Okay, I’m a slow streamer. I don’t binge. It often takes two nights to watch a show, with a few “down” nights in between when I’m reading or doing something else instead.
But I finished watching Boots on Netflix last night.
I’m still not sure what to make of it. Like many original shows on Netflix, I shrugged through episodes. Things were just okay much of the time. It felt like how I watched Survivor back in the day. I always wanted to skip over the challenges and get to the whispered camp negotiations and the episode-ending tribal council. The challenges were just contrived nonsense with Jeff Probst yelling the occasionally cautionary remark.
Same for Boots. I’ve already seen An Officer and a Gentleman. I know that military training involves a lot of camp activities on steroids (e.g., sink or swim; obstacle course; target shooting) and, instead of Jeff Probst, you’ve got drill sergeants who are built like tanks yelling at you. Belittling you. Saying things that should put them in HR if this were the corporate world. The berating gets old. It becomes an annoying buzz, like that of a mosquito swirling around your head in the dark at three in the morning. You listen; it’s grating; you want to smack the source of the noise to stop it.
Yeah, so I’m not the target viewer for Boots. A boot camp feels like too much testosterone, too much bravado, too much negativity. I’d have checked out even before having to put on the leather boots. But this, I was told online, was a gay show.
I tried to focus on the personalities. In my mind, the show comes down to three characters: Cam Cope, played by Max Heizer, his best friend Ray McAffey (Liam Oh) and Sergeant Sullivan (Max Parker). The rest of the characters are caricatures—the guy who just might be crazy, the guy who desperately wants to call home, the guy who’s too aggressive, the guy who alienates his mates. With all the focus on drills, there isn’t the opportunity to get to know the supporting cast.
I’ve said the drill scenes carried zero interest for me, haven’t I?
Cope is a likable, passive guy—perfect for the “yes, sir” mindset of the military, but too scrawny to look like he’s got a shot at becoming a Marine. He’s also gay, a fact known only to his best friend who fully accepts him. This is 1990, by the way, a time when George H.W. Bush was president, a time before Clinton’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell…a time of just Don’t. Being gay meant living in a fortified closet or a dishonorable discharge.
McAffey has daddy issues, his father having served in the military and raising his son with a stereotypical stoicism that might serve him well on the battlefield but doesn’t make a good parent. McAffey must excel. He must exceed.
Sergeant Sullivan just has issues. Early on, he seems to zero in on Cope as someone unworthy of being a Marine. (“Why are you still here?”) SPOILER ALERT: He’s closeted and anytime his gayness is in danger of being detected, he becomes a masculine prick, taking things out on the recruits (or someone else). I found Max Parker a stunning screen presence—enough so that I scanned his Instagram and discovered he’s a gay Brit with a husband—but he’s got a challenging role, most of his scenes played out with his guard up, emotion limited to whatever we can see in his stunning eyes or in a slight cheek twitch. Every time there’s anything vulnerable about Sullivan to make the viewer like or relate to him, it’s followed by a scene to make you hate him. Is he a compelling character? Not really. I may have been too distracted by Parker’s good looks to appreciate any nuance in his portrayal of Sullivan.
Once you strip away all the drills of boot camp and the obligatory let’s-get-drunk and let’s-throw-food scenes, Boots boils down to: Why the hell would a scrawny gay guy want to be a Marine? Cope seems like a remarkably composed person. He’s been bullied but he seems like a survivor, albeit on the meek side. We’re told several times he’s “smart enough,” which my biased mind interprets as he can do so many other things. I was a meek, semi-closeted gay guy in 1990, too. Would enlisting and beating up another guy in a sanctioned fight have made me a better person, more of a man…someone who won’t be bullied anymore? Somehow I think I would have felt more ashamed. But then, I never aspired to be “more of a man.” Testosterone was never going to drive me. Sometimes coming out involves coming to terms with what you are and what you’re not.
But Cope chose the Marines. Go figure. He’s a likable character. I cared what happened to him. That’s something.
The most interesting character to me wasn’t a part of boot camp at all. The very talented Vera Farmiga is almost wasted as Cope’s single mom, Barbara. She herself is a caricature, a cluelessly bad mother in dowdy clothes, but Farmiga makes the most of the few scenes she’s in. I’d enjoy just watching a reel of her work in the show. I doubt I’ll tune in for what is set up for a second season, but I hope there will be more time to explore the mother-son relationship. If written right, that’s where the magic will be.
Boots is based on the memoir, The Pink Marine, by Greg Cope White. I suspect I’d have enjoyed the book more but, no, I’m not going back and reading it now. I have a seemingly endless reading list and I’ve had my fill of military storytelling, thank you very much.
