Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: C | 3 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT Shakespeare Said That
By Jacob Clifton | Season 1 | Episode 6 | Aired on 08.17.2008
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.CA fully runs up and stabs a guy for no reason, but luckily he hits up in a non-body part, because he's so fucked up and weird. Meanwhile, Walt is still sad and freaked out by the fact that guns kill people. Not even Espera's Generation Kill speeches -- or Ray makin' out on him and humping his head -- seem to cheer him up. On the other end of the spectrum, Trombley gets to be called "Whopper Jr." now, because he's a Baby Killer. Needless to say, he thinks this is very cool. It's actually not.
Ferrando tells the Platoon Companies that Dowdy, having achieved his mission of getting them into Al Kut, was relieved of his command and his bullets. Why? Don't know. Even Godfather admits he's a good man who achieved his goals. The problem was? Questioning (stupid, bad, wrong, wickedly selfish and self-aggrandizing) orders.
Encino Man decides that this horrible decision by Mattis was actually a coded message to him that he should make Nate Fick's life even more irritating. Everybody simultaneously discovers a surfeit of naked Iraqis everywhere; their clothes having been jacked by The Republican Guard. Nate and Brad discuss how they're now going to be taking Baghdad somehow with Humvees, which freaks everybody out -- although not as much as all their diarrhea. What's worse than diarrhea is Casey Kasem, though, who is now just openly leveraging Nate against Encino Man's favor. It's gross. Nate explains to him how gross he's being and why, and Casey Kasem goes away again.
So then while everybody's walking dead because they have this horrible throwing-up-while-having-diarrhea disease (and have been on the road forever and are broken), a billion fugeez show up and get herded down a road by the Humvees. Literally herded. One chick is like, "Um, thanks so much for 'helping' me walk down a road at gunpoint in my own country, that's awesome of you. I'm from Baghdad, which you're bombing to the stone age, so thanks for that too." They talk about how hot she is -- she is -- and she's like, "No, you can't have my number. Because you blew up my phone."
Somebody accidentally shoots a dude in the head with a blue smoke bomb. Nate manages to listen to Brad talk about his Warrior Spirit without laughing, and gets excited that the war might be ending. Then they pee. It's just one in a series of very serious, very intimate speeches that Brad goes around giving people because he honestly thinks the war is going to end. He's even more awesome every second that goes by.
Captain America tries desperately from inside his craziness to communicate with Fick, but it doesn't work out so well. Godfather manages to get First Recon into a mission to Baqubah, north of Baghdad. Which is even worse because they're dealing with those reservist jerks from Delta Company, whose awfulness some random dude explains at length. Captain America manages to break down in tears on comms, so he's doing well.
Kocher takes some prisoners -- good -- and then gets accused of prisoner abuse -- bad. Needless to say, Captain America is actually the freak who's to blame. Garza trades out his bike helmet for an Iraqi one, which causes the Delta freaks to fire on Bravo Two, because they are idiots. Fick makes a new friend and gets a little kiss, then reminds everybody not to do any war crimes. Bravo ends up Oscar Mike into Baghdad, with prisoners in tow but no particular mission as far as they're aware.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Platoon Three's patrolling -- you can spot them by the set of Captain America's mouth -- when Kocher spots a guy taking a crap, and starts yelling in Arabic. They're closing on the guy when Captain America comes running over a berm, screaming, and crashes into them, dropping the guy and the Marines on the ground. He stabs at him with a knife, again and again. It's a pile. Captain America keeps screaming. They wrestle Captain America away, and pull the guy up off the ground. They finally stop the fight, and Kocher's once again amazed. "Jesus, Eric. I thought that hajji was killing you. I fucked his shit up good, didn't I?" Somebody pulls the knife out of the guy's ammo magazine, shaking his head. "Better luck next time, sir..." There is the suggestion, once again, that Captain America's hamster has fallen off its wheel. I think the hamster must be as fucked in the head as Captain America. They wander away from the scene, and Captain America laughs nervously as usual. He's like a faulty jack in the box that just needs to explode, because that's what he's been designed to do.
Walt is weary. Ray and Brad watch RCT-1 blowing up Al Kut while they sit with their hands tied. Brad reminds everybody around that Kocher's team is patrolling the zone, so don't engage on the left beyond eleven o'clock. He cuts the world in half, right, but more importantly: that's what you do when your guys are out in front of you. You figure out where they are, and you don't shoot them. Right? Eric drives up with his prisoner tied up on his hood, takes him in for field interrogation. He quietly reassures Captain America that it's going to be reported as his snatch, I guess because it's no skin off his ass. Or it could be that whatever tales the guy tells, Captain America should be the main character. I'm not sure Captain America gets it either: he stares at nothing, weirder and crazier than usual.
Day. Eckloff and Godfather get off a chopper, coming back from a meeting with Mattis, and address the Platoon leadership. "As of 0915 hours forward elements of Colonel Dowdy's regiment seized the main bridge over the Tigris river in Al Kut. As you know, I just returned from a meeting with General Mattis. What you don't know is that shortly after Dowdy led his regiment into Al Kut, General Mattis relieved him of his command." Casey Kasem stares, because like Godfather this is the thing he understands: punishment/reward. Leadership for its own sake; the natural choreography of smoke and mirrors that says the violence of action is better than tactical surgery. Maneuver warfare. The thing about broadcasting static is that all you hear is static, too. They cut the world in half.