Haze, Gray, and Underway...

Alright, does everyone have their schedules out? Good. Go ahead and set aside 10 hours to watch PBS's documentary series Carrier. It doesn't have to be 10 consecutive hours per se, but I won't hold it against you if you get sucked in...

Seriously, this series is fantastic. It chronicles an entire 6 month tour of duty of the USS Nimitz from March to November 2005. An aircraft carrier is an amazing piece of engineering, but it's also a floating city with everything from garbage people to admirals, from fighter jocks to nuclear physicists. I was expecting lots of amazing footage of the ship in action (I was not disappointed), but I did not expect to be drawn in by the stories of the people that sail her. The thing that struck me the most is that a vast majority of the crew members are literally kids. They're 18 and 19 year olds who, in many cases, joined the navy to get away from less than perfect home situations. Some of them are immature and naive, but they've all been trained to make the ship function safely and efficiently. They handle enough ordinance to lay waste to an entire country and launch and recover multimillion dollar aircraft on a pitching carrier deck.

Throughout the series I found myself empathizing with them, vehemently disagreeing with them, and generally respecting the hell out of quite a few of them. The entire series plays like an epic drama (with a good bit of humour mixed in ) and I can't recommend it highly enough. Despite the 10 episode length, the entire thing is tightly produced, constantly watchable, and mixes in some good music to boot. Although some of the most interesting parts have to do with rank and file sailors, my favorite scene comes from the episode entitled "Rite of Passage". It's even cooler when you've gotten to know the people involved over the course of the previous episodes, but I'll share it here anyway. Part 1 is scary. Part 2 is downright terrifying but contains a fair amount of sheer bad-assery at the end.

Pitching Deck Pt. 1

Pitching Deck Pt. 2

P.S. If you have Netflix, you can Watch it Instantly for free