Did you happen to see the final episode of NBC’s Stars Earn Stripes that aired Monday night? I applaud the basic concept of the show but it was overproduced and ended up not being the most compelling TV . . .
My point: throughout the series it appeared to me that the producers were using a mix of live and dummy ammunition. Specifically the grenades they used were, for obvious reasons, fakes, but the rifle and pistol ammo looked authentic – until the final challenge. If you didn’t see it, they boarded a ship and shot targets off the decks amid stairs, wall and catwalks of steel. The ship was moored to a working dock clearly visible in the background; not really a safe place to be firing off live ammo that is bound to ricochet. You could see no targets hit –only poofs of pyrotechnic smoke when a contestant scored a “hit.”
Is this a scandal? Maybe. Maybe it would have been a scandal if they’d used live ammo on the deck of a ship moored to a working port.