LAST NIGHT on “Survivor,” 14 unattractive exhibitionists tussled and jockeyed for position, all hoping to last 39 days on an island and win $1 million. This Saturday night, on “Surviving West Point,” seven young kids will work together, all hoping to last four years at the famed military academy and win the chance to fight for their country. You tell me which reality show sounds more compelling.
Surviving West Point debuts on the National Geographic Channel this weekend (Saturday, 8:00 p.m.), and it’s an unprecedented look into the venerable school. In July, 2001, West Point allowed a documentary film crew to follow the incoming plebe class through its first year. The filmmakers focus on seven of these young students.
The first two episodes of “Surviving West Point” take place during the summer of 2001. Long before classes are scheduled to begin, new cadets are brought to the Point to be indoctrinated into military life. On R-Day, the 1,189 freshmen are shuttled from station to station, all the while being harassed by upperclassmen. The shouting and the insults are hard enough for the new kids. But unlike the touchy-feely group grope that comprises freshmen orientation at every other college in America, the new cadets are under strict orders not to talk to one another. It’s clear that the isolation is much harder to bear than the abuse.
In the second episode, the cadets march off to Beast Barracks, the six-week basic training that whips them into Army shape. And here, there’s a small surprise: While Beast certainly looks more daunting than anything the kids at, say, Florida State, will have thrown at them, it doesn’t really look that bad. The new cadets wear shorts, T-shirts, and sneakers as they make their way through obstacle courses and learn to rappel. And there seems to be a lot of New Army attitude on display; the instructors sound more like Joe Paterno than R. Lee Ermey. A friend of mine who graduated from West Point in the ’50s tells me that his class wore wool slacks and long-sleeve shirts and boots. He recalled how, on one march up a ski slope, one of the older cadets used the antenna from a Jeep to whip faltering plebes on the back of the neck.
It’s not clear, however, that this softening is necessarily detrimental to the mission of West Point. The academy claims that it wants to manufacture not just warriors, but leaders, and it will be interesting to watch what happens to the class of 2005. At first glance, the kids that the show focuses on seem interesting, but no more special than any other collection of freshmen at a competitive college. (With one notable exception: David Veney. Veney exudes intelligence, judiciousness, and charisma all at once–he’s clearly the natural of the group and the one to watch.)
But this is exactly the point. These good-hearted kids aren’t super-human geniuses. West Point will, however, with a little luck, transform them, make them into something bigger than themselves. That’s the magic of the institution, the thing that makes it different–more vital–from Harvard, Yale, and all the rest. Watching this transformation should make “Surviving West Point” the best reality show of the season.
Jonathan V. Last is online editor of The Weekly Standard.
