I'm writing this review 25 years after it left the air. I have never forgotten it. It is superb television. The ensemble cast is stellar. It was co-written by John Sacret Young and William Dodson "Bill" Broyles, Jr. who served as a marine in Vietnam. While watching it, it made me intensely feel what it was like to be there; I could feel how every moment and every individual counts. I could also feel how relationships are exquisite and intense when you daily face life or death. Conversely, their lives were also portrayed after the war when they returned home where they were no longer making a big difference in the world; there I could feel just how empty, inane, and futile their existence felt in comparison to their lives at China Beach.
