The "Aliens" offseason blueprint.

The recently concluded Twins season played out remarkably similar to the movie "Aliens."  Let me enumerate some of the parallels:

You had a woefully inept "Lieutenant" put in charge of a multi-billion dollar spacecraft.  Seriously, I don't think the U.S. Navy has anyone under the rank of Captain in charge of anything bigger than a speedboat, but in the near future, the government is going to send a very expensive craft into deep space with the highest ranking officer being a wet-behind the ears LT?  I wouldn't be surprised if the actor who played Lt. Gorman in the movie actually is Bill Smith.

 Smith is also represented in the movie by the delightfully smarmy company man played by Paul Reiser.  (Don't even embedded reporters wear battle fatigues?  Who wears a coat and tie into outer space?)  At any rate,  Reiser's character is more concerned with the company's investment than actually winning a battle, and trades away the platoons best shortsto, er sniper before the mission even begins.  Later he is seen trying to intentionally strain an oblique of one of the soldiers, as a sort of experiment.

In the movie, their mission was to save a multitrillionbazillion dollar outpost on a remote planet with bad weather.  Apparently, given enough time, they were going to 'reprocess' the atmosphere and make it a habitable planet.  Wouldn't a giant retractable roof have been cheaper?  (non sequitar--here's a new saying to replace the phrase "rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic."  How about this--"Chopping the trees down at Target field."

You had the classic sergeant in the role of Gardy--"O.k. people, you heard the man, I wanna see a**holes and elbows!  Git after it!  I need some grit!."

Like private Hudson, who wasn't the best soldier in the platoon, but managed to somehow stick around most of the movie, you have Kevin Slowey, whom I'm sure is up to date on world affairs--"Game over man, game over.  I don't know if you're keeping up on current events, but we just got our ass kicked.  Also, I don't pitch out of the bullpen."

Another character to survive most of the movie is Vasquez, who doesn't say much, but when she does, it packs a punch--"Ever been mistaken for a man, Vasquez?"  "No.  Have you?"  Shave Kubel's beard and you've got Vasquez.

In the movie, the little girl Newt somehow managed to survive despite a lack of any offensive capabilities.  She did, however, play great defense.  Likewise, Drew Butera.

Newt is captured towards the end of the movie, which really pissed of Ripley.  She duct tapes a flamethrower to an assault rifle, shaves her goatee, and rescues Newt.

Bishop is a 'synthetic,'  not really human, devoid of any emotion, but he plays a position of need.  I presume it costs around $160 million dollars to manufacture one of these guys.

Of course, most of the platoon gets killed off/impregnated with alien eggs/concussed early in the film, including some of their best operatives.  This was a result of Lt. Gorman sending them into a hostile environment armed only with shotguns, which are the epitome of pitch to contact weapons, and flamethrowers that had very little movement and were drastically inaccurate.  I believe one of the characters also had a whiffle ball bat.

And finally you had Corporal Hicks, who is thrust into a leadership role.  He looks a lot like Cuddy, and he uttered the words that summarize my offseason blueprint after the jump:

http://www.moviesoundclips.net/movies1/aliens/nuke2.wav