Bridgerton Squid Game

 

Time to avoid anything Christmas-related (the timing hereof to the contrary notwithstanding) and instead review two one-season Netflix series, “Bridgerton” and “Squid Game”.

Bridgerton.  A few months ago I tuned into “Saturday Night Live” and the guest host was Rege-Jean Page, a handsome black guy.  No clue who he was.  Later I ascertained that the Netflix has a show called “Bridgerton”, set in an alternate 1813 London where Queen Charlotte – obviously of German descent – somehow became black, and likewise the most eligible bachelor, some sharp guy with an anarchronistic perpetual five o’clock shadow courtesy of modern electric razors, is likewise of African descent.  To make matters worse, almost all the white males on the show are of extremely poor ethics.   If you’re amused or offended by this recent business of turning white characters (fictional or historical) black en masse (e.g. “Foundation”) fair warning there’s more here as well.  Naturally the villains remain white. 

Daphne Bridgerton (Phoebe Dinosaur) has just turned 15 or 16 or whatever and is now being pimped out by her family to whichever ugly, repulsive noble from a prestigious family wants to claim her as his own.  Aghast at the frontrunners, she befriends Simon Bassett, the Duke of Hastings (the aforementioned Page), who himself is trying to avoid being set up.  His “deal” is that his father was a major league asshole who mistreated him so badly, that on his father’s deathbed he swore a vow never to have children and continue his father’s bloodline.  So the two of them pretend to hook up with each other to satisfy their respective families’ crusade to marry them off.

Naturally this is originally intended purely for show and naturally – can we see it coming from the next galaxy – they wind up falling in love with each other.  Sorry to spoil it for anyone of you.  Oh, and there’s a gossip columnist, Lady Whistledown, who scoops the dirt on everyone.  Her name is an alias, causing rampant speculation as to her identity, and even the Queen herself wants to know who she is.  Plus there’s a babe who got knocked up by a British officer – down in Spain fighting Napoleon – who her family wants to marry off before her pregnancy become obvious.  And her hypothetical husband (and his entire family) is supposed to be too clueless to do the math when their first child pops out less than nine months after the wedding.

There’s some sex, as tastefully simulated as you might imagine on a show on Netflix and not Pornhub. 

Modestly enjoyable.  Season 2 is on the way for those of you who enjoyed it more than I did.

Squid Game.  South Korean miniseries about a bizarre game show on a remote island.  They manage to kidnap 456 players to participate in this thing.  It’s a series of games, some blatantly childrens’ games (e.g. red light green light) where the winners survive to the next round, and the losers wind up in gift-box designed coffins and into the crematoria.  As the games progress and the players become fewer, the pot grows larger.  Players are permitted to opt out at any point, however they will forfeit any winnings if they do so.  The staff members all wear pink jumpsuits and black masks, there’s a Front Man with a different mask – ostensibly the Manager but somehow not the person ultimately behind the whole thing. 

What’s really interesting is that after the first round, everyone is sent home.  Then they’re given invitations to return – 100% voluntary.  And sure enough, all of them do.  Each of them has some compelling reason to decide to continue, mostly because they screwed up somehow and ended up billions of noodles (whatever South Korean currency is) in debt, and might otherwise simply kill themselves in despair absent the chance of fixing everything in these lethal games.  Nominally they go by numbers, but as they get to know each other, they learn each other’s names.  Frequently the games require the players to choose teams, but they have to do so before they learn what the game is. 

A cabal of elite douchebags are also behind the scenes betting on the games, and a Seoul cop manages to infiltrate the complex, which is plausible given that all of the staff members wear the black masks. 

Some of the more colorful characters: a gangster with tattoos; a cynical older woman who briefly hooks up with him; a cute chick from North Korea trying to smuggle her family to South Korea or China; an elite business school grad who somehow managed to lose billions in noodles through incompetent trades; a Pakistani guy; and an old man no one can figure out why he’s there.  The show does a good job of making us empathize with desperate game show contestants.  You don’t need to be Korean (north or south) to relate to this whole shebang.

Warning, though: as you might imagine on a show where half the contestants die in every round, it’s fairly violent.

My Way and 9th Company

Now it’s time for another blog on obscure foreign movies, and as you may expect by now, they’re about WAR, which is one of my favorite topics.

The first is a South Korean film about World War II. 

My Way.  A Korean – Jun-Shik Kim (JSK) – and Japanese – Tatsuo Hasegawa (TH) start off as friends/rivals.  Both are good marathon runners and compete against each other in the mid-30’s leading up to the war, even trying out for the Japanese Olympic team, i.e. the 1940 games which were supposed to take place in Tokyo, but which were cancelled due to the war.  Tatsuo is the grandson of the Japanese military governor.  Korea was a Japanese colony from 1895 (the first Sino-Japanese War) until 1945.  The movie depicts the Japanese as arrogant and mistreating the Koreans as second class.

            They both end up in the Japanese Army in 1938. Tatsuo is an esteemed officer, while JSK is a lowly private; he and his fellow Koreans in the unit were conscripted as punishment and suffer the abuse you might expect.  TH and JSK don’t get along.

            Part I:  Up in Manchuria, the Japanese bump ugly against the Red Army.   “Banzai” suicide charges aren’t enough to defeat several waves of Soviet tanks (which look like T-26s).

            Part II:  The pair wind up in Siberia in a Soviet POW camp.  One of the Korean soldiers is now the block leader and browbeats the previously abusive Japanese, now POWs.   TH and JSK still don’t get along. The Germans invade, so the Red Army comes by looking for warm bodies to fight the Nazis.  Facing imminent execution for a prison riot, our two buddies quickly agree.

            Part III:  Stalingrad?  Sverdlovsk?  Who knows.  In some battered Soviet city, the Red Army schmucks are thrown up against a wall of Germans with MG42s and other fun stuff; from the timeline it’s still 1941, so the Germans are still very much in the game.  And the stereotypical Commissar is right behind them to shoot anyone retreating.  SOMEHOW, both guys survive this…slip into German greatcoats and uniforms…and trudge through the snow to the German lines.  They get split up at this point for the next three years, each not knowing if the other has survived, although JSK did help TH survive the battle and helped him escape.

            Part IV:  These two Asians in German uniform who speak no German eventually wind up in an Ostbatallion (mixed Wehrmacht unit of Arabs and other miscellaneous Russian ethnic groups all thrown together because the Germans have no clue who they are, only that they’re not European) at Normandy in June 1944, and finally reunite.  Guess what happens! 

An epic story, very long, but intriguing to see what happens to these two, sometimes at odds, sometimes rivals, but ultimately friends.  They have to depend on each other to survive in a brutal war on three different fronts in three different uniforms.

The second film is a Russian deal, in Russian with English subtitles, taking place in Afghanistan.

9^th Company (DVD).  This was in the previews which came with “My Way”.  Imagine your typical French Foreign Legion film:  various disreputable types flee to the FFL to escape either justice or boredom, get sent to the godforsaken desert of North Africa, and wind up practically wiped out by angry Arab tribesmen.   Got it?

            Ok, now instead of the French Foreign Legion, it’s the Red Army in 1988 – towards the very end of the Soviet Union.  Instead of North Africa, it’s Afghanistan.  Instead of Justin Bieber tribesmen, it’s the mujahedeen.   But almost exactly the same.  Some things never change, do they? 

            The funny thing about this film is that back in 1988, we’d be rooting for the mujahedeen against the Red Army.   Nowadays, knowing the “muj” (as the Russians call them) morphed into the Taliban?  Eh, not so much.  Most of the Russian soldiers are as sympathetic as Paul Baumer & his buddies in “All Quiet”, or the Band of Brothers gang, or any other close-knit squad of misfit soldiers who only want to survive.

B-29 Bomber

I’ve gotten addicted to those “combat missions” books available at steep discounts at Barnes & Noble.  I’ve already written about the B-17 and B-24 bombers, the most common US bombers of World War II, and recently I picked up a third volume, B-29 Combat Missions, by Donald Nijboer and Steve Pace.  Unlike the B-17 and B-24, I can’t claim to have any uncles that I know of who flew the B-29.

The B-29 is most famous for being the bomber which dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, thereby ending World War II with Japan’s surrender.   The Enola Gay, the one which bombed Hiroshima, is on display at the Dulles Annex (Udvar-Hazy Museum) out near Dulles Airport.  Unfortunately, you can’t go into the bomber – or any of the others.  I can understand not flying around, but not getting inside?  Someone, at some museum, should set up a display bomber, whether it be B-17, B-24, or B-29, set up to allow visitors to actually get inside the plane.  I suppose at this point the planes are too rare to allow that.  Anyhow.

Due to the vast distances, mostly over water, which these planes had to travel, a very long range bomber was needed for attacks on the Japanese mainland.   Boeing developed the B-29 starting in 1942, and rushed development and production so that when operations began in June 1944, the ”bugs” were still not worked out.  In fact, B-29 losses due to engine failures and other such “snafus” exceeded losses inflicted by the Japanese; of 414 losses, 127 were due to enemy action.  A B-29 crew was more likely to be killed by the plane itself than the enemy.  During WWII a total of 3,970 B-29s were built at various plants across America.  

In addition to its higher range and payload, the B-29 also had some innovations.  The cabin was completely pressurized, and the turrets were remote controlled, allowing a much lower profile and higher accuracy.  In terms of bombing accuracy, however, the Norden bombsight was not as good as commonly claimed.  At high altitude, and with unpredictable weather and a strong jet stream, bombing Japan was hit or miss.  Sometimes they had to bomb by radar (visual sighting being the optimal method assuming the target could actually be seen).  Ultimately they decided that precision bombing was not going to happen, so the better solution was lower level night attacks focused on general areas.

Japanese cities were primarily built with wood at this time, making them particularly vulnerable to incendiary attacks.  B-29s would strike at night, with the bombardier simply dropping bombs on whatever target was not already on fire, which was simple enough to execute and remarkably effective and devastating.  Tokyo was hit especially hard.  B-29s also took part in supply missions and rescue operations.

Reaction.  Just as the aircraft carriers were, B-29s were subject to suicide attacks.  But Japanese resistance was not very impressive, least of all compared to the Luftwaffe’s night fighter forces.  Japan’s top fighter ace, Saburo Sakai, lamented the consistently negligible impact the Japanese interceptor forces had on the B-29 raids.   The B-29s were more likely to have to ditch because of unreliable engines or the planes running out of fuel, than because of damage caused by Japanese fighters or flak.

  

Korea.  The B-29 served in the Korean War too, operating from bases in Japan.  However, once the MiG-15 came into operation, B-29 missions had to be done at night, as the MiGs would slaughter the B-29s.

 Engine.  The Wright R-3350 Duplex-Cyclone.   This was an 18 cylinder radial engine, with the cylinders in two banks of 9, and a supercharger.  Total displacement was 3,347 cubic inches, but only 2,200 horsepower, or .65 HP/cubic inch.  This would be like a 350 cubic inch V8 putting out 230 HP – with a supercharger.   My L98 put out 240 HP in stock form (1992 model year), without a supercharger, though with EFI and electronic ignition, neither of which were available to aircraft designers in the 1940s; GM automotive engineers were able to achieve 1 HP/cubic inch in the late 1950s without forced induction.  Due to the tight clearance between the cowl (engine cover) and the cylinders, which were air-cooled, the engines had a bad habit of overheating, and the magnesium cases burned at extremely high temperatures, making them extremely difficult to put out.  

PPSH-41

I’ve never had the pleasure of firing this gun, or even holding one in real life, but it sure is impressive. This is the PPSh-41, the top submachine gun of the Red Army during WWII. It fired a 7.62x25mm pistol round at 900 rounds per minute. Although a 35 round box magazine was available, and was more reliable, the ubiquitous 71 round drum magazine, copied from the Finnish Suomi submachine gun, was considerably more common and popular. Approximately 6 million of them were produced during WWII, and entire units of the Red Army were equipped with it. It was the ideal weapon for close-quarters street fighting in Stalingrad, though once the distances opened up, the more advanced German Stg-44 assault rifle became more advantageous – provided there were enough Germans left alive to fire them. With a capacity advantage of more than 2 to 1 against the the Germans’ MP40 (with its 32 round box magazine), the PPSh-41 gave the already more numerous Red Army soldiers a definite edge. For their part, the Germans adapted the PPSh-41 to 9mm, and even attempted a double-stack magazine setup for the MP40, which worked as poorly as you can imagine.

After WWII, the PPSh-41 was supplied to North Koreans, Chinese, and other communist countries. Pictures circulate of rebels in Hungary in 1956 using them, and early in the Vietnam War, before the AK-47 became the standard weapon of the VC and NVA, it was used by those forces.

Remarkably, long after the AK-47 has captured our attention – thanks to the PLO and countless other terrorist groups adopting it as their signature weapon – the PPSh-41 made a comeback, in the most unlikely context. US forces in Iraq, involved in street fighting, have adopted the PPSh-41 and have been using it there - even fitting high-tech laser aiming systems obviously not available to the Red Army in WWII. Only the Danish Madsen machine gun has more staying power over the years – from 1903 to at last being retired by the military police of the state of Rio de Janeiro, in Brazil, as late as 2008.