Who knew Vietnam was so depressing?

Some brilliant fellow posted an episode of China Beach in alt.binaries.multimedia, and having not seen an episode of that show since its original run 16 years ago, I had to download it.

What a excellent/terrible idea!

It's been half a lifetime, so I'd forgotten the two most important things about the show:

1) Dana Delany in a bathing suit ...



and 2) China Beach is the most damnably depressing show in existence.

Likeable characters live together and strive for happiness and are rebuffed, and then return home individually and are similarly thwarted for decades thereafter, only this time they're thwarted and alone. Nothing is ever resolved satisfactorily. Ideal romantic partners are kept apart by fear, inaction, and plain ol' circumstance. Ricki Lake appears in a couple of episodes and survives, while beloved characters are killed outright. The theme of the series seems to be that in life there is never resolution, merely continuation, and if you're unlucky enough to want something more than you can have, you'll forever want it and never get it, so just enjoy the friends you have while you have them because you won't have them forever.

I suppose I can draw shaky parallels between my own situation and the China Beach-ers', but any such connection would be of questionable benefit. In two years I am gone from here, and gone alone, headed for excitement and disappointment hundreds or thousands of miles away. The last thing I need is to be reminded that these years will be as heartbreaking in the future as they are joyous now.

Man, what a great show.