What am I Watching on DVD Right Now?

I often keep strange hours, in part because my cat is 18.5 years old (old enough to vote but they won't register her, damn electrons people, but she can drink next year) and that my bunny is awake starting at 3 am in the morning.  That means pretty much my day starts at 3 am, and sometime sends at 1 am the following morning.  Yeah well, I know how to power nap so to speak.
So while my rabbit is out or I am waiting to feed my cat or give her antibiotcs (often I don't measure time in minutes or seconds for this, but episodes of TV shows I am watching on DVD).  Let me say that I really prefer to watch TV as seasons of DVDs because you get so much more out of it.  I would've never been able to watch Lost if not being able to watch episodes back to back and season to season.
So when I am upstairs, I am watching these days China Beach.  For those not alive in the late 80s, after Platoon came out, it generated interest in the war of the forgotten heroes as I refer to it (I find it so sad that so many vets were never welcomed home from Vietnam), two shows came out, Tour of Duty (one I have seen) and China Beach.  China Beach is about what goes on at a military hospital in Vietnam during the height of the US involvement and is based on a true story.  The gist is that there is nurse, Colleen McMurphy, and it is about her and the people there, their struggles, their love interests, and the general toll of the war on people.  In the first show, it is the end of her tour, but due to getting so used to being in the war, decided to stay for another tour because she felt she couldn't leave.  The one really good episode is where she got to go home and had to decide to desert or go back.  Many shows have tried to cover this war well, as have movies, but this one in particular was written in a way such that you feel what the characters are feeling. I often come away being somewhat down, but it gives me an insight into the toll of war and what it does to both that are strong characters and ones that struggle more.  It gives me a bit more realism to my characters when I put them in difficult situations (for instance, making an immortal face his mortality and coming death).  Overall I would recommend it, and until recently you could only buy the entire series as one set, but now the first 3 seasons are out individually and the fourth set for release on late september.
Now when I do have the little red bunny out for his running, I am watching none other than Hawaii Five-O, not the new one, but the original with Jack Lord (and his hair of course).  Yes it started in 1968 and ended in 1980, and you are probably wondering how it hold up.  In my opinion, it holds up really well.  Yes the cars and style of filming can now be considered cheesy, but shit, having watched to almost the end of season 7, it has one of the highest body counts I have ever seen in a cop show ever, even compared to modern shows like NYPD Blue.  Of 24 episodes in a season, there is at least a 75% chance a bad guy gets killed.  Also, McGarret was no non-sense type of guy, and sometimes there are some disconnects with stuff in the plots of the episodes once and awhile, but hey, not even modern shows are perfect.  Give this a try if you haven't yet, go out and get the first season.

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