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| By Charles Storey (Tango49) on Unrecorded Date: |
Little Jewel,
I had to chuckle a bit when I read your post. I agree that the story is far fetched in almost every way that you mentioned. However, as one who has driven many miles on military posts has noted, there is a hog wallow somewhere on every "dry" road. Usually, it is at a bend in the road, or where it forks. My only explaination is that it happens at a spot where the water table is near the surface, or where the drainage is poor. It's strange, but you can drive for several miles on a dry dusty road and hit a big mudhole with little or no standing water anywhere else around. Those narrow dirt roads just aren't able to support the weight of trucks, let alone armored vehicles. They aren't worth fixing and besides, it's good training.
Keep Up The Fire
Tango 49
| By Patsewell (Patsewell) on Unrecorded Date: |
Don't dig that foxhole too deep, Little Jewel!
"The Duel" is one of my favorite action episodes. My sixteen year old son loves it as well, but he has also noted the sudden appearance of the mud in a dry road and the tank that materializes from no where. I also wondered why our oh so intrepid and ingenious Sergeant didn't think to look in the back of the truck sooner. On the other hand, if he had dicovered the gasoline at the beginning of the hour we would have had about 35 minutes of dead air. And it is entertainment as well as being historically significant, isn't it? As it is, we never forgot that episode, did we?
| By Littlejewel (Littlejewel) on Unrecorded Date: |
I don't believe I have watched The Duel since I taped it ten or twelve years ago. So I pulled it out, dusted it off and popped it in the machine. As I watched I remembered why I hadn't worn this tape out the way I had Survival, Hills Are For Heroes, The Little Carousel, The Pillbox, The Glory Among Men, etc, etc, etc.
First off, I need to say that the camerawork is terrific, the performance of Bobby Rydell is natural and likeable, the action sequences are rousing and Vic Morrow gives his all. So why on earth can't I muster two twigs of enthusiasm for this episode? It boils down to the script.
Edward J. Lakso appears to subscribe to the "Little Girl With the Curl in the Middle of Her Forehead" school of scriptwriting: when he is good he is doggone good, and when he is bad he is just gawdawful. This script falls with a decidedly dull thud into the latter category. It loses me almost from the beginning.
I like things that make sense. Mr. Lakso asks me to suspend belief just one to many times. First off, we get a great sweeping aerial shot of that truck barreling down the road kicking up great billows of dust behind it. All of a sudden the truck has a flat tire. Okay, I can handle that. But, when the guys step out of the truck they step out into a soggy mud pit that looks like the banks of the Ganges during monsoon season! Where the heck did that come from?? It's as dry as Southern California everywhere else on the landscape--but the truck has a flat tire and bogs down in the one twelve foot square piece of real estate for miles that is lousy with mud. Then, as I'm still pondering that little anomaly --hark!--they hear a tank! Now, somebody PLEASE help me out here. Please tell me that that tank is not coming up the same road that they were just on. That's how it appears to me. How could that be? The tank is "in trouble" and moving slow. Did the truck pass it and just not notice it? Where did it come from? And it just gets worse. Saunders, who is, in my estimation the most capable, level-headed, shrewd, intelligent and savvy soldier going, realizes he has to stop that tank. Right. So he spends 30 minutes or so messing about with all kinds of stop gap measures until he finally hauls a can of gasoline out of the back of the truck and destroys the tank quite handily in about 2 minutes. I refuse to believe that My Sarge is that dull. I could go on and on. The tank captain and his crew are incredibly bad shots and obviously have little wit to deal with their tormentor. And why oh why did they bring in the subtitles? They did not serve to enlighten us in the least as to the inner musings of the tank captain. What, we can't figure out "Left!" or "Right!"? I always felt pleased that "Combat!" credited its audience with intelligence enough to figure out what was going on without the subtitles. Then, the topper: Mickey gets trapped under the truck and provides us with what is supposed to be dramatic tension. Will Sarge drive over him to save his men? Will he put the needs of one man above the needs of 100? Well, an earlier and far superior episode, "The Samaritan" already answered that one for us. Yet Sarge does an about-face and risks everything to save Mickey. Nice for the 100 other guys that it all happened to work out so neatly.
Oh guys, I LOVE Combat, but this episode just left me cold. Too many contrivances, too many things that just didn't make sense, and great action sequences that didn't serve to do anything greater than provide diverting filler for Mr. Lakso's weak script.
Okay. I'll stop ranting. I know I'm stepping on toes here and the dreadful thing is that I respect those toes an awful lot. Please excuse me now while I find a shovel to dig a very deep foxhole. I think I hear the 88's cranking up.
little jewel
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