“And I want to paint it black”…thus used to start every Wednesday night for me during my early teens. Despite the remonstrations of my grandparents that it was a ‘school night’ and the eeriness of the downstairs of my house late at night, including a wicker chair that creaked occasionally as if a passing ghost decided to take a break, nothing could keep me away from Tour of Duty. I lapped the non-stop action up, the camaraderie and the series introduced me to some of the best music I have ever heard, sparking a fascination for “have you ever seen the rain” by Creedance Clearwater Revival that I still have. That song is one of my all time favourites. 

I thought the series had some amazing characters and did really well on building on them. Zeke and Goldman’s relationship from the latter being an impetuous whippersnapper trying to lord it over the former to a healthy deferment to the formers vast experience. The empathy Zeke shows, Ruiz’s cockiness and Taylor’s wild ways. I seemed to most identify with Ruiz, probably because he was short and brown, sorta like me. We used to spend hours on the playground chatting about last night’s episode and trying to perfect the ‘fist handshake. ’All this was so intoxicating to a teenage kid and of course the guns, bombs, explosions and the occasional Viet hooker on display made the show utterly irresistible. That said some serious issues were covered, mental instability, the backlash to the war, etc. but this mostly enjoyed only a bit of my interest. 

Why the sudden bout of nostalgia? Well I went and bought the first two seasons on DVD and started watching them. Even from the cold light of my 25 year old eyes, the series still has magic. None of the original music is on the DVD’s (some pissy licensing issue); the special effects are absolutely terrible compared to what I have seen in the intervening decade. But the stories are still strong and Zeke is, well, Zeke.

On a side note it appears the second series was shot behind my current house where there is currently a paintball range. The hill they fly over umpteen times looks oddly familiar despite it being occasionally near Saigon and sometimes the border of Laos in the series. There’s also the river they cross many times, a similar one which runs close to the residence. I’m pretty damn sure that where they shot it is the paintball range and that would be sweetly ironic. Now I just have to get series three, oh yeah if you like Vietnam War movies, forget Platoon, watch Apocalypse Now, Redux. It’s the most acid trip movie I have ever seen, especially the tiger scene, trust me, you won’t regret watching it.