TVData Features Syndicate
11/11/01 (no link available)
Veteran's Day Programming Reflects America at War
By John Crook
For the first time in several decades, Veterans Day dawns on America at war, a context that lends special resonance to much of the day's TV programming.
Around the channel spectrum, programmers observe the holiday with events ranging from a day of worthy documentaries on Dicscovery Channel to a new Veterans Day-themed episode of Doc, the Billy Ray Cyrus medical drama on PAX. Also noteworthy, is We Stand Alone Together, a profile of the real-life WWII veterans of Easy Company, premiering November 11, on HBO.
The high-profile entries include two stand-outs: a daylong marathon of JAG, episodes on USA Network and the Sunday, November 11, premiere of "War Letters", a segment of American Experience on PBS. (check local listings), a simple, yet profoundly affecting special adapted from Andrew Carroll's best-selling book of the same title.
USA's JAG-athon, of course, consists of favorite off-network episodes from the hit military drama's six-year run. It's a series that, for the most part, has flown under the radar of TV critics and Emmy voters, yet it has connected solidly with middle-American viewers, winning its time period on a consistent basis.
Current events make the prime-time Tuesday CBS episodes seem more pertinent and compelling than ever, although series creator and executive producer Donald Bellisario acknowledges that he and his writers are walking a fine line in light of ongoing military campaigns against world terrorism.
"Current events move so fast that it's very difficult to predict too much in advance of airing what may have happened (by the time viewers actually see the show)," Bellisario explains.
"We had five shows in the can when September 11 happened. What I have done is put the date up in the corner at the half-hour mark on all those shows so the public can see that this happened before the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington."
"A recent show had a (secondary) story line about a Navy SEAL who, on a commercial flight, killed a man he thought was endangering the lives of passengers. He was tried for using excess force in subduing this person he thought was trying to get into the (cockpit). We left it in, but with the note that it had been filmed before September 11. So far, viewers seem to understand and appreciate these stories."
Carroll, an archivist and consultant on "War Letters," is acutely aware of the savage irony at play around the premiere of this poignant one-hour special, which features an impressive off-camera roster of actors ranging from Kevin Spacey and David Hyde Pierce to Joan Allen and Kyra Sedgwick reading excerpts from wartime corespondence between spouses, lovers, friends and family members, illustrated by archival battle footage.
The special, like Carroll's book that inspired it, is an offshoot of the Legacy Project, Carroll's campaign to preserve wartime letters that might otherwise be lost. His motivation? Carroll was afraid his young peers would lose any real sense of what life during a war is really like.
Now, he sees this special premiering on the first wartime Veteran's Day he has seen since he was a toddler.
"I received a copy (of the special) on September 10, which was the first time I saw it," he says. "I watched it again after September 11, and it did take on a different resonance, there's no question about it. It's not abstract anymore. We're right in the middle of it.
"But what has always amazed me about these letters, having read through thousands of them by now, is that despite the horrors going on around them, there is an astonishing resilience about these young men and women. That, to me, validated our whole project, because our main purpose was to honor veterans and try to save these letters that are being lost or thrown away."
Concerned that the special might seem inappropriate, Carroll has screened at least portions of it for various historical groups, receiving unanimous praise for the profound emotional wallop it packs with its deceptively simple style.
"Like a lot of people, I really hated history growing up and tried to avoid it in school," Carroll says. "It has been through reading these letters from these men and women in the past that we can make a connectin to them and understand how much like us they were, and how much their experiences speak directly to our own."
Bellisario, meanwhile, is focused on the immediate future with JAG, trying to devise scripts that may illuminate current events without feeding paranoia or exploiting real-life tradgedies.
"One story we were going to do had to do with attempting biological warfare by spreading something--it wasn't specifically Anthrax, because we didn't even get that far with it--via crop-dusting planes," he reveals. "Right now I'm putting that on hold, because I don't want to do anything to heighten everyone's anxiety.
"I want to do just the opposite. I want people to get comfortable with the fact, as much as they can, that we have a very capable military force here, honorable people who are putting their lives on the line. We should take solace in that, and we should feel safer because of that. Nothing is safe, we know that, but the military is doing a hell of a job, and that's what I want to put out there."
