Obligatory disclaimer: Happy Easter! Yes, real life still
sucks, but Easter has nothing to do with real life, so enjoy your Easter! Or
your Sunday, period. What next?
Firstly, on the topic of real life – people were telling me
yesterday that while ibises and spoonbills share a family, and both of them
share an order with the heron family, the storks are a separate order of birds’
altogether, and got nothing to do with the other three. Fair enough. Evolution
itself is a mess, and convergent evolution only muddies things down, somewhat.
Just look at – the jellyfish. These critters, also known as
the medusas, are the free-floating stage of several invertebrate groups, none
of which is closely related to each other at all. Even on the layperson stage,
there are ‘jellyfish’ that aren’t really jellyfish, such as the Portuguese
man-o’-war, you know? And on a professional level…do not even go there! What
next?
…So, yesterday, I got to watch yet another DW episode, this
one being the ‘Nazi Waffen SS vs. Viet Cong”. In layperson terms – ‘Nazis vs.
Communists’, and what can be said about this episode?
It was completely out of DW’s comfort zone, that is what!
The final simulation, (let us start there), was really the American G.I.’s vs.
the Viet Cong, and the latter have lost.
…Actually, the latter were set up to lose; in particular, in
the long-range weapon comparison, the Viet Cong were given the MAT-49 firearms,
which were inferior to the SS’s MP-28. Fine, but in the S2 finale, which put
the U.S. against the Israeli commandoes, the Viet Cong had a cameo, and they
had AKMs there instead, because of course they had! The AKM machine and
submachine guns appeared in all 3 seasons of DW, and they were always superior to
whatever their rival were; if they’d appeared in this episode of DW, the Viet
Cong would’ve been more likely to win instead.
The rest of the weapons… it was a mixed bag – punji stakes
against a flamethrower; a land mine vs. a grenade & a land mine combo; and
a Mauser vs. a TT. Yes, the weapons for those two combatants were all over the
place…but this is why this DW episode was rather fun to watch; but after it was
aired, DW never really attempted to do something like that again, possibly
until the S3 episode ‘Ivan the Terrible vs. Hernan Cortez’, but we’ll talk
about that episode some other time.
So, why did the Viet Cong lose? I will not tell a lie – I
have no idea, and that brings us back to the comfort zone. See, normally, after
a DW episode aired, there was an online ‘aftermath’ episode, which would
feature two of the show’s regular hosts, as well as a representative from both
of the titular teams. For that episode, however, instead of one of the regular
hosts in question, we got some other member of the DW team, who was never seen
before or after this episode – and with his overall appearance of a stereotypical
highwayman, it is easy to see why. So, why did he appear on that episode?
…Probably because he was the sponsor of that episode, (as
well as of DW in general?). Yes, this theory smacks of conspiracy theories, but
the fact is that for all of its’ positive aspects, DW had remained a flawed
show, and in the end, this was why it got cancelled – it tried to play the real life version of GoT, and it backfired, with the show ending on ‘Vampires vs. Zombies’
note. Seriously, why not ‘Dragons vs. Griffins’ instead? The two face-offs are
not that different from each other in terms of realism! Anything else?
Sadly no. DW is gone, and while the jellyfish are still around,
and on occasion, they are wreaking havoc on our marine ecosystems, the latter
is our fault. COVID-19 – I have no idea, the occasional conspiracy theory
aside, but most ecological disasters are certainly our fault. Did I mention
that real life sucks, Easter notwithstanding? Yeah…
Well, this is it for now – see you all soon!
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