night on a missing girl in Aruba, but God forbid we pay any attention when kids like Private Elliot, killed in action…
I’m not off the point. We’ve had two thousand American trees fall in that forest over there and we don’t even know it. Not really. But, maybe we don’t wanna know about our children dying. So lucky for us this war isn’t really being televised. We’re not seeing images of soldiers dying in the arms of their comrades, being blown apart on the streets of Baghdad. But they are! By the thousands! And all the American public wants to concern itself with is whether Brad and Angelina really are a couple. At least with Vietnam we all watched and we all got angry! Private Elliot is dead in part because we have a people and a government in denial. We currently have no strategy to fight this war. We have no timetable for getting out. Some of these troops could be extended twenty plus years! Their mothers and fathers have to spring for body armor because the army doesn’t. And they’re getting killed! And we as a nation in denial are letting them. We simply don’t seem to care. Well she does. She’s in this courtroom honoring one dead soldier. That’s a start.
I know it’s a bit strange out of the context of the show – but I think the overall message and the statement made is complete, tangeable and remarkably applicable to our current situation. Nothing else really needs to be said.
Welcome to the Suck.