Having waited 2 weeks to watch a new Combat episode, I was excited to see what kind of epic greatness the show would come at me with next, and I was ready to have my expectations blown away once again. How could they go wrong? Well, they went wrong all right because this is one of the worst episodes of the entire series. Let me back up and explain. This episode aired on Easter Sunday, 1964, so people, even fans of military shows, weren't really in the mood for watching a gorefest on a holy holiday. The episode is meant to be taken in jest, but instead, it falls flat on its face for numerous reasons which I'll explain shortly. The episode begins with Hanley and the other soldiers (with the noticeable absence of Saunders) discovering a group of nuns in a destroyed town. Their leader has just died, and the eldest nun, Sister Therese, wants to bury her. Hanley gets Caje to explain to them why they can't do that because they've received news that Germans are closing in from 3 sides. The squad and the nuns escape, manage to elude german patrols and vehicles, and eventually come to a farmhouse. They decide to rest here for a bit, but sometime during the night, someone notices Therese is gone, having gone back to the town to search for the titular "Infant of Prague", which turns out to be a statuette of Jesus as a child. She believes if she finds it, nothing bad will happen to her. Caje and Hanley set off in pursuit, and find that she has found the statue in the presence of a german officer. The german tries talking to her in French, and eventually swats the statue out of her hands, causing its head to break off. Therese cries hysterically until Hanley manages to kill the german. They get the squad medic to repair the statue with tape, and the rest of the squad holes up in a building in the town, where they notice that a large force of german vehicles and infantry is closing in. Badly outnumbered, Hanley calls in artillery on the german positions, but his building is being hit by friendly fire. The squad leaves the building, taking the nuns with them, and flees into the woods. Therese realizes they forgot to take the statue with them, so the medic tries to go back and retrieve it. Unfortunately, that's out of the question since a long german convoy is coming down the street. The medic manages to make it back to where Hanley is and tells him the germans are about to attack from another angle. Hanley tells the radioman they're taking heavy damage and need air support now, and finally, medium bombers arrive and destroy the german positions. Finally, Sister Therese tells Caje she hopes she didn't cause him or his squad any problems. This was frustratingly bad to watch. I don't think I've ever seen an outright bad Combat episode, but this one fits the bill alright. It's not horrible since it still contains action and a lot of actual newsreel footage from ww2 which is always a pleasure to look at, but the problems run deeper than this. I don't even know where to begin. For one, nothing really gets accomplished in the episode. The squad picks up a bunch of dead weight that don't contribute to their efforts, and Therese habitually jeopardizes all their lives by searching for the statue completely alone. She's always getting into trouble and the men have to keep her safe and a part of the team (because that makes sense). Secondly, I don't really like the inclusion of religion in shows like this, since even if the producers mean well by it, including religion in pretty much anything almost guarantees an argument of some kind. At the time this was made, JFK was killed not even a year earlier, so Catholics were strictly off limits for being made fun of on TV. I can understand this, but that still doesn't support the argument that this episode isn't bad. Overall, I really can't believe I'm writing this, but I hated to watch this and I'm surprised I had the patience to sit through it. Ironically, Jeanette Nolan's name doesn't even appear in the intro to let the audience know she plays the obnoxious, elderly nun who always gets into trouble. It's like the show itself just pretends she's not there, and for good reason. As for Vic, maybe he was thankful for sitting this one out.
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