‘Enlisted’ episode 10 review: ‘Prank War’ yet another reminder of show’s greatness

There is no cancellation from this past season that makes us sadder than that of “Enlisted.” It was funny, heartfelt, and most of all completely original. We live in a world with dozens of family comedies and crime procedurals, but someone a silly military comedy that somehow still honors the armed services doesn’t make the cut.

We promised yesterday that we were going to be around to review the remaining four episodes of the show, which will be at 7:00 p.m. Eastern time until the finale airs on June 22. Tonight, this brings us to “Prank War.” This is an aggressively funny episode that made you feel at moments, but soon after jerked you back into funny mode. We have zero military experience, but we imagine that on some bases out there some of these sort of pranks go on (albeit on a smaller scale).

The strongest part of the entire half-hour, though, was when Derrick thought that he had actually found a way to get Pete’s unit some sort of victory in the prank war against Perez and company by giving her a “gift” from her former boyfriend … who turned out to have died a long time ago. The way the show handled this was wonderful in that there was an essence of sadness to the scene as you could tell that she missed him and the “prank” by the boys was somewhat hurtful, then for her to completely flip it around and hit them with a better prank as a result of their ignorance. It once again showed off her strength as a character.

What did we learn from this episode as a whole? A variety of different things, starting with the fact that Pete is a horrible prankster, that there are very embarrassing kinds of hair that can be used for pranks, and that you never drink from an open container if you are expecting the worst. Also, we were reminded that “Enlisted” gives more laughs-per-minute than a good 90% of comedies out there, and does so without making the characters feel hollow or cynical. Grade: A-.

We’ll see you guys next week; just remember that in real life, April Fools’ was two months ago and such pranks may be better left until then. (Of course, nobody would expect them now…)

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Photo: Fox