Stay Frosty: Generation Kill wordthinks

Maybe somewhat out of date this one, having first screened on FX in January, but I recently rewatched it on DVD, and it’s definitely worth tossing out a few hundred words. Why? Because Generation Kill is hands-down one of the finest television dramas of recent years. Yeah, you heard me. It’s up there with The Wire.

Which shouldn’t come as a surprise really, because it comes from exactly the same brains; namely journalist David Simon and his Wire co-creator and former Baltimore cop Ed Burns. But rather than the slow decay of the American dream, this time the pair are tackling a more focussed (but no less tricky) subject; the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Set during the first 3 weeks of the war (ie. the time it took the yanks to capture Baghdad, but before they started to properly fuck things up), the 7-part miniseries follows the Marines of the elite 1st Recon battalion as they tear across the desert in a convoy of battered Humvees.

So far, so Black Hawk Down, you’d be forgiven for thinking. But there you’d be wrong. Like The Wire, Generation Kill is superbly, painfully authentic. The viewer is plunged into a world of overlapping military jargon and identikit Marines in desert fatigues. It’ll likely take you a couple of episodes to even begin to tell which is which. Also like The Wire (I’ll stop mentioning it soon, honest) it demands your concentration; zone out for a few minutes and you’ll likely end up completely lost. And that’s the intention; when talking about that other show, David Simon once said “Fuck the average viewer.” It’s an ethos Generation Kill sticks to religiously.

But once you’re in, you’re in, and as the Marines blast their way through Iraq, things become clearer as a core of main characters begin to take shape. Our main viewfinder into this strange world is through the eyes of Evan Wright – a Rolling Stone journalist embedded with the Marines for the duration of their tour, on whose memoir the series is based. He plays the foil throughout; explaining the troop’s more exotic dialect and practices – from deciphering the constant stream of semi-rascist banter to questioning the continual non-appearance of Saddam’s feared WMDs.

Other characters begin to shape up too; Sergeant Brad ‘Iceman’ Colbert is the Afghanistan veteran constantly at a loss as to the army’s methods in Iraq; Corporal Ray Pearson is the motormouth driver, reliant on uppers to keep him going over the endless desert miles. As the personalities start to form, so Generation Kill plays its trump card; it is frequently, unexpectedly hilarious. From a sub-plot involving a photograph of the reporter’s girlfriend becoming a masturbatory bargaining tool, to the constant foul-mouthed banter between troops trapped in wheeled metal boxes for hours on end with little to do but talk, the dialogue is never less than exceptional. Heightening the sense of realism is the complete absence of a soundtrack – save for the constant chatter of the military radios, and occasional a cappella humvee singalongs.

You can detect a real warmth for the troops (mainly) on Simon’s and Burns’ part. But that’s not to say Generation Kill lacks any of the commentary that made the Wire such an acclaimed masterpiece. From the military hierarchy to the administration’s reasons for invading, there are no easy answers – and the road trip that Burns and Simon take you on will leave you alternately saddened, perplexed, bamboozled, enlightened, and, occasionally, fucking terrified. It’s a savagely, bafflingly complex show; one that’ll make you fight for every ounce of understanding gained. But it’s completely, utterly worth it. Like they say: Fuck the average viewer.