Season 1, Episode 1
Date of airing: April 26, 1988 (ABC)
Nielsen ratings information: 22.7 million viewers, 18.0 rating/29 share in Households
Written by: John Sacret Young
Directed by: Rod Holcomb
”But most of all, girls, welcome! And have a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful war.”
When Laurette arrived at China Beach for the first time, all she wanted was to woo some men, essentially wanting to have some luck with them during the nightly hours after her musical performances. She called it her “men-o-rama.” Men everywhere. But what I came to realize by the end of the episode was that most of the men in this country Laurette hoped to score with were just boys. Laurette hoped to find men, and only met kids – a lesson learned the hard way about where Laurette really went in the search for fame and love.
On the other side of the coin, Cherry met some “men,” and they turned out to be corrupted assholes who probably deserved to be met by a bullet from the gun of a Viet Cong. Cherry traveled to Vietnam in the hopes of finding her brother, but what she really found was hell on Earth. Granted, when Laurette did her part in helping out McMurphy, she also got to see what life in Vietnam looks like. Cherry and Laurette's experiences during their first couple of days may have been different, but it's the same horror they are now in.
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| Welcoming all the girls to hell on Earth. |
