“I guess we have to give some credit to the Pentagon there, don’t we?” says Andy Parker, cheekily. His Netflix series Boots—which follows a closeted teen in the 1990s as he enlists in the Marines—has surged to the leading of the streamer’s charts since its release on October 9, peaking earlier this week as the No. 2 most-watched series on the platform. That might have something to do with the fact that the Pentagon released a statement on October 16 shading Boots, calling it “woke garbage.”
“Under President [Donald] Trump and Secretary [Pete] Hegseth, the US military is getting back to restoring the warrior ethos. Our standards across the board are elite, uniform, and sex neutral because the weight of a rucksack or a human being doesn’t care if you’re a man, a woman, gay, or straight,” said Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson. “We will not compromise our standards to satisfy an ideological agenda, unlike Netflix whose leadership consistently produces and feeds woke garbage to their audience and children.”
“I would be very surprised if the Pentagon actually watched the show,” Parker says in response. But whether or not Trump or Hegseth have streamed the queer-boot-camp series, perhaps after a long day of very heterosexual activities like remodeling the White House and trying to make the military more buff, the administration slamming Boots has apparently only made it more popular. (Spoilers below.)
“The premise itself instigates or incites some kind of reaction or assumptions,” says Parker of Boots. “What I would invite people to do is to series the show, and see how they feel about the questions the show is trying to provoke.”
The irony is that in an alternate universe, Parker might have been a drill instructor reporting to Hegseth. “I had been this closeted gay high school kid, and had invited a Marine Corps recruiter to my house to talk with my parents about why I should go join the Marines,” Parker tells me over Zoom. “I was very actively seeking that.” He ultimately decided not to enlist—“I was running away from myself”—but with Boots, he’s getting to experience what might have been.
“There was a personal connection to the idea of a gay kid running off to join the Marines and not really understanding what that was going to do for him, or where that was going to ultimately lead him,” Parker says. “It felt like this was the road not taken. This is a path I could have gone on. How would I have done?”
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