This "Eating the Young" episode is one of the worst things I've ever seen on TV.
Can't people watching it in the US really see the countless absurdities and inconsistencies when it comes to picturing real-world Brazil? Have Americans got at least a basic knowledge of Geography or Contemporary History? I mean, have they ever attended such classes in school?
Okay! Let's see some stupid things shown on this episode:
1 - The "favela" (slums) we see in the opening scenes might well be part of one of these which actually exist in Rio de Janeiro. However, it takes only a few seconds for anyone who isn't a complete ignorant to realise the Unit men are anywhere but here:
a) The clothes people are shown wearing are not what one would see even poor favela-dwelling people wearing in Rio. In fact, they're dressed in what I think people may wear only in the poorest areas of Bolivia or Ecuador.
b) In addition, dangerous favelas in Rio would be totally inaccessible to foreigners. Our Unit men would have to fight a real war against heavily armed drug dealers in order to go in there, instead of being like tourists taking a stroll in the area and then renting a place to stay in.
2 - Where in the world are those military policemen we see from? Their uniforms don't resemble at all what Brazilian police officers wear (in fact, I thought someone had decided to re-use costumes from an old film about World War II in order to save budget money). Not to mention that that real piece of junkie they're driving when they show up in the favela isn't even allowed out in Brazilian roads because there are legal restrictions for too old cars. Brazilian police vehicles are as modern as the ones in the US, and they're mostly armored SUVs.
3 - The scene in which those supposed-to-be Brazilian policemen threaten and terrify a mother and her child for no reason and, then, shot some men dead inside a house from where they are shown stealing bags of rice donated by the USA really grossed me out!
a) Real-world policemen in this country don't go up in favelas doing such a thing, not because they're kind and sweet, but especially because when they go there, they're on a mission, exchanging fire with the local heavily armed drug dealers.
b) Brazil doesn't receive foreign aid, especially food and definitely no such an aid from the USA. If Americans don't know it, here the welfare state policies include social ones, like "Fome Zero" (Hunger Zero), with a set of measures taken by federal, state and municipal governments aiming at providing the poorest with their necessary supply of food. What is no big deal for a country that is simply one of the biggest food producer in the world.
c) Needless to say, Brazilian police officers aren't angels, but they'd never steal people's food. That's the most outrageous thing I've ever seen when confronted with foreigners' ignorant idea of what Brazil is like.
4 - The plane found crashed and abandoned for days with dead people inside reveals how ignorant this episode's producers are about the fact that no plane flies up in our sky without being detected by radars. No plane would crash without being sent a rescue team immediately to the very spot where it stopped transmitting radar signals.
5 - Almost the same might be said about the helicopter used by the episode's villains without being noticed.
6 - Whoever has been once to this city may easily notice that the natural landscape, which supposedly is round the city of Rio, in fact has got plants and hills and soil which are quite different from what one actually finds in Rio. Conclusion: that was NOT shot here!
7 - Last but not least, only two or three characters are really Brazilians speaking in Brazilian Portuguese. The boy wearing a Brazilian football team's shirt, for example, that is, the one who speaks English, speaks Portuguese with quite a noticeable Spanish accent. And the supposed Brazilian crime boss can't really pronounce a single word correctly in Portuguese. Not to mention that, when he is shown watching a football match on TV, we can read "Loucura no Fútbol" (Craziness in Football) on the TV screen. However, it's a laughable mixture of Portuguese and Spanish: "football" in Portuguese would be "futebol", not "fútbol".
In sum, this "Unit"'s episode has turned out a praise of ignorance about Brazil for people who quite probably have got such an ignorant perspective about this and many other countries in the world.
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