THE PACIFIC: JUST THE BADASS PARTS

Yes, the first episode of the “The Pacific” aired last night. It would be unreasonable to expect everyone to watch HBO every Sunday night, so I’m not going to bother with a recap and all of the untidy complications of plot and character development. Instead, I’m sharing Just the Badass Parts, including the all-new Warming Glow-trademarked JAP COUNT. That’s the number of times characters referred to the Japanese as “Japs.” Hooray, casual racism!

• OFFICIAL JAP COUNT: 18, plus an additional six in the scenes promoting the coming weeks.
• Chesty Puller, one of the world’s greatest all-time badasses, is a character in this show. APPROVE.
• Mutilated corpses.
• Featured: hiking through jungle with machine gun tripods. I can personally confirm that the tripods and spare barrels Marines carry for 7.62mm machine guns today are sheer misery to carry. The ones from WWII are twice the size.
• A wounded Japanese soldier receives aid from two Americans, then blows them up and commits suicide with a grenade.
• Beach littered with Japanese bodies after an all-night firefight.
• Marines play “Duck Hunt” with random Japanese soldier.
• A Marine stuffs cigarettes into his nostrils to keep smell of the dead at bay.`
• A Marine smokes while his festering wound gets dressed.

All of that made up for the painfully slow first half hour. Coming next week: more Guadalcanal! That means more malaria, more gore, more starvation, and heroism on Bloody Ridge that’ll make you piss your pants. Semper Fi!