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Notes -
I think the target audience is very important here, these shows strike me like exactly the kinds of stories fellow enlisted dream up and tell each other based on a mix of harsh reality, dark fantasy, but mostly just blowing off steam that you can only fully understand if you were there. By far the most accurate portrayal of modern military life in a warzone I've seen is Generation Kill, highly recommend it if you're interested in this kind of thing.
Yeah, for sure it's intended for an audience of ex-enlisted. And yet it's still weirdly captivating to me as someone who was never in the military at all. It seems like Generation Kill is from 2008, so that's still... not so modern, compared to this. A big theme in this is the role smart phones and social media have had on the modern military experience. Not to mention women and gays.
edit: one thing that jumps out at me from watching this is how young most of the characters are. Typically they enlist at age 18, and then get out as soon as possible. So a typical marine now would have barely even been born when that movie came out.
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