Military misfits have been one of the tried-and-true premises for TV series for decades, going back to the days of The Phil Silvers Show. Even more “serious” military shows like M*A*S*H were fill of non-military types. What separates the best of this genre are the characters in the ragtag group going through military craziness together, which is what we see in the new dramedy Boots.
Opening Shot: “1990.” A teenager sits at a Marine recruitment office and is asked, “Why do you want to be a Marine, Cameron?”
The Gist: Cameron Cope (Miles Heizer) has been bullied for years, whether it’s because he’s gay or just because he might march to a different beat than his classmates do. His mother Barbara (Vera Farmiga) and brother Benjy (Ivan Hoey Jr.) are less than supportive, and tell him to be more “masculine.”
He feels he has an “angel on my shoulder,” the true version of himself. So when his best friend, Ray McAffey (Liam Oh), comes back early from the Air Force Academy due to eyesight issues and says he’s going to join the Marines, Cameron decides to join with him. “My life needs a change, sir. I wanna be someone else,” he tells the recruiter.
Next thing we see, Cameron is on a bus to Marine basic training on Parris Island, SC. He and Ray did tell Barbara he was leaving, but Barbara was so preoccupied that she thought her son was just going on errands.
Of course, in the Marines in 1990, being openly gay is a problem, which seems to go against that “angel” on Cameron’s shoulder that wants him to be his true self. As Cameron and Ray come off the bus, they’re screamed at by Staff Sergeant Marcus McKinnon (Cedrick Cooper), the senior drill instructor, and his assistant drill instructors, Sergeant Howitt (Nicholas Logan) and Sergeant Knox (Zach Roerig).
During his first day in camp, Cameron starts to regret coming, given that he’s still getting bullied, though he notices fellow recruit Isaiah Nash (Dominic Goodman). And when Sgt. Knox knocks out Ray, he’s removed by post commander, Capt. Denise Fajardo (Ana Ayora) replaces him with a new drill instructor, Sargent Sullivan (Max Parker), who might be the most demanding of all of them. In the meantime, Barbara tries to cozy up to Sgt. Pitowski (Brett Dalton), the recruiting officer who signed Cameron up in the first place.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Boots, created by Andy Parker and based on the book The Pink Marine by Greg Cope White (the late Norman Lear was involved as an executive producer as well), gives off the same vibes as military comedies like Enlisted, but with shades of the first half of Full Metal Jacket.
Our Take: In a lot of ways, Boots is a pretty standard dramedy about misfit recruits somehow making it through the gauntlet of military training and learning something about themselves and their fellow recruits. Military shows and films are no fun if the recruits, or even the soldiers and officers in established careers, are typical military types; they have to be misfits, and the group they’re in has to be a ragtag team who come together and bond, or else the whole premise would be boring as hell.
We know Cameron is going to go through highs and lows at Parris Island, which aren’t helped by the idea that he has to hide the fact that he’s gay. We know his friendship with Ray is going to be put to the test. We also know that the drill instructors, especially Sullivan, are going to push every button they possibly can in order to break down Cam and his fellow recruits in order to build them back up into Marine killing machines.
So what makes Boots stand out? Well, of course there’s the issue of how Cam deals with being gay in the Marines, before the days where even restrictive policies like “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” existed. He knows there are others in his recruiting class that are in the same boat, and that there’s an attraction there that he is going to have to either squelch or act on in very covert ways. Cam wants to be a different person, but how much of that is tied up in the fact that he was bullied, which he’ll still get in the Marines, or the idea that he needed to hide who he really was?
We’re still unsure about the guys surrounding Cam in training. Brothers John and Cody Bowman (Blake Burt, Brandon Tyler Moore), have their own issues to deal with, and we’ve only gotten brief glimpses at the personalities of other recruits, like Slovcacek (Kieron Moore). But this is the kind of story where we’ll see more about them as Cam and Ray go through basic training.
Sex and Skin: There’s a shower scene where Cam is more than intrigued by what he sees.
Parting Shot: Sullivan looks straight at Cam and says, “Time to kill the enemy.” It seems that Sullivan is going to have it out for Cam, doesn’t it?
Sleeper Star: Vera Farmiga isn’t there as Cam’s mother Barbara to play a tiny role; we know she’s there to be a thorn in the side of whatever Marines she can complain to about recruiting Cameron, and she’s funny in the few scenes she’s in during the first episode.
Most Pilot-y Line: Who knew that you only needed to do three pull-ups during a Marine strength test in order to stay in the training platoon? Not that we could have done three, but that seems like a relatively low bar (pun intended) to clear.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Yes, Boots is in many ways similar to many “misfits in the military” comedies that have been a staple of TV for decades. But entertaining characters will always be the key to making a show in this genre work, and this show has plenty of them.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.