Among the smorgasbord of available pleasures in life is that of escaping from the pressures of the moment by watching television programs available in our current multi-multi-channel environment. Years ago I became addicted to “JAG.” Though its first-run episodes came to an end last year, it lives on in rerun heaven.
In the late 1960s, the U.S. Navy created a new staff corps, the Judge Advocate General’s Corps, comprised of the service’s lawyers. The world at large probably took little notice. That changed in the mid-1990s with the advent of the new network television show that drew its title from the staff corps initials. It lasted for one season on NBC before moving to CBS and becoming a hit. Using the titles of two popular movies of the 1990s, some dubbed the show “Top Gun Meets A Few Good Men.”
Principal character Harm Rabb, played by David James Elliott, was a swaggering combination of a fighter pilot and lawyer, and a number of the early episodes were of the action-adventure nature as he and his Navy junior officer female partners set out with guns drawn to foil evil-doers. Both Navy lawyers and line officers undoubtedly hooted and hollered at some of the plot lines and dialogue.
It was, perhaps, a case of the show’s producers creating dialogue to conform with what they thought the viewing public expected Navy and Marine Corps people to say rather than what they actually say. That sort of dialogue continued even as the show matured and focused more on courtroom situations rather than cops-and-robbers scenarios. The word “six” seemed to be thrown in often, referring to a vulnerable position— as in a six o’clock position behind an aircraft—but used much more broadly. And each meeting between a senior and subordinates tended to end with the word “Dismissed." I don’t ever recall shipboard encounters ending with that word.
As the show climbed in the ratings, its ensemble cast developed great chemistry. The salty, gruff-but-caring Judge Advocate General himself, Rear Admiral A. J. Chegwidden, was portrayed by actor John Jackson. Viewers with long memories will recall him as a Navy captain judge advocate in A Few Good Men. In that movie, when he was talking with Tom Cruise, Jackson dismissed Demi Moore from a meeting by saying that the men wanted her to leave so they would be able to talk behind her back. After “JAG’s” early years, the show brought in Catherine Bell to be Sarah MacKenzie, a strong female Marine Corps counterpart to the Navy’s Harm Rabb. The sexual tension between the two added to the program’s appeal by giving it a soap opera-type element that drew viewers into the characters’ lives.
Despite the hokiness of some of the stories, I found them immensely appealing as entertainment because of the “feel” they created. They evoked memories of shipboard experiences—the roar of F-14 engines, the ladders and passageways, the interaction among shipmates, guns firing, shots of ships and aircraft above the blue sea. For an hour a week I could vicariously be back in an environment that I remembered with pleasure.
As the program became more popular, the Navy and Marine Corps recognized the great publicity value of the show and offered considerable cooperation, including access to ships, aircraft, and shore stations. It was a synergistic relationship in which both sides benefited. Some years back a Marine Corps public affairs officer visited the Naval Institute to talk about his job. In the question-and-answer period he was asked how often “JAG’s” production company called for information and assistance. His answer: “Daily.”
One particularly appealing aspect of the series was that it delved into the history of the sea services in some of the episodes. One week’s story dealt with the 1944 Port Chicago case in which black sailors were tried for mutiny when they declined to go back to work loading ships after two ammunition ships blew up while being loaded with unsafe practices. The episode demonstrated the institutional racism at work in the Navy during World War II.
Reaching still farther back, a program focused on the Somers affair of 1842 in which the son of Secretary of War John C. Spencer and two other alleged conspirators were hanged after being convicted of plotting a mutiny. For that episode the “JAG” cast donned 19th-century uniforms and took the parts of various crew members.
An episode on the 100th anniversary of the submarine service dealt with a fictitious 1941 encounter between a U.S. submarine and the Japanese carrier task force headed for the 7 December attack on Pearl Harbor. Another historical episode recalled the Vietnam War. It flashed back to a Bob Hope USO show on board the aircraft carrier Ticonderoga (CVA-14). Film clips from an actual Hope appearance were spliced in among shots of the cast members portraying various members of the ship’s crew.
“JAG” also dealt with much more recent events, giving viewers something of a sense of what it was like to be in those situations. There was a show on a battleship turret explosion, the downing of a U.S. intelligence plane by the Chinese, scenes from the mountainous terrain of Afghanistan, the requirement for U.S. female service members to wear Muslim clothing when in Middle East countries, episodes of friendly fire, and the chaotic nature of Iraq when it is difficult to distinguish combatants from noncombatants. Sometimes fictional stories impart a good deal of truth.