Commando du désert

This show is escapist entertainment because it is supposed to be escapist entertainment. And that just happens to be why I like this show so much. The plots were short and simple. They HAD to be since the show was only a half hour long (not a full hour like COMBAT or 12 O CLOCK HIGH). So in a nutshell, the Rat Patrol came, they raided and then they were off. In 30 minutes, there was not much more they could do in the time allotted. True, some of the episodes are kind of silly but other episodes are really good.

Unlike most war related features of the time (tv shows, movies, etc), the Germans were not depicted as villains, but as the opposing force. The Germans were lead by Captain Deitrich, who actually respected the Rat Patrol and on more than one occasion, teamed up with the Rat Patrol on a truce. One truce, for example, was declared to rescue an Arab girl who had fallen into a well.

The main selling point of this show was that it was in color! Another selling point was to promote one of the stars (Lawrence Casey) as a sort of teen-zeen idol. It was a tactic that would work until 1968, when the public would quickly lose interest in anything war related and THE RAT PATROL would drop suddenly in the ratings war and get the cancellation ax later that year.

I grew up watching Rat Patrol. Great series. I don't know how many plastic machine guns me and my buds went through pretending we were Rat Patrol. Had to have been a lot! I'm just cracking up over some of the serious comments. Yea it makes the Nazi's look bad just like Hogans Heros. And yes the story's are simple and sometimes outrageous. Gee Wiz! Get a grip! Can't wait to hear your reviews of the original Batman not being real police work and unfair to penguins.

I am a child of the seventies having grown up in and around the time and as a kid I can remember this being on in the afternoon and played on Saturday afternoon's. Two of my earliest best friends in this world were named Korey and Coy and we would watch this with great enthusiasm being only age 7 to 9 years old. My father at the time owned a jeep and after the show aired we would go outside and play the Rat Patrol. I always seemed to pick Tully to play because he always drove the jeep and we would spend an hour or two just making up our own adventures as we went along. My memories of this are quite strong when I still watch this series as it reflects a time when I had no worries in the world. I am not a violent person because of this series even for all the explosions and gun play it just makes feel good to watch it and because of that it truly is one of my favorite series of all time.

I thought "The Rat Patrol" was pretty implausible. I mean, four guys tooling around the desert in a couple of jeeps with two .50-caliber machine guns taking on troop convoys, armored columns, and anything else the Germans cared to offer. And with all the lead thrown their way, the Rat Patrol always came through unscathed. (Extraordinary. Didn't the German Army teach its men to shoot during basic training?!) This show was essentially escapist stuff, and not based on military reality. I watched the show because of the actors' performances, while discounting its implausible premise. (I thought that Christopher George as Sergeant Troy was pretty good.)

I hate it when people take a show like Rat Patrol, and try to show how smart they are when it comes to being a critic. It wasn't intended to win awards, or be a dramatic masterpiece. One of these reviews used the term escapism, like that single fact makes this show a disgrace. Well, that happens to be why I love this show, and many others from the the 50's, 60's, and 70's. This was before the loosely used term "reality TV", was even close to being thought of. I like to turn on the TV and be entertained by a simple show, that knows it's there to entertain me and take me away for awhile.As a kid I used to stay up until mid-night in the late 70's to watch Rat Patrol. I grew up in the D/FW(Texas) area, and this used to come on after the local Saturday Night Wrestling. And I had a little 13in. black&white TV. I loved it. And now I have both sets of DVD's and I'm over joyed that it's in color! So long live the Rat Patrol!!!