The 60's: Part 2

So! The white family in the 60's. 

The family's last name is a little weird, but after looking it up, I found out they are the Herlihys. So, in this family, the father is as conservative as a conservative can be, while the mother is submissive, as any 60's housewife would be. Their kids, Brian, Michael, and Katie, each get their own storyline throughout the movie/mini-series. Brian joins the Marines right after high-school, and is fortunate enough (note my sarcasm) to go to Vietnam, much to his father's pride. Once he comes back, he is visibly traumatized by what he saw and experienced. He ignores his father and his enthusiasm for a long time, and eventually lets the audience know that the war didn't really have a purpose; at times, he said he didn't even know who his enemies were or why they were fighting them. 

(I just realized it may be a little hard to tie all the stories up but I'll try.)

Michael, on the other hand, gets involved in politics and equal rights movements and has very different ideals from his father. He is a much more radical and progressive-minded person. He stands up for a woman who tried to voice her opinion in a student meeting, and ends up dating her. This storyline gets a little complicated, but she ends up leaving him for another revolutionary student, and after finding out she was wrong, tries to get back together with him (sort of) but doesn't want a serious relationship so he rejects her, and then she comes back to him once more and they get back together. So... I honestly don't know if there's something else to say about this storyline. Oh! He gets in a few confrontations with his father regarding the morality of the Vietnam war, and he inspires his mother to disagree with the father and vote in favor of a movement he was proposing. Or something like that.

Finally, Katie meets a singer at a concert, and after having sex with him, ends up getting pregnant. Her father kicks her out of the house and she moves with the singer to San Francisco and becomes part of the hippie movement. She is clearly not at comfort with this lifestyle, and this is most evident when her child is sick and she needs to get medicine for him, but can't find the money for it. She becomes a stripper, at one point in the story, in order to maintain her child. 

So, after Brian comes back, he and Michael go to a hippie concert/party (I forgot the name) and Brian has a traumatizing flashback that ends with him covered in mud and unconscious. As luck would have it, the woman charged with cleaning him up is Katie, his sister. Once all three brothers are reunited, they go back home, and after a few struggling moments, the family is back together. 

Damn, this was much longer than I thought it'd be. Enough!