When JAG first came on the air, I didn't watch it at all. My politics are a little left of center and I was not impressed by the first Bush administration sending our people to secure the Kuwaiti oil fields. I felt American lives were worth more than that. When a show came on a couple of years later that was advertised by seemingly endless shots of people in uniform saluting planes that were taking off, I just wasn't in the mood for what I took to be a John Wayne vision of the military as a bunch of patriotic action figures with no real depth as human beings.
A couple of years later I was visiting my parents and they had begun watching JAG, scheduling their Tuesday evening plans around it. This was not surprising for my Dad, an ex-marine and a solid Republican. It was surprising for my Mom, a Democrat with the same opinion of military adventures that I had. The first episode I watched was the last episode of the third season, "To Russia With Love". It seemed reasonably entertaining and certainly wasn't' "jingoistic". The characters were multi-dimensional, (I certainly noticed that Catherine Bell was!). Since it was a cliff-hanger I naturally had to watch the first show in the fall and slowly became hooked, making the show part of my own regular viewing schedule.
I found it a solid, if flawed, drama focusing primarily on the effort, through law, to keep the military on it's moral compass. I'd always liked "The Caine Mutiny" and also liked "A Few Good Men", which seems to have inspired the series. The concept of judging a severely hierarchical organization using a set of standards that ultimately supersedes the hierarchy while continuing to respect it is dramatically interesting and the show drove home the point that military power itself is not enough: it has to have a moral reason for its existence and use.
When I used to watch "Star Trek", I presumed that a civilization that could travel across the distances of space would probably be militarily superior to anyone they encountered and that their dilemmas would tend to be moral, (how to use their power wisely), more often than physical, (how to get more power to defeat a threat), and I preferred the "moral dilemma" episodes, even though they were in the minority. In JAG, those episodes seemed to be the norm and the "action" episodes the exception.
There were two things I didn't like about the show. One was it's non-linear format, jumping from the main story to a romantic or comical sub-plot or into a continuing background story. I prefer shows that stick to their subject. JAG seemed to be a half-hour drama padded into an hour format by all the "other stuff". I came to resent the "action" shows. They seemed to be a rather silly divergence from what the show was really about, certainly from what a JAG lawyer's job was all about. I remembered watching "Homicide", which was supposed to be an examination of the day-to-day lives of Baltimore homicide detectives but which occasionally was interrupted with episodes the network insisted they make about serial killers, drug kingpins and arsonists so they could advertise it with titles like "City on Fire", etc. It seemed to me that the "action" episodes of JAG, with their "Hunt for Red October" plots, CIA undercover work, continuing stories about Harm's father and brother and mysterious, recurring villains served the same purpose for the network and served little purpose on the show itself.
The show went off the air after a decade and I was recently walking through a record store and saw the DVD of the first season of JAG for sale. I bought it on a whim, just to see what the show was like at its beginning. It was a revelation. The shows take place almost entirely in the field and are about JAG investigations. Those investigations inevitably lead to action-packed sequences but at least they grow logically out of a JAG investigation. The show has a completely linear format and thus has a much faster pace but still has more time to tell it's story because it's not cross-cut with sub-plots or ongoing stories. I like Catherine Bell but I like Tracey Needham even a little better. She seems very soft and sexy, (especially with that watery voice), and yet can be tough when the occasion demands. "Tough" is a personality trait but not a type of person and those who have to be hard-boiled to be tough really aren't very good at it. Meg Austin demonstrates that very well.
The production values are amazing, especially since the show at that time had no Navy co-operation. Clips and even sets from several movies, (Top Gun, The Hunt for Red October, Crimson Tide and isn't the ambush in "War Cries" from "A Clear and Present Danger"?) are skillfully integrated with stock footage and scenes shot on an old carrier and in a studio give each episode the look of a movie.
It's one of the most entertaining shows I've ever seen. Even if there are only two episodes with courtroom scenes, the "moral dilemmas" are still there: the show is all about right and wrong. Even though I liked the later JAG, I'd have to say the original concept of the show was much superior. Apparently the public, (the show was ranked 77th in the ratings that year) and the networks didn't agree. The show got canceled, picked up by CBS and changed considerably and wound up in the top ten, lasting a decade, something very few shows have ever done.
At least we've got the DVDs of the first season to see what it was originally supposed to be like.
A couple of years later I was visiting my parents and they had begun watching JAG, scheduling their Tuesday evening plans around it. This was not surprising for my Dad, an ex-marine and a solid Republican. It was surprising for my Mom, a Democrat with the same opinion of military adventures that I had. The first episode I watched was the last episode of the third season, "To Russia With Love". It seemed reasonably entertaining and certainly wasn't' "jingoistic". The characters were multi-dimensional, (I certainly noticed that Catherine Bell was!). Since it was a cliff-hanger I naturally had to watch the first show in the fall and slowly became hooked, making the show part of my own regular viewing schedule.
I found it a solid, if flawed, drama focusing primarily on the effort, through law, to keep the military on it's moral compass. I'd always liked "The Caine Mutiny" and also liked "A Few Good Men", which seems to have inspired the series. The concept of judging a severely hierarchical organization using a set of standards that ultimately supersedes the hierarchy while continuing to respect it is dramatically interesting and the show drove home the point that military power itself is not enough: it has to have a moral reason for its existence and use.
When I used to watch "Star Trek", I presumed that a civilization that could travel across the distances of space would probably be militarily superior to anyone they encountered and that their dilemmas would tend to be moral, (how to use their power wisely), more often than physical, (how to get more power to defeat a threat), and I preferred the "moral dilemma" episodes, even though they were in the minority. In JAG, those episodes seemed to be the norm and the "action" episodes the exception.
There were two things I didn't like about the show. One was it's non-linear format, jumping from the main story to a romantic or comical sub-plot or into a continuing background story. I prefer shows that stick to their subject. JAG seemed to be a half-hour drama padded into an hour format by all the "other stuff". I came to resent the "action" shows. They seemed to be a rather silly divergence from what the show was really about, certainly from what a JAG lawyer's job was all about. I remembered watching "Homicide", which was supposed to be an examination of the day-to-day lives of Baltimore homicide detectives but which occasionally was interrupted with episodes the network insisted they make about serial killers, drug kingpins and arsonists so they could advertise it with titles like "City on Fire", etc. It seemed to me that the "action" episodes of JAG, with their "Hunt for Red October" plots, CIA undercover work, continuing stories about Harm's father and brother and mysterious, recurring villains served the same purpose for the network and served little purpose on the show itself.
The show went off the air after a decade and I was recently walking through a record store and saw the DVD of the first season of JAG for sale. I bought it on a whim, just to see what the show was like at its beginning. It was a revelation. The shows take place almost entirely in the field and are about JAG investigations. Those investigations inevitably lead to action-packed sequences but at least they grow logically out of a JAG investigation. The show has a completely linear format and thus has a much faster pace but still has more time to tell it's story because it's not cross-cut with sub-plots or ongoing stories. I like Catherine Bell but I like Tracey Needham even a little better. She seems very soft and sexy, (especially with that watery voice), and yet can be tough when the occasion demands. "Tough" is a personality trait but not a type of person and those who have to be hard-boiled to be tough really aren't very good at it. Meg Austin demonstrates that very well.
The production values are amazing, especially since the show at that time had no Navy co-operation. Clips and even sets from several movies, (Top Gun, The Hunt for Red October, Crimson Tide and isn't the ambush in "War Cries" from "A Clear and Present Danger"?) are skillfully integrated with stock footage and scenes shot on an old carrier and in a studio give each episode the look of a movie.
It's one of the most entertaining shows I've ever seen. Even if there are only two episodes with courtroom scenes, the "moral dilemmas" are still there: the show is all about right and wrong. Even though I liked the later JAG, I'd have to say the original concept of the show was much superior. Apparently the public, (the show was ranked 77th in the ratings that year) and the networks didn't agree. The show got canceled, picked up by CBS and changed considerably and wound up in the top ten, lasting a decade, something very few shows have ever done.
At least we've got the DVDs of the first season to see what it was originally supposed to be like.