Archive for the ‘Television’ Category

‘China Beach’: Network TV Takes on the Vietnam War

China Beach has finally gotten a DVD release in an elaborate box set. The 1988–91 ABC TV series examined the Vietnam War from the perspective of women, both those who served and civilians who experienced the war up close. +Continue Reading

‘Lauren’ Explores Sexual Assault in the Military

The WIGS Channel on YouTube wants to update the serial drama (a/k/a “soap operas” or what your grandmother called “my shows”) for the modern world with a series of programs named after the female lead characters who anchor each drama.

Lauren returns today for a second season. “Season” on the WIGS channel is kind of a hybrid between the traditional weekly episode model and the all-at-once release Netflix is pioneering with House of Cards and Hemlock Grove: four episodes of Lauren are live now, with four to follow on May 10th and the final four on May 17th. Each episode runs about ten minutes, which makes each series almost add up to a feature-length movie.

Lauren wants to address the problem of sexual assault in the military and explores the subject in a manner that will seem familiar to anyone who grew up on General Hospital or One Life to Live. The show features some other high-watt talent: Jennifer Beals (Flashdance) plays Lauren’s commanding officer and Bradley Whitford (The West Wing) plays the officer that Lauren tells about her sexual assault.

In the scene below, Lauren (played by Troian Bellisario from Pretty Little Liars) tries to convince Raymond Cruz (from Breaking Bad and The Closer) to seek help for what seems to be post-traumatic stress.

And here’s the trailer for season two:

And you can watch the first four episodes here.

Revisiting the ‘Ten Thousand Day War’

Made for Canadian television in 1980 and later syndicated to American stations, Vietnam: The Ten Thousand Day War is an almost twelve-hour documentary about the history of Vietnam from the end of WWII through the fall of Saigon in 1975. Time Life has just issued the series in a 4 DVD set.

Future CNN war correspondent (and Canadian) Peter Arnett wrote the narration and conducted the interviews for the series and the Richard Basehart narrates the documentary, something that might be disconcerting for anyone who recognizes his voice as the narrator of Knight Rider. +Continue Reading

HBO & VICE Reimagine the News

HBO is taking a risk with a newsmagazine series made by the kids at VICE, a hipster magazine turned website turned alternative news source. The website has long featured the kind of immersive, participatory journalism you never, ever see on the major broadcast or cable networks.

The reporters head to hotspots around the world in an attempt to shed some light on the underground web of arms dealers, warmakers and mercenaries who exist outside of the usual American sight lines. The VICE founders are Canadian-born and they don’t seem to find much daylight between the agendas at FOX and MSNBC, carving out an approach that’s likely to shock anyone who’s been getting their news from Wolf Blitzer. +Continue Reading

Jane Fonda Learned ‘Empathy is Revolutionary’ From Vietnam Vets

Jane Fonda tells Oprah that thing she did in North Vietnam was an “unforgivable mistake” and talks about what she learned when she apologized to a group of Vietnam Veterans in an episode of Oprah’s Master Class. The clip surfaced because Oprah’s running a followup interview with Fonda on Sunday April 7th at 9pm on Oprah’s Next Chapter. +Continue Reading

Go ‘Inside Combat Rescue’

Inside Combat Rescue is a six-part series premiering on the National Geographic Channel next Monday February 18th at 10PM. The show chronicles an Afghanistan deployment for the Pararescuemen (a/k/a Para Jumpers a/k/a PJs), an elite Air Force Combat Rescue unit whose mission it is to extract and provide medical assistance to U.S. forces and our allies who are injured in combat.

The show’s producers have outfitted the PJs with cutting edge micro cameras attached to their chests, helmets and also strategically placed the flash drive cameras in locations the helicopters that fly the unit on its missions. What they’ve captured are detailed and realistic visions of combat missions that far surpass anything the public has seen before. +Continue Reading

How Your ‘Alpha Dogs’ Get Trained

Raise your hand if it ever occurred to you that United States military and law enforcement would outsource at least some of their dog training. Retired USAF Senior Master Sergeant Kenny Licklider saw a need for specialized training, seized the opportunity and started Vohne Liche Kennels.

VLK is now a multi-million dollar business spread over 600 acres in Denver, Indiana with satellite kennels in California and Arizona. Just like (seemingly) all successful entrepreneurs in modern America, Kenny got himself a cable reality show and Alpha Dogs premiered last Friday night on National Geographic’s Wild channel.

Over the last twenty years, VLK has trained dogs for more than 5,000 law enforcement and government agencies, including the National Security Agency (NSA), Pentagon Police, U.S. State Department, all military branches and more than 500 civilian and police agencies. +Continue Reading

Aid for the Journey Home

What a strange and complicated Super Bowl Sunday. Strange because, if the San Francisco Forty-Niners had managed to pull out a victory on that final drive, we would be plagued forever with power grid failure conspiracy theories.

Complicated because it was a day a lot of us spent thinking about retired Navy SEAL Chris Kyle. As author of the acclaimed bestseller American Sniper and star of NBC’s Stars Earn Stripes reality show, he was in many ways our highest-profile Special Operations veteran. News that he was killed while trying to help a fellow vet deal with a difficult transition back to civilian life. Kyle and Chad Littlefield’s deaths are a sobering reminder how tough that transition is for many men and women and how limited the support resources can be for struggling vets and the people trying to help them. +Continue Reading

Boot Camp for the ‘Rocket City Rednecks’

Back when I passed through Hunstville, AL in the late ‘70s, all the rocket scientists sounded like they’d been imported from Indiana or had suspicious German accents. That’s why the National Geographic Channel’s Rocket City Rednecks has always been a mystery. I knew folks who talked like Travis, Daddy and the rest of the cast but they were always the ones badmouthing the “carpetbagger Yankee scientists.“Things have obviously changed enough down there so TV can come up with a Mythbusters–meets–Moonshiners concept show.

Tonight’s Season 2 finale has Dr. Travis deciding to invent a lightweight, full-body flak suit that won’t limit mobility in the field and testing out his homemade field armor in last October’s Marine Corps Marathon in DC. He recruits William Bodette a retired USMC drill instructor, to put him through a civilian boot camp to train for the race. No word yet if Travis finished the race or if he plans to test out his invention in actual combat.

‘The Americans’ Brings Back the Cold War

During the Cold War, was the USA packed with Soviet agents who lived as regular American families, spying on their neighbors and radioing the intel to Kremlin analysts? For anyone too young to remember the era, does that sound remotely possible? +Continue Reading