Character Analysis
If you're looking for a war hero who's perfect and 100 percent sympathetic—you know, a white knight and all that—keep looking, because Staff Sergeant William James is not that guy.
Don't get us wrong, though: Will doesn't seem like a bad guy. He risks his life every day to prevent bombs from blowing up people and places, so doesn't that automatically slot him into the good-people column? We want to think so.
That said, Will's got some, well, quirks, and probably a bit of a dark side. Here are the basics about our protagonist.
He's Not Thompson
This is lesson #1: Will is basically nothing like his predecessor. The EOD team's late leader-slash-bomb-tech got along great with all of his men, and he was super cautious and communicative during every step of an operation.
That's not Will. Whereas Sanborn and the others expect Will to use a robot during their first operation to help do recon, Will just heads right in to start tinkering with the bomb, sight unseen. Will doesn't like to waste time, but the rest of the men think his haste is, er, more than a little reckless.
Oh, and then there's the fact that Will doesn't really prioritize communicating with the others during an operation...or even making sure that they can see what he's doing. During that first outing, he sends up a canister of smoke to set a diversion...which is all well and good as far as the enemy goes, but it prevents Will's own men from being able to track him. Not super helpful.
Oh, and he's terrible about communicating with Sanborn and the others over the radio while he's in the field. While Sanborn barks questions about Will's exact coordinates over and over in a futile attempt to get Will to check in, Will either ignores him or—if that doesn't work—takes his headset off.
Yeah, even if you know nothing about the military, you've probably guessed that's a serious violation of protocol. Sure enough, his team is less than impressed. Talking to the company's doctor and resident psychiatrist, Eldridge says, "He's going to get me killed. Almost died yesterday."
That's not exactly what you want the men you lead thinking about you. But as you may have already guessed, Will doesn't really care that much about what people think. When Sanborn suggests that he's figured out Will is a "redneck piece of trailer trash," Will serenely responds that Sanborn is "on the right track."
He's a Wild Man
Will's team might not be impressed by his signature style, but others sure are. Despite his unorthodox methods—or perhaps because of them—Will has been pretty successful as a bomb tech, and word has got around.
In fact, one colonel goes full fangirl on Will, asking him about how many bombs he's dismantled (answer: 873) and following the response with a full-on gush fest:
COLONEL: Well, that's just hot s***. You're a wild man, you know that?
Let's be honest: we're pretty sure that Will agrees with the colonel's assessment. However, he doesn't take his self-congratulations too far. Case in point: when the colonel asks him the best way to disarm bombs, Will keeps it simple:
WILL: The way you don't die, sir.
Sure, it's kind of a smart-aleck response, but his delivery makes it seem like a sincere answer. At the end of the day, he's not trying to do anything fancy: he's just trying to keep everyone alive.
He's a Weirdo
Eventually, the other men on the EOD team (you know, Eldridge and Sanborn) seem to develop at least some respect for Will...even if they still think he's strange and reckless.
This turn of events comes about after a long and difficult afternoon in the desert, during which the boys unexpectedly come under enemy fire. Will's calm and compassion seem to help steady everyone as they pull through the attack.
Afterward, they all celebrate together in Will's barracks, and they discover a box of bomb parts and one other key—a wedding ring—under Will's bed. What is this, some weird EOD version of a blankie? The guys are puzzled:
WILL: This box is full of stuff that almost killed me.
ELDRIDGE: And what about this one? Where's this one from, Will?
WILL: It's my wedding ring. Like I said, stuff that almost killed me. You know, I just think it's really interesting, you know, to hold something in your hand that could have killed any one of us.
The guys, however, are less than convinced:
SANBORN: Damn that, it's all s*** from Radio Shack.
So, yeah, the guys continue thinking Will is weird, but at least things have taken a friendlier turn—they're drinking together, after all, right?
Of course, Will even ends up taking the camaraderie thing too far when, during that same drinking and bonding session, he mounts and rides Sanborn like a bucking bronco. Will clearly thinks he's just roughhousing, but Sanborn is not amused.
We already know that Sanborn thinks Will is a "redneck," and this incident probably didn't do much to counter that perception. Whatever Will's intentions were, treating Sanborn, who is African-American, like an animal and mounting him was beyond offensive, inappropriate, and dumb...you name it.
The guys don't come to blows over the incident, and the whole thing doesn't play as intentionally malicious, but the moment is tense. Sanborn even ends up pulling out a knife. Will should know better—but it seems like he just can't help himself.
He's Fallible
Despite being hot stuff, Will does make mistakes. He even lets his emotions get the better of him from time to time.
We get a glimpse of his soft underbelly when he believes that his friend, a local boy who calls himself Beckham, has been killed and turned into a body bomb. Despite the fact that the dead boy's face isn't really recognizable, Will is absolutely convinced it's Beckham, and that sets him off on a series of risky actions.
First, even though evacuating and then detonating the body bomb is the least risky option for all involved, Will finds he just can't do that to Beckham's body. So, he ends up dismantling the bomb, which is the far more dangerous move. Luckily, it all works out.
After that, though, Will seems a little bit unhinged, and he becomes convinced that Beckham's old boss, the DVD seller, had something to do with the kid's death. So, he basically holds the guy at gunpoint and tries to make him drive to Beckham's house. The DVD seller doesn't really speak English, though, and so Will ends up prowling the hallways of a professor's house and getting beaten on by the professor's wife.
Then, he has to make his way back to the base and come up with an excuse for why he left without permission in the first place. Basically, it's a gong show, and it could have easily ended with him—or the professor, or the professor's wife—getting killed for no good reason.
Oh, yeah, and by the way: the boy with the body bomb was not Beckham at all. And here's the even crazier part: when Will walks outside a few days after his little AWOL adventure and sees Becks out hawking his wares, he refuses to talk to the kid. Wait, what? Didn't he just go through a bunch of foolishness because he was so broken up about Beckham being dead?
Sure, but we're guessing that seeing Beckham alive shows Will just how off the rails he had gone—and he probably doesn't dig thinking of himself as out of control. Or wrong.
Right on the heels of the whole Beckham thing, Will makes another misstep: he sends the group on an ill-advised hunt for a bomber, even though the pursuit had already been tasked to a group of infantry.
His team is against the idea, but as team leader, Will overrides them. The result? Well, the short version is that Eldridge ends up briefly in the hands of the enemy. The good news: Will and Sanborn do rescue him. The bad news: Will accidentally shoots Eldridge in the process, breaking his leg in nine places.
Needless to say, Eldridge goes back into full McKayla Maroney mode with Will. As they load Eldridge onto the helicopter to go home, Eldridge lets Will have it for his risk-junkie behavior:
ELDRIDGE: Thanks for saving my life, but we didn't have to go out looking for trouble to get your f***ing adrenaline fix, you f***.
So, yeah, while the worst didn't happen (no one killed), Eldridge's prediction that Will would get him hurt turned out to be spot on. Sometimes being right just isn't as satisfying as it should be.
He's a Father
Yes, that's right—our resident bad boy has a baby back in the United States.
If you find it hard to picture Will that way, you're not alone—Will himself seems to have trouble reconciling the whole fatherhood thing with his day job.
Sanborn tries to get Will to explain how he can take all those risks out in the field, with a little kid waiting for him at home...and Will isn't really able to do it:
SANBORN: I'm done. I want a son. I want a little boy, Will. I mean, how do you do it, you know? Take the risk?
WILL: I don't know, I just...I guess I don't think about it.
SANBORN: Every time we go out, it's life or death, you roll the dice...You recognize that, don't you?
WILL: Yeah, yeah. And yeah, I do. But I don't know why, you know. Yeah. I don't know, JT. You know why I am the way I am?
SANBORN: No, I don't.
Well, Will, if you don't know, how can the rest of us figure it out?
In any case, Will does ultimately decide that he can't really do the whole family thing. When he's finished his tour and allowed to go home, he doesn't seem happy being back with his family. He confesses what he thinks the problem is to his infant son:
WILL: You love everything, don't you? Yeah! But you know what, buddy? Once you get older, some of the things that you love might not seem so special anymore, you know? Like Jack in the Box. Maybe you realize it's just a piece of tin and a stuffed animal. But the older you get, the fewer things you really love, and by the time you get to my age, maybe it's only one or two things. With me, I think it's one.
Oh, man. He's gotta mean the kid, right? Please tell us it's the kid.
Yeah, no. The very next shot is of Will returning to Iraq. Apparently, dismantling bombs is what he loves above all else.
We can't say we don't see some noble intentions there, sort of, but man, loving the thrill of the war zone over your own kid is, well, pretty dark.
Will James' Timeline