Lots of fun however, it was not realistic

SipteaHighTea

I love the show because it show all the beautiful American female naval personnel. When one of McHale's men was court-martial, Ensign Parker who was the defense attorney called for a witness, and this witness was a beautiful blonde naval officer with great legs that all the men on the court-martial board look at her.

The show was not realistic in portraying Navy life. At a TV interview, Ernest Borgine stated that Secretary of the Navy talked to him and stated that McHale Navy helped with the recruitment of young people into the Navy because those young people saw the show and wanted a commander like Commander McHale. I wonder how many of them got a rude, crude shock at what Navy life was really like. First of all, many officers did not care about the men particularly minorities and women since a good number of officers came from prominent rich families. Second of all, you usually did not have a close relationship between officers and men because military regulations forbid it unless you were aboard those riverboats during the Vietnam War. Thirdly, you were not allow to express your views in the military because then you would be charge with disrespect to an officer or to a chief petty officer or have some other phony baloney charge thrown at you just to shut you up or throw you out of the service. It was no wonder why the Navy had very serious racial problems and leadership problems aboard ships,during the Vietnam War. Admiral Zumwalt called in a whole bunch of Navy Admirals and Marine Generals and read the riot act about their failure to provide proper leadership in accepting minorities into the military and treating the enlisted men better respect. The admirals and generals hated Zumwalt's remarks and many of them complain to the press behind his back. One naval officer stated that Zumwalt's style of leadership was long overdue compare to the harsh, choking leadership of yesterday. Finally, you have episodes of the PT-73 crew dancing with the Navy nurses. In real life, such a thing could not exist nor be tolerate because the PT-73 crew was mostly enlisted men while the nurses were always officers; therefore, there was no fraternization between officers (nurses) and enlisted men.

I thought I had seen all of the McHale Navy episodes. I did not know that the last season they had transfer to the European Operations. At least, if they were operating in the Aegean Sea off Greece, they would have been subject to air attacks by the German Luftwaffe and fought gun battles with the E-Boats. The only episode I saw them fight against the Germans was where there was a German U-Boat that came into the South Pacific to be re-fuel by the Japanese Navy. The TV show ratings would have fallen to a all time low because the PT-73 crew could no longer do their illegal operations like running a pearl operation, illegal card games, distilled brooze, or selling real/fake Japanese items when they were in the South Pacific. In Europe, there would be too much competition from the Italian organized crime, other Allied soldiers running their own illgal enterprises, and dealing with the Italian police and Allied Military Police. Even if they ran their own enterprises, if they double cross their clients, the Allied soldiers would either put them in the hospital or the grave. If they tried cheating the various resistance movements in Italy and the Balkans, the guerillas would turn the crew over to the Allied authorities, killed them when the crew was not looking, or would contact the Germans about the PT-73 pending operations, so the Germans killed or capture the crew. I wonder how come the last season, they did not transfer the crew to late 1944/early 1945, where McHale's crew would be involved in the American invasion of the Phillippines? At least, they could do some of the illegal activities while still doing their jobs.

score 9/10

SipteaHighTea 7 April 2008

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1853934/