Dead Tree Alert: Army Wives, Mad Men

I have watched parts of two or three episdodes of Army Wives and have been disappointed each time. The acting was horrible, the production value was low... my fiancee walked in while I was watching one episode and swore that I was watching soft-core porn. I have to admit - it's kinda hard to tell the difference at some parts.

I think that the crucial difference in the reception of the shows is one that you gloss over in your review -- the inclusion of the "war zone" in Over There" and its exclusion on Army Wives.

The audience focus of any show in which the lives of some of the protagonists are at risk while other protagonists are dealing with non-lifethreatening issues will inevitably be on the characters whose lives are in danger. It didn't matter how many "home front" scenes there were in Over There -- as far as the audience was concerned, the show was about the characters with "life or death" conflicts -- and the issues facing the home front characters were subordinate to those of the soldiers in Iraq.

Thus, despite the similarities that you cite, in terms of audience perception, these were two completely different shows.

There is also the question of platform --- Army Wives is "made to order" for Lifetime's target audience -- and the people running Lifetime know how to deliver a show that its specific audience will embrace even though the show is actually pretty bad (see The Closer). In 2005 FX didn't seem to have a clear identity as a network -- nor was its programming targeted at a specific market. Each FX show had (and still has) to find an audience -- on Lifetime, the audience is already defined and all a show has to do is deliver the goods.

p_luk: I basically agree with you, though I don't think that was all there was to it. (I do think the passage of time has had some effect as well, and that Army Wives would not have been made before fall of 2005 or so.) I mean, I wrote--I *thought*--that because Army Wives stays at home and avoids combat it is both more palatable and taken less seriously, though many of the themes are the same. I (and my editor) definitely compressed the description of Over There to fit in more about Army Wives, but--compression, glossing over, tomato, tomahto, I see your point.

Army Wives is definitely better tailored for its audience, although I would argue that by 2005 FX had a distinct brand: morally ambiguous dramas about self-destructive flawed men (The Shield, Rescue Me and Nip/Tuck). Because Over There's producers were so hesitant to make the show seem to be "politicized," there was no way they were going to give you the army equivalent of The Shield's Vic Mackey. The characters were just flat and typecast, and it couldn't compare to FX's successful dramas, which had much better-written characters and distinct points of view. (Another point that would have worked nicely in the column had it been 1200 words and not 650.)

"(Another point that would have worked nicely in the column had it been 1200 words and not 650.)"

I don't know if you are allowed to answer this or not, but is this insistence upon brevity merely a question of the size of the news hole, or a stylistic editorial decision.

As for FX "branding"... three shows do not create a "brand identity" for the network, especially when one considers the dependence upon Fox Network (and other) reruns that was a staple of FX programming at that time (and which remain a staple to this day).

And is there really an actual demographic for " morally ambiguous dramas about self-destructive flawed men" that can be targetted? I don't have the data to back it up, but I doubt that the audience for The Shield is the same as that for Nip/Tuck.

If FX did (does?) have a "brand", it was as a hybrid of broadcast series and HBO Original programming -- edgier than broadcast stuff, but not so edgy that it has to be behind a "pay for play" programming wall.

@p_luk: I dunno if this answers your question, but my print column gets one page, like Joe Klein's or Kinsley's or whatever, although the layout is different. (Theoretically I guess it could run on two-thirds of a page, though it never has.) So I guess it's a matter of layout/design, which is in a meta sense an editorial decision driven by the average size of the newshole. (In the same way that a newspaper op-ed column generally tends to have the same format and length.)

Now, some column ideas I've had have occasionally been bumped up to the Arts section lede, which runs 3 or 4 pages and thus is more like 1500 words, more or less, depending on layout. (One example would be the preview essay I wrote before the Sopranos' final season.) But then it doesn't run with the column name or layout -- it just looks like a longer Time magazine article. Usually, though, the bigger lede slot tends to go to feature articles.

The long and short of it is, since Time can publish far fewer words a week than, say, the NY Times, my column will often be 700 words (avg) on a subject that the NYT might do a 1200-word Critic's Notebook on.

Wow, that answer even bored me!

I'm grateful that you are panning it. I'm befuddled completely as to why "Army Wives" is such a hit. Befuddled and ANNOYED. As a former Army wife, and an Army brat who grew up in an Army town, I'm at a loss that a woman who is herself an Army brat, former military reporter and now an Army wife wrote the book that this show is based on and is a consultant for the show. Even the little details are WRONG. The way their berets are on their heads, their badges, the way they dress, everything is wrong, if you have any knowledge of the military. There are SO SO SO many faults with this show, it's unreal. The portrayal of a group of Army wives of different ranks frequently gathering together is so wrong it's unreal. The plots are hokey, any fact-based ideas are so screwed up it's unreal, and if this is considered a "real portrayal of life in the military," I can't even think of a way to make it any less realistic unless they were all living in mansions and paid more than $80,000 a year.

I wish more critics had your brain cells.

Wait, clearly I read the panning before I read the current column. My comments stand, and to add to them, I'd say that while AW does point out the cost that the war has on families, it does so in a way that leaves most connected to the military annoyed. A lot of military spouses I know won't watch it because it so apallingly shows a military that doesn't exist. And they are strapped for cash because they're in the military, but when they're deployed they get more money. Maybe it'd be a better show if it was more realistic. The errors far outweigh any good the show does, and most military people recognize that.

@Fayetteville: Just to be clear, my analysis of the show wasn't based on it military realism or lack thereof. (Call me a cynic, but I usually expect TV fiction to take liberties, which I don't mind if it gets certain basics, and the emotional truth of the characters right.) Interestin gto hear that wives of officers of different ranks wouldn't get together that way.

Anyway, if you're checking in, I'm curious: Did you watch Over There? Wondering what you thought of its portrayal. Or how about The Unit?

As a military brat myself, I understand what many of you are saying, but at the same time, it's a TV drama, not a documentary. If you lived or live the life of the military, you know it isn't glamorous, and in the few episodes I've watched I think that comes through loud and clear, military families give up (and hopefully gain) a great deal during war time, and even in times of peace. All tv dramas, whether medical, military or legal rely on ratings and people watch TV to escape into a world where for one hour a week, you aren't answering the demands of a family/life and should be entertaining. Sometimes realistic can just be too difficult to watch. The author wrote the book from her perspective, and it may not be mine or yours, but it's hers nevertheless. I actually know quite a few military wives who watch it and laugh because even if it may not be completely accurate there's always something that rings true to your own lives.

I loved "Over There" and miss it. Actually, I love most of Steven Bochco's work. NYPD Blue was another favorite. I now watch "Army Wives" and love that too. I believe that many people found "Over There" too violent, and too realistic to deal with. I don't think "Army Wives" will go in that direction. Lifetime is definitely the chick channel and will deal with relationships, hardships of being a military wife, and so on.

I was in the military for 12 years and watching those two shows is my way of connecting with the military again. I don't watch "Army Wives" to see if the rank is so many inches from the notch on their collars! I can also relate to issues that were brought up in "Over There" to some extent and I can certainly relate to "Army Wives" being I'm a female and at one time was married to a military man.

Fayetteville,

I understand your issue with realism since you have real life experience to compare it to. That being said, it is a TV show. I laughed when I heard that the show Alias sent their scripts to the CIA to be checked to make sure they were not doing anything that might give a secret away? Nice PR stunt. Alias was a fantasy and the CIA could only wish they had the gadgets that Alias had. Now, I could see the cancelled show "The Agency" having that concern because it was far more realistic than Alias. Not that I would have any idea what CIA realism would even look like. I just know it was closer to The Agency than Alias.

I'll soon get to jump on the bandwagon since Holly Hunter's (the name escapes me) new series is about a detective in the Oklahoma City Police Department. The show is not shot here, so the scenery won't be local, but I do want to see if they get the look and feel of OKC right.

Keith: Do you realize how many 9/11-sized terror attacks CIA agents have stopped by going into nightclubs in Turkey dressed like whores?

My one experience with a TV series recreating my life experience was Freaks and Geeks--I grew up in southern Michigan in the '80s--and I was surprised how many details it got right. Journalism shows are always pretty outlandish and it rarely bothers me, but I'll be curious to see the final season of The Wire, in which the media plays a big role.

Did you watch Over There? Wondering what you thought of its portrayal. Or how about The Unit?

First, I don't expect it to be completely documentary style or anything, but if they got so many huge things wrong (stuff about the military such as being newly married and immediately getting on post housing; the berets being completely wrong; the way that military wives of different ranks are hanging out together — they have fraternization policies against that type of thing), I'm usually too annoyed to continue watching it for the few things that ring true. And there are things that ring true, but there are far more outright falsehoods that drive me nuts.

James, I never saw Over There, but I do watch The Unit, faithfully. Are they completely accurate about military life and what Delta does? Probably not. But their portrayal is WAY more accurate than AW. For instance, on AW, there's a wife that keeps telling everyone that her husband is Delta. You just DON"T DO THAT in real life. And in The Unit, in the first episode, one of the wives is told that you don't ever tell anyone outside of the unit what your husband does. One small detail that makes the difference between having realism, and just being a soapy show with no basis in reality.

I didn't think that I would like the show Army
Wives, but I tried watching it with an open mind. I was surprised that I liked it. I've never seen the other shows that you were referring to. It's getting difficult to watch television anymore because there is so much smut on T.V. Why can't there be decent programs where people believe in morality. That maybe why we have a war going on today and all of the turmoil in the world. And although the show doesn't depict everything factually, they're dealing with a topic that is a real touchy subject with a lot of people.