I saw all three episodes a couple months ago, and was watching it again last evening. It struck me about the one male recruit who said that he LOVED the AWESOME food. I couldn't help but wonder what he was accustomed to eating back home?
From what I recall of Parris in 1972, these recruits in the documentary are simply not getting the quality and quantity of training with regard to needed profanity and scatalogical conversational skills,(one-way may they be). My own finely-honed profanity abilities were learned at Parris. Possibly the DIs cleaned it up for TV.
The most trouble I had as a recruit was remembering to scream responses as I am by nature soft spoken. I was quarterdecked a couple times and did a bazillion push-ups but got with the program.
A did notice a slight shift in attitude of our DIs and our Sr. DI towards me when we began rifle training and I consistently out-shot everyone else in the platoon. I qualified Expert with the M14 and M16, and when the time came for firing the .45 for qualification, the Sr. DI quietly handed me a 1911A1 and said "use this one, Smith, and make sure I get it back immediately after you clean it." I shot Expert with it. Shortly after that, I was informed late one afternoon by the Series Commander and the Sr. DI that after Basic, I would be reassigned to Small Arms Repairman training instead of Wheeled Vehicle Mechanic training. All of those $3.95 bricks of .22 shells that I shot up as a kid sorta paid off. Spent the rest of the hitch in Quantico.
Noah