Episode Report Card Shack: D+ | 14 USERS: B- YOU GRADE IT The Known Soldier
By Shack | Season 6 | Episode 20 | Aired on 05.05.2002
Since the girls are all upstairs playing house with Sgt. Morgan and his family, the boys have to go downstairs to the kitchen and play war. Simon whines to Robbie that he'd miss home-cooked meals (as he eats a crappy cheese sandwich) if he were in the military. Robbie points out that he'd have to lose the earrings as well. But hey, he'd get to shower with dozens of other men and probably lose his virginity away from his creepy, stalking parents. The two of them blather on about how shocked they are about soldiers being in Afghanistan and the attacks on September 11, and this entire conversation is about four months too late to be believable. Robbie complains that people are going back to their old bad habits; somebody recently cut him off in traffic and gave him the finger. Waaah! Don't proselytize about how great America is and then whine about the fact that you're around a bunch of people who act like Americans.
Then Robbie says, "I don't know if in going about our business as usual, we've forgotten what happened. But I don't think we've dealt with what happened. The only people that seem to be dealing with it are the people who are in uniform, who have to, and their friends and family, as well as the friends and family of the victims and the rescue workers." What? Oh my god, shut up, you prick. On what basis are you saying that people haven't appropriately dealt with this? And what the hell is the appropriate way to deal with this if we haven't done it? That line pisses me off more than anything in this episode. Brenda Hampton is incapable of presenting people that behave like actual human beings, and now she presumes to tell us how to deal with tragedy? Shut up, Brenda, and go away.
Simon and Robbie continue on to discuss how life must be different for people in New York and D.C. Yes, we know. We know, because we live here on Earth, and we're not idiots, and we know. Simon says that, because the rest of us who don't live in those cities don't have those daily reminders, it's "easy to forget." Fuck that. The September 11 attacks are burned into the permanent memories of every single American (and probably most non-Americans around the world). Forever. Always. In forty years we're going to be boring our grandchildren with stories about September 11. Stop trying to tell me what people remember and what people are dealing with, because you guys don't have a freaking clue. Robbie goes on that people need to remember what happens in the world so that "they can make the world a better place." He tries to amend that he doesn't mean "a place just like America," but everybody knows that's just lip service, because it's so obvious that he does. Simon whines about not wanting to go to war, and Robbie responds that he doesn't want to either, so thank god there are so many wonderful volunteers in the armed services willing to do that for us. This scene is just so awful. These two have absolutely nothing to contribute to the national discussion on this issue that has been going on for months. The delivery is wooden. The scene doesn't start from anywhere, so it has nowhere to go and serves no actual dramatic function. It's not even very good as propaganda. It's like a parody of a military recruiting film you might see on The Simpsons with Troy McClure. Simon wonders what would happen if everybody refused to go to war. Robbie points out the problem of people crashing planes into buildings as a flaw behind that theory. Simon brings up all the problems in the world with poverty and illness and the environment, et cetera. Robbie says that we need a military to keep us safe while we try to fight all these problems. Yes, we know. Is there a major movement out there to disband the military that nobody told me about? This scene actually made me miss "Isaac and Ishmael." ["Now, let's not go overboard here." -- Sars]
Upstairs, Annie watches the twins sleep. Won't somebody think of the children?