"Over There", the 1st T.V. show about a war shown during that war

[mopaul]

http://www.boston.com/ae/tv/articles/2005/07/27/conventional_over_there_holds_its_fire/

Sure, it has the visceral intensity of every combat opera since ''Apocalypse Now" -- the battle anarchy, the numbed-out kids losing their religion, the horror, the horror. And it's filled with hauntingly hallucinogenic visual poetry -- an electric-peach sunset across a torn land, white smoke twisting through ruins. It gives us the indelible image of a pair of legs still running after their torso's been blown off.

But the series, which premieres tonight at 10, is a surprisingly conventional war story in praise of Americans fighting on foreign soil, broken but unbowed. The title of the show, which reaches back to World War I and the Yankee Doodle innocence of George M. Cohan, carries little irony here. Despite its edgy stylings, ''Over There" is a straight, well-made homage to our boys and girls in Iraq -- the duty-bound young mother, for instance, and the newly injured hero longing to return to his post. It portrays very few of this particular war's moral and political twists, even while it strongly captures a general sense of band-of-brothers bravery and battle suspense.

And that's too bad. ''Over There" is the only TV series about an American war to air during that war. As such, it's a missed opportunity to dislodge some of the issues about this fight while they're still incendiary. It doesn't need to be a political screed on one side or the other to fold in psychic elements specific to this conflict.

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I won't watch this show, it ain't my thing, and i think it's fucking bizarre besides, and sickly surreal. it makes the whole bloody atrocity look like an entertainment, which i find vulgar and sad.

and that title: "Over There" which harkens to bush's famous lie, 'we're fighting them OVER THERE so we don't have to fight them over here'. it also harkens to the world war one song, 'over there', which makes us long for the good ol' days when we had wars for specific reasons.

[Dogmudgeon]

1. "Over There" was a song glorifying World War One

Another meat-grinder of a war, even bigger than the jolly little one we're inflicting on Iraq and a big chunk of American and English enlisteds.

I never saw the show. But if it's at all realistic, I hope it does well.

--p!

[mopaul]

2. thanks for the correction

over there, over there, the yanks are coming, the yanks are coming so beware....

[Dogmudgeon]

3. Correction?

I didn't read your post thoroughly -- that's what I get for skimming!

Actually, I was kind of pointing out that the song glorifies war.

Personally, I'm partial to the irony of When Johnny Comes Marching Home, which is actually possible with some of those new prosthetic limbs. The ones they give the officers, anyway.

--p!

[Cooley Hurd]

4. Since I've heard not one whit of a complaint from the right about this...

...I assume it glorifies the conflict. If "Over There" is anti-war, then one would assume that the RW would be railing against it...

[ThomWV]

5. There Was A TV Show During The Korean War

When I was young, and we first got a TV, the Korean War was still on. There was a weekly show, half hour, that was much like a documentry of the past weeks events in the war, and it definitly included film from the front. I remember it vividly because my family is from the south, a traditional source of much of our military personnel, and we looked for relatives - and once saw my uncle Ernest. Four of my Uncles served in both WW-II and Korea.

I remember it as clearly as yesterday becacuse I had never seen him look like he did on the tiny screen. He was just one of a rag-tag band of men walking down a road toward a camera, returning from a battle in which they had been relieved by replacements. I knew my Uncle Ernest well and I had seen him, and all of my other uncles, as tired as only 80 acres of cotton can make a man, but I had never seen him look like he did on that TV. It was a look I wouldn't see again on any man until my turn came, in Viet Nam. It was a look I have never seen on my son's face and pray God I never do.