Date of airing: October 22, 1995 (FOX)
Nielsen ratings information: 9.3 million viewers, 6.1/10 in Households
written by: Glen Morgan, James Wong
directed by: Charles Martin Smith
It was a surprisingly good episode, considering the mostly annoying titular guest character and his behavior of being the hugest dick in the universe while also making sure that his behavior had purpose and reason. While I liked the tragic backstory of Colonel Raymond Butts, I disliked his cocky and suicidal attitude. The former could have made for a wonderfully emotional episode by itself, but the latter ruined it somehow, even if it feels slightly authentic that someone who has lost everything and everyone would behave in such a way. Although an argument can be made that the writers deliberately downplayed Butts's suicidal tendencies – it was only mentioned once via Shane ("He's not planning on coming back."), but other than that, Butts's suicidal tendencies looked like they were part of his story, but then the network got ahold of the script and demanded it to be cut.
But people like Butts I always hated during my two-year stint in the German military (the ones power-tripping, pushing their soldiers to the brink of exhaustion and madness), and there certainly were a few of them, even though they did not have the suicidal tendencies due to surviving a massacre they should not have come out of alive. Then again, the destructive nature of Butts leading the Wildcards into what almost sounded like a suicide mission seemed like an intriguing premise. Not only was Butts responsible for bringing the five core members of the 58th Squadron together and having them perform at their absolute best, but I appreciated the effect Butts had on the five-header, culminating in the interesting imagery of floating pancakes, giving Butts, who just wanted to be back with his own men even if that meant he had to die, the final salute he deserved.
 |
| A question no marine wants to answer truthfully: Would you die for us? |
What I liked about the episode though was that Butts was not leading the 58th into a suicide mission at all. The secret operation was not Butts trying to clean up his mess or cover up the mistakes he may have made that led to the deaths of his men, it was just cleaning up the aftermath of a Chigs assault, or maybe even the save of a handful of Hammerheads, because maybe they cost a lot of arms and legs to build and Butts’s superiors thought that it might be best to get five functioning, pilot-less Hammerheads back into service. Granted, Butts could have told the 58th what the mission was instead of pulling the "classified" card, circling around his choice of alcoholic beverage, and trying to play games with his new group of Marines, but the end of that story was a simple retrieve and return, with a bit of Chigs action included. Because the Chigs are still a threat in this series universe, they needed to attack the 58th.
Although I do have to say that the way the 58th defeated the dozen-or-so Chigs
seemed kind of absurd. Not that I was expecting a BATTLESTAR
GALACTICA-type outer space battle, but the 58th and Butts had it way too easy demolishing the Chigs, even after Butts told the 58th that this was essentially a fight that was not going to end well for a few of them. All this hype of the Chigs being highly-skilled enemy combatants, and they were dispatched with a couple of easy shots from a batch of fresh Marines...
I also liked the first half of the episode, starting with Butts making his cockiness known to the Saratoga crew, ending with the finale of the paintball “game” that apparently was also an audition for Butts to take charge of the 58th. Maybe there should be an entire show that is set in the world of paintball battles, because it was enjoyable to see the 58th getting slaughtered by Butts, who might have had a little too much fun killing off the Marines one by one.
Of course, explanations are needed as to how
Butts was able to drop all the cockpits from where he was: on a dropped
cockpit. There was no way he could even see what was going on with
Nathan at the time, because Butts was on a dropped cockpit (or at least below the floor of the cockpits), in
the dark, waiting to rise from the darkness and shoot Nathan in the
head. By the way: Getting a paintball in the head apparently does not hurt in the future.
 |
| This is a human standoff on an alien planet. |
Meanwhile, I was missing a greater conflict between Butts and McQueen, as the former turned into the lead character of the episode and the latter was put to the sidelines. It was apparent that McQueen had his problems with Butts, but he did not do anything about it. Maybe because McQueen did not want to overrule a Colonel or the entire military by going against what he thought were proper orders (I was already questioning those orders myself), but maybe McQueen was removed from the final third of the episode was because the writers did not know how to include him into the story. At the beginning of the hour, I was wondering if this episode was centered on McQueen, because it started with the conflict between him and Butts, but that story was over and done quickly. Maybe this might have been a better choice of story for me.
