Cam\u2019s confusion is represented by externalizing his inner voice into a double, \u201cthe angel on my shoulder and, honestly, sometimes the devil,\u201d with whom he argues, like a difficult imaginary friend. (It\u2019s the voice of his hidden gayness.) Where basic training stories like this usually involve a cocky or spoiled character learning a lesson about humbleness and teamwork, Cam is coming from a place of insecurity and fear. At first he wants to leave \u2014 he had expected nothing worse than \u201cmud and some bug bites and wearing the same underwear two days in a row\u201d \u2014 and plots to wash out; but he blows the chance when he helps a struggling comrade pass a test. He\u2019s a good guy. (Heizer is very fine in the part.)<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Cameron (Miles Heizer), left, is convinced by his best friend (and only friend), Ray (Liam Oh), to join the Marines with him.<\/p>\n
(Alfonso \u201cPompo\u201d Bresciani \/ Netflix)<\/p>\n
Press materials describe \u201cBoots,\u201d created by Andy Parker, as a comedic drama, although, after the opening scenes, there\u2019s not much comedy in it \u2014 even a food fight is more stressful than funny. Using \u201cAlso Sprach Zarathustra\u201d as the soundtrack to a long-in-coming bowel movement \u2014 I just report the news \u2014 was already dated and exhausted in 1990, and is bizarrely out of joint with the rest of the production. \u201cBoots\u201d isn\u2019t anywhere near as disturbing as, say, \u201cFull Metal Jacket\u201d<\/a> \u2014 which Ray told Cam to watch to prepare, though he opted for a \u201cGolden Girls\u201d<\/a> marathon instead. But it makes no bones about the fact that these kids are being trained to kill. \u201cKill, kill, blood makes the grass grow,\u201d they chant, and \u201cGod, country, Corps, kill.\u201d And sometimes just, \u201cKill, kill, kill.\u201d And things do turn violent, sometimes for purposes of training and sometimes because someone just goes off his head.<\/p>\n Still, that Cam survives, and, after a period of adjustment, thrives (that\u2019s not a spoiler, Cope White lived to write the book) makes this, strictly speaking, a comedy. (And, by implication, an endorsement of the program.) \u201cWe\u2019re killing our old selves so we can be our best selves,\u201d he\u2019ll say to Ray. The Marines may make a man of him, but it won\u2019t be a straight man.<\/p>\n Rhythmically, \u201cBoots\u201d follows scenes in which someone will break a little or big rule \u2014 I suppose in the Marines, all rules are big, even the little ones \u2014 with some sort of punishment, for an individual or the platoon. Laid across this ostinato are various storylines involving recruits working out the issues that have brought them to this Parris Island of Misfit Boys. Cody (Brandon Tyler Moore) was taught by his father to look down on his twin brother, John (Blake Burt), who is in the same outfit, because he\u2019s fat. Slovacek (Kieron Moore), a bully, has been given a choice between prison and the military. Mason (Logan Gould) can barely read. Santos (Rico Paris) is slowed down by a bum knee. Ochoa (Johnathan Nieves) is a little too much in love with his wife. And Hicks (Angus O\u2019Brien) is a chaos-relishing loon, having the time of his life. Obviously, not everyone who joins the Marines is compensating for something; Nash (Dominic Goodman), a more or less balanced character who seems to be sending Cameron signals, is there to pad his resume in case he runs for president one day; but he\u2019ll have his moment of shame.<\/p>\n Sgt. Sullivan (Max Parker), left, is one of the drill instructors who takes an interest in Cameron (Miles Heizer).<\/p>\n (Alfonso \u201cPompo\u201d Bresciani \/ Netflix)<\/p>\n Though they all raise their voices and get in people\u2019s faces, the drill instructors do come in various flavors. Staff Sgt. McKinnon (Cedrick Cooper), the senior instructor, is imposing but obviously sane and sometimes kind; Sgt. Howitt (Nicholas Logan) is an unsettling sort who will prove to have some depth, while Sgt. Knox (Zach Roerig) is a twitchy racist, soon to be replaced by Sgt. Sullivan (Max Parker), tall, steely and tightly wound. He doesn\u2019t yell as loud as the others, but even his posture is intimidating. He focuses immediately on Cameron; make of that what you will. He\u2019s the series second lead, basically.<\/p>\n There are some respites from the training, the running and marching, the room full of tear gas, the dead man\u2019s float test, the hand-to-hand combat, the flower planting. (That part was nice, actually.) The yelling. <\/p>\n Ray winds up in sick bay, where he flirts with a female Marine. We get a few perfunctory glimpses of what the brass is like when they\u2019re out of uniform and quiet; it comes as a relief. McKinnon\u2019s wife is having a baby; he makes Cookie Monster noises on the phone for his son. Capt. Fajardo (Ana Ayora), \u201cthe first woman to lead a male company on Parris Island,\u201d is heard talking to her mother, presumably about her daughter\u2019s wedding: \u201cI would rather not spend the time or the money because she can\u2019t live without love.\u201d Of her position, she observes that it \u201conly took 215 years and a congressional mandate.\u201d McKinnon, who is Black, offers a brief history of Black people in the Marine Corps as lived by his forebears.<\/p>\n The social themes become more prominent in the second half, and we learn or are reminded just how toxic the military was to gay people, and how backward was its attitude. \u201cDon\u2019t Ask, Don\u2019t Tell\u201d wasn\u2019t in effect until 1994, and it wasn\u2019t until 2011<\/a> that openly gay soldiers could serve. Now, as civil rights are being beaten back to \u2026 backwardness by small-minded politicians, there\u2019s a timely element to this perfectly decent, good-hearted, unsurprisingly sentimental miniseries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In \u201cBoots,\u201d a new miniseries set in 1990, Miles Heizer plays Cameron Cope, a scrawny, bullied gay teenager…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":63121,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[46367,46366,3962,146,46368,85,46372,46,46370,46371,46373,1266,40965,46374,46369,1532,2178,1663],"class_list":["post-63120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-boot","tag-cam","tag-day","tag-entertainment","tag-gay-marines","tag-il","tag-inner-voice","tag-israel","tag-mckinnon","tag-military-drama","tag-parris-island","tag-people","tag-ray","tag-sort","tag-staff-sgt","tag-test","tag-training","tag-wife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63120\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} <\/p>\n