Combat! - Season 1 Episode 18 Next In Command On television, war is heck.
Overview: Ben Cooper plays Corporal Cross, the newest addiyion to the squad. For once, the new boy is a veteran. He is tormented by a fatal mistake he'd made on another hill. That mistake has crippled him, stripping away not just his ability to fire a rifle, but also his ability to be a soldier.
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My dad used to talk about this when I was a kid... well... his entire life. And I can relate. He sounded a lot like I probably sound when I still talk about the A-Team: "And then, and then Mr. T did this and.... ahhhh... it was awesome." "How old are you again?" "40." Anyway, hearing about that all my life, when I finally got to watch it, Thank you MeTV, I felt obligated to take the opportunity. After all, Combat! And All in the Family were the only television shows I ever heard my father reference. And.... WOW. It humanizes. The Nazi soldiers are just, well, soldiers. They totally ignored the habit of making them characterless monsters and instead just made them soldiers who may or may not be political. That is pretty amazing right there. That sort of says "Yeah, we are going to be focused on writing and telling compelling stories more than anything else," and of course, it still manages to keep the O. Henry style moral twists that came with the era despite not making a statement of absolute evil. It makes for a really smart show.