jakethebake
05-02-2005, 01:53 PM
Maybe it's already been posted. If not....
[ QUOTE ]
'JAG' gives its final salute
April 29, 2005
'JAG," CBS' dramatic series about the Navy's Judge Advocate General Corps, ends its run tonight at 9 with a 10-season episode tally of 227 and an Emmy Award total of three, none of them biggies - one for editing, two for costuming. Creator/executive producer Donald P. Bellisario believes there's a simple explanation: Hollywood's politics.
"You know, Hollywood is a very liberal community and a community that doesn't have a great affinity for the military," he said in a phone interview last week. "When this show started, 'military' was almost a pejorative term in Hollywood. That's the reason, I think, for its not getting the awards. At first it's irritating, but after a while, you just get used to it."
I can't entirely agree with Bellisario's assessment. I think the series' old-school qualities are a big factor. "JAG" is well-produced and cast with capable, likable actors, but the dialogue sometimes has too much plot exposition or background information encoded to sound naturally conversational, and the musical underscoring practically slaps you upside the head, saying, "This is a dramatic moment" or "This is whimsical."
If "JAG" had arrived in the 1970s, when series such as "Kojak" and "The Waltons" set the weekly drama bar, it probably would have contended more for awards. But once "Hill Street Blues" came along in 1981 and pioneered still-escalating standards for moral ambiguity and verbal indirection, "JAG" couldn't help but have a whiff of relic about it.
That's not to say Hollywood, which does tilt left, has Bellisario's baby perfectly pegged. If "JAG" is gung-ho, so is Herman Wouk's World War II classic "The Caine Mutiny." Bellisario, an ex-Marine, respects soldiers and believes in the armed forces. But he and his writers have hardly been blind to the human flaws of military personnel or to bureaucratic idiocy to which any veteran can attest. "Snafu" is a military acronym, after all.
"I try to show both sides," Bellisario said. "I try to show incidents that are realistic."
Indeed, "JAG" is as rooted in real-life events as "Law & Order." As Bellisario remembered the other day, he got the idea for "JAG" in 1995 from news reports about the first-time deployment of women on combat ships.
In the pilot episode, then-Lt. Harmon "Harm" Rabb (David James Elliott), a JAG attorney, was on an aircraft carrier investigating the mysterious death of a female Navy pilot. When CBS snapped up "JAG" after NBC stupidly discarded it after one season, Rabb got a new partner, Maj. Sarah "Mac" MacKenzie (Catherine Bell), who regularly encountered sexist attitudes in the ranks and among her superiors.
For every conventional murder mystery "JAG" has adjudicated, there was usually a more topical episode exploring, for instance, the necessity of military tribunals or whether female personnel serving in Muslim countries should have to follow Islamic law.
Always in the background, sometimes in the fore, were personal stories, such as Harm's search for conclusive news of his father, a pilot who'd been shot down during the Vietnam War, and various romances among the regulars, including the long "What are these two waiting for?" tension between Harm and Mac.
In last Friday's episode, new orders reassigned Mac to San Diego and Harm to Europe. Bellisario said recent story lines reflect the reality that Elliott, whose contract was up, wasn't coming back, and that CBS considered continuing the show with a revised cast headed by Bell. When CBS belatedly cut "JAG" loose, Bellisario said, he rewrote parts of what had been conceived as a season finale.
"I'm not going to say what happens, but it's an ending that I think all the fans will be satisfied with," he said. "I'll be satisfied because it's an ending that still leaves something hanging in the air. Everybody can have their own view of what really happens in the end."
[/ QUOTE ]
http://nude-celebrity-babes.hotyoungstars.com/catherine-bell-nude/catherine-bell-nude_018.jpg
[ QUOTE ]
'JAG' gives its final salute
April 29, 2005
'JAG," CBS' dramatic series about the Navy's Judge Advocate General Corps, ends its run tonight at 9 with a 10-season episode tally of 227 and an Emmy Award total of three, none of them biggies - one for editing, two for costuming. Creator/executive producer Donald P. Bellisario believes there's a simple explanation: Hollywood's politics.
"You know, Hollywood is a very liberal community and a community that doesn't have a great affinity for the military," he said in a phone interview last week. "When this show started, 'military' was almost a pejorative term in Hollywood. That's the reason, I think, for its not getting the awards. At first it's irritating, but after a while, you just get used to it."
I can't entirely agree with Bellisario's assessment. I think the series' old-school qualities are a big factor. "JAG" is well-produced and cast with capable, likable actors, but the dialogue sometimes has too much plot exposition or background information encoded to sound naturally conversational, and the musical underscoring practically slaps you upside the head, saying, "This is a dramatic moment" or "This is whimsical."
If "JAG" had arrived in the 1970s, when series such as "Kojak" and "The Waltons" set the weekly drama bar, it probably would have contended more for awards. But once "Hill Street Blues" came along in 1981 and pioneered still-escalating standards for moral ambiguity and verbal indirection, "JAG" couldn't help but have a whiff of relic about it.
That's not to say Hollywood, which does tilt left, has Bellisario's baby perfectly pegged. If "JAG" is gung-ho, so is Herman Wouk's World War II classic "The Caine Mutiny." Bellisario, an ex-Marine, respects soldiers and believes in the armed forces. But he and his writers have hardly been blind to the human flaws of military personnel or to bureaucratic idiocy to which any veteran can attest. "Snafu" is a military acronym, after all.
"I try to show both sides," Bellisario said. "I try to show incidents that are realistic."
Indeed, "JAG" is as rooted in real-life events as "Law & Order." As Bellisario remembered the other day, he got the idea for "JAG" in 1995 from news reports about the first-time deployment of women on combat ships.
In the pilot episode, then-Lt. Harmon "Harm" Rabb (David James Elliott), a JAG attorney, was on an aircraft carrier investigating the mysterious death of a female Navy pilot. When CBS snapped up "JAG" after NBC stupidly discarded it after one season, Rabb got a new partner, Maj. Sarah "Mac" MacKenzie (Catherine Bell), who regularly encountered sexist attitudes in the ranks and among her superiors.
For every conventional murder mystery "JAG" has adjudicated, there was usually a more topical episode exploring, for instance, the necessity of military tribunals or whether female personnel serving in Muslim countries should have to follow Islamic law.
Always in the background, sometimes in the fore, were personal stories, such as Harm's search for conclusive news of his father, a pilot who'd been shot down during the Vietnam War, and various romances among the regulars, including the long "What are these two waiting for?" tension between Harm and Mac.
In last Friday's episode, new orders reassigned Mac to San Diego and Harm to Europe. Bellisario said recent story lines reflect the reality that Elliott, whose contract was up, wasn't coming back, and that CBS considered continuing the show with a revised cast headed by Bell. When CBS belatedly cut "JAG" loose, Bellisario said, he rewrote parts of what had been conceived as a season finale.
"I'm not going to say what happens, but it's an ending that I think all the fans will be satisfied with," he said. "I'll be satisfied because it's an ending that still leaves something hanging in the air. Everybody can have their own view of what really happens in the end."
[/ QUOTE ]
http://nude-celebrity-babes.hotyoungstars.com/catherine-bell-nude/catherine-bell-nude_018.jpg