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Date Posted: 13:45:21 09/30/02 Mon
Author: manette
Subject: inside --try again
In reply to: manette 's message, "my review--(Inside)" on 13:41:38 09/30/02 Mon

This is a convoluted review of what I think is a really good episode. It has the feel of a play and it is full of deeper meanings. The first time I saw it I am sure I dismissed it for it’s lack of shipperyness, but every time I see it I get something new out of it. I have just skimmed some of the layers.

I am not sure what draws me to this episode except that it is nearly impossible for anyone my age not to have been affected by the Vietnam War and it’s consequences. We all know that Harm is obsessed with finding his MIA father. Harm’s whole life has been lived honoring his father’s memory but a wheelchair bound Vietnam Vet who is the polar opposite of those heroic ideals forces him to question his beliefs about his father and the principles by which he lives his life.

While playing music on a Georgetown corner, Willie Menkes recognizes a Vietnamese man who ran the POW camp where he had been a prisoner during the war. He stabs the man then turns himself into Jag. He confesses not only to that killing but also to crimes that happened thirty years earlier during the war.

Stung by Harm’s failure to take him seriously, Willie picks up on Harm’s need for information that might help him with his search for his father. In the same way the Viet
Cong interrogators preyed on their prisoner’s weakness, Willie hones in on Harm’s obsession. Desperate to be heard Willie finally tells Harm that his father was a collaborator and backs his story up by providing details such as his father’s call sign and the kind of plane he flew. Harm attacks him and has to be restrained by Bud as Willie goes on to describe the torture and the pain that his father had to endure. Shaken but not convinced, Harm states what he believes to be true about his father.

“He was strong willed. Surrender was not in his vocabulary. …And he was a committed . Once he pledged his word he could not be moved from his mark. He was duty bound.”

These words define his father. They define manhood. They define Harm.

His world depends on them being true.

Harm eventually realizes that Roscoe’s story is a lie and the information about his father was gleaned from the photograph that was on his bookcase. Just when he is ready to turn him over to the police Bud comes in and tells him that his story about the man that was murdered running a POW camp checked out and he also discovered that Willie Menkes is MIA and his name is on the wall. The Vietnam veteran then confesses to being Roscoe Martin and admits that Willie Menkes was dead.

Roscoe admits that everything he was saying about Harm’s father was really about himself. He has buried his pain and his guilt so deep that he has even taken on another man’s identity. He begs Harm not to stop pushing him until he tells all of his dark secrets. Roscoe was not a heroic man. He was a deserter and a collaborator who somehow while enduring the horrors of war still tried to make choices that would help save lives. He gave up the flyers in the camp in an attempt to save the others. The flyers were taken away and then the other prisoners were brought out and shot. The special torture that Roscoe must endure was that he was allowed to live.

Harm tells him that he didn’t kill those men and he needs to let it go. Roscoe responds by asking him if he can let go of his father then adds, “You keep searching for a place I can never leave.”

Harm says he still needs his own closure, but when he offers to defend Roscoe in his murder trial he is offering absolution from all of the son’s whose fathers might have died because of the choices Roscoe was forced to make.

There are so many things I didn’t cover—the life as a circle references. Roscoe’s declaration—“I chose you, Commander.” References to marriage and running off the good women in his life…Well I could go on and on but I won’t, but if you haven’t guessed I liked this one a lot.

Just a couple of notes—Coster—Mac’s eventual stalker is the policeman waiting to take Roscoe into custody. We also have Dalton showing up to take Mac to lunch. On a completely frivolous note, Harm is about a 12 on a scale of 1-10. How can a man look so hot even when he is on an emotional roller coaster?

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