#so I copied it all out on notepad and then copied and pasted it again

[nimuetheseawitch]

1, 8, 10, 17,

1. favorite episode

A Night At Rosie's, at the moment I have so many favorites (and there are so many episodes...), but A Night At Rosie's lives rent-free in my brain, ready to make me smile any time I remember it.

8. favorite "Hawkeye has a mental breakdown" episode

Does Depressing News count? It's not quite a breakdown the way he normally has them, but honestly, his behavior is so obsessive and single-minded that it feels like a break from his regular level of mental health. He focuses so hard on one folly of the Army that it takes him a little while to notice the absurdity of the reporter. And he kind of takes a vacation from interacting with other people and sleeping (and I don't remember if we see him eat), so it seems like at least a breakdown from his normal. And it's just so good. I can't remember the first time I saw it, but a little bit of me always worries more when he puts on his dress uniform (Hawkeye would never get dressed up for an Army photo!) and then I still feel the relief of him blowing up the monument. And it's hilarious and a little unhinged.

10. unpopular opinion

Sometimes I have no idea which opinions are popular and which aren't. But I think my least popular opinion is that Potter is also a victim of the Army.

I know he's shitty many times and a problematic part of the unfortunate shift in tone in the show towards being more pro-military (or at least more forgiving of the military), but his story shows me a victim too (victims often perpetuate systems of abuse/trauma). A young boy caught up in a sense of patriotic duty (and later, horse girl levels of obsession with horses) in the "War to end all wars," who becomes an Army doctor because he thinks it's a great career in peace time. And then he's married and probably has at least one child by the time the Depression hits, and the military is a stable job. And then he finds himself in Europe again, at an age where a military career makes sense (he’s fallen victim to the sunk cost fallacy at this point) and in a war that seems just (and he’s definitely been brainwashed about the value of a military career by this point). Then when he thinks it’s finally all over (again) and he’s near retirement, he ends up in Korea, a war that makes him question the entire basis of his life. He should’ve questioned more, and I wish that had been something they explored better.

It honestly reminds me a little of my grandfather. His case was very, very different, but the Army gave him a career. He was one of the many people in WWII who had posts close enough to the developing computer technology to be offered a job at IBM after the war. He had a very different experience in a very different war (and then wouldn’t talk about it or apparently offer any opinion on Korea or Vietnam after that, although I wasn’t old enough to ask him about that before he died). I know it’s different, but it makes me give Potter the benefit of the doubt because I think he has a really complicated relationship with the military, and his greatest sin is that he is uncritical of the status quo and the military.

17. best quote

I have a lot of favorites, but I always come back to:

“For your amusement and bemusement, I give you the human person: thumb and fingers flexing madly, straining to keep aloft the leaden realities of life: ignorance, death, and madness. Thus we create for ourselves the illusion that we have power. That we are in control. That we are loved.”

From S4E18, Hawkeye