From the NY Post
11/12/01 (LINK)
AFTER 7 YEARS, 'JAG' IS SUDDENLY A HIT
by MICHAEL STARR
November 12, 2001 -- JAG creator Donald Bellisario agrees - up to a point - that the events of Sept. 11 and the war in Afghanistan have had a beneficial effect on his CBS military drama.
"I don't agree with it totally, but that's part of it," says Bellisario.
"I think Sept. 11 has caused a number of people to take a look at this show who might not have looked at it before - especially the media," he says.
"Suddenly I'm getting calls from everywhere about this show after being ignored for seven seasons."
Once lost in the wilderness against ABC's Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, JAG has reclaimed Tuesday nights.
Since the beginning of this season, the show - starring David James Elliott as Lt. Cmdr. Harmon "Harm" Rabb, a Navy lawyer (Judge Advocate General) - has easily won its timeslot (8 p.m.) each week.
Last week, in the flurry of hype over the ratings battle between NYPD Blue and the new 24 on Fox - the No. 1 show of the night, beating both of them, was JAG, averaging nearly 17 million viewers.
"The show is the same as it's always been - JAG didn't discover its patriotism on Sept. 11," says Bellisario. "But I am feeling more of an obligation to take Sept. 11 into account and I've told my writers they have the opportunity to do a service to our country.
"We are going to deal with the war in Afghanistan, and deal with our people going into that arena of conflict," says Bellisario. "We're going to have at least two episodes that put us directly into the area of conflict.
"I have been throwing out shows that I felt were too frivolous under today's circumstances."
Bellisario says the episodes built around Operation Enduring Freedom, the official name of the conflict in Afghanistan, will be broken up into two parts.
"We will be dealing with 'black operations,' the operations whose success or failure you never hear of," he says. "And we're also dealing with the fact that the mood of the country has changed.
"We're now in our first war since World War II that is not a war of choice - we're being attacked, and JAG is going to deal with the rules of engagement."
