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Originally Published Nov. 22, 2001 |
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makes a startling confession: |
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It may be white bread TV,
but Chuck savors it all
of The Columnists.com
I HESITATE to confess this particular guilty pleasure amid my high-powered colleagues at TheColumnists, but I am a fan of … well…"JAG."
I know, I know. "JAG" is white bread television, made for middlebrows who think the darkness selector on their toaster is the height of high-tech.
Well, I like it. I watch it. I think David James Elliott is a dashing male lead and Catherine Bell, the female lead, is a gorgeous hunk of woman.
The plots are a mixture of military courtroom drama and Navy derring-do around the world. Lots of action, bang-bang. Elliott plays a former Navy jet jockey named Harmon “Harm” Rabb who is now a Navy lawyer (JAG is Navy talk for “Judge Advocate General.”) and Bell plays Marine Lt. Col. Sarah “Mac” MacKenzie, a fellow lawyer. She is a recovering alcoholic, but that’s mentioned only very occasionally. Of course, both are very able, tenacious, smart lawyers with buckets of courtroom charisma.
There is sexual tension between the two. (This is television, after all.) But "JAG" gives it an extra fillip because these-not-entirely platonic friends often find themselves opposing each other in court. And Elliott’s character has a beautiful blonde girlfriend and Bell’s, until recently, had a ruggedly handsome fiancé.
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Catherine Bell is "a gorgeous hunk of woman" |
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Then there is Admiral A. J. Chegwidden, played by the marvelous John M. Jackson, the head of JAG, and Lt. Bud Roberts, played by Patrick Labyorteaux, who provides occasional comic relief, but you know deep down he’s a hell of a lawyer.
I find it an entertaining mix of characters and plots. The program frequently presents court situations where the defendant did the right thing, but violated regulations. Or did he do the right thing? Maybe he should have stuck by the regulations. Or maybe…
JAG and the Pentagon, I would guess, are tight. There was an out-and-out defense of the Osprey, the troubled Marine aircraft, in one episode, for instance. In a more recent one the Chinese government claims that a U.S. Navy spy plane invaded its air space and collided with a Chinese fighter, killing the fighter pilot.
The writers do seem to be trying to keep the series as current as possible with plots frequently taken from the headlines. "JAG" in fact had six episodes of the new season in the can before September 11, and Producer Donald Bellisario has ordered that small boxes run during upcoming episodes telling the audience that the episode was filmed before the tragedies.
My wife cannot figure out how I came to be a fan of "JAG." After all, in our household, if it isn’t "Masterpiece Theater" or "Mystery!", it isn’t worth watching. And now here I am, watching this…this…"Mission Impossible" out of "Perry Mason" television series. But interestingly enough, when I happened to confess out loud to a group of middle-aged people recently that I was a "JAG" fan, more than half of the males owned up to watching "JAG" religiously. One even confessed to programming his VCR while he was away for three weeks so he could tape all the episodes he was missing.
"JAG"’s been on CBS for six years now, cruising quietly along, doing well in its Tuesday 8 p.m. slot but pretty much ignored by the critics. (It started on NBC two years earlier) It isn’t a series that makes television history and comparatively speaking, it doesn’t attract that much media attention. For the most part, the cast is made up of journeymen actors who have been together, most of them, for more than half a decade. Bell describes them now as an “extended family.” "JAG" is the best thing that’s ever happened to them, professionally.
The writing and acting are consistently good, at times very good. Neither rises to the level of "Masterpiece," or "Hallmark," or "West Wing," but then how many television dramas do? It’s a page-turner of a television series that’s fun to watch and once in a while gives you something to think about. It has no pretensions to be anything else.
"JAG" holds one extra attraction for me, and that is the conundrum faced by the scriptwriters. Where are they going to go with the nascent romance between Mac and Harm? If they were ever to consummate the relationship, there goes the tension, and, probably, there goes the series. But can you keep up the Mac/Harm thing fresh and interesting for many more years? How do you do that? It’s a nice writerly challenge and I will be interested in seeing how they handle it. My guess is they’ll go the roller-coaster route, with the relationship flaring up and fading out as the episodes roll on. As soon as Mac and Harm start warming up, zip, there goes Mac to Afghanistan. (Come to think of it, I shouldn’t regard it as that much of a challenge to the writers - soap writers have been doing that sort of thing for 70 years.)
So now you know. My secret is out. I’m a "JAG" fan. I feel better already.
In years to come, when you speak of this--and I know you will--please be kind.
©2001 by Charles M. McFadden. McFadden caricature ©2001 by Jim Hummel. The illustrations are from the official "JAG" website.
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