Enlisted Uses Pixar As An Unofficial Army Training Tool

After a very strong pilot that firmly established the personalities of the three central Hill brothers, Enlisted goes on, in its second episode, to build on what we already know and add new traits to deepen them, and yes, I know it's ridiculous to talk about the depth of characters in (a) a sitcom that's only (b) two episodes old, but that's how good a show it is, for real. So since we learned, in the premiere, that Pete is a very talented soldier who derives a lot of his self-identity from the skillful performance of his duties, of course Episode 2 finds him tying with Perez in a target shooting test, and spending the rest of the episode going through a series of tasks meant to break said tie (including a cooking face-off that turns into a pretty delightful Top Chef parody). And since we learned, in the premiere, that Randy is the gung-ho brother who may be too dim for military service and Derrick is the brother whose bad attitude is mostly just a front, of course Episode 2 found Randy screwing up a basic requirement for his job and Derrick eye-rollingly helping him remediate it.

See, Randy also participates in the shooting test Pete aces — the whole platoon does. And while not everyone else kicks its ass like Pete and Perez do, they all, at least, manage to pass, except Randy. When a somewhat concerned Derrick talks to Randy about it, he quickly figures out the problem: Randy makes up whole backstories for the targets he's shooting, and obviously he's going to miss his kill shots if he's thinking about making paper orphans of the target's fictional children.

Derrick decides that what's required is to toughen Randy up, whether Randy likes it or not. As an exercise, he asks Randy to recite the plotline of Toy Story 3. Randy's barely gotten through a description of the opening setup — Mr. Potato Head robbing a train full of troll orphans — before he bursts into tears: "Those fuzzy-headed trolls just wanted a better life!"

Derrick's point proven, he gets his Lancaster Dodd on, and orders Randy to start again, and thus we launch into a training montage of the sort no one probably expected to see in a show about the U.S. Army. Randy is so incapable of retelling this particular story that the more he tries, the less progress he makes. "Come on, Randy," Derrick begs, as Randy paces and wails. "You're just describing the opening logo!" To which Randy has this to say:

Spoiler alert: Randy eventually does get through a full recounting of the Toy Story 3 plot, and his shooting test; though Derrick worries that he may have overcorrected Randy, drilling all the heart out of him, Wallace assures Derrick that if Randy ever is deployed in a combat situation, Derrick's helped Randy to preserve his own safety — and anyway, not all of Randy's emotions are dead: just the ones he used to have for his targets. As the episode closes, we see that a box full of old toys still has the power to melt his heart. I can relate.

Here's the quote in the context of the full training montage.