Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, September 21, 1995 TAG: 9509210037
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: TOM SHALES
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Actually, ``JAG'' probably deserves another few points for its aerial photography, something you don't see much in series television. The two-hour pilot for the series, airing on NBC (WSLS, Channel 10) Saturday at 8 p.m., is a spectacular production, with dogfights and bombing raids and daredevil landings aboard an aircraft carrier in the Adriatic.
But when it's not literally up in the air, ``JAG'' sinks like a rock. It's bottom-of-the-barrel ``Top Gun.'' The exploits of a Navy lawyer who walks around like he's balancing books on his head prove to be yawnable and contrived, and old-fashioned in a very bad way. ``JAG'' uses cliches from the 1957 movie ``Zero Hour'' that were already lampooned, and brilliantly, in the 1980 movie ``Airplane!''
It seems our Navy lawyer was once a flyer but he had a little mishap when landing on a carrier one night; his night vision failed him. Meanwhile, his dad went down years earlier over Da Nang. Big question: Will, during the climax of the show, the lawyer be required to do a night landing again? And will he manage to do it successfully this time? And will someone then say to him, ``Wherever he is, your old man would be proud of you, sir''?
Yes, yes and, heaven help us, yes. ``JAG'' is one corny macho howler after another.
``JAG'' stands for Judge Advocate General, the Navy office charged with investigating crimes and mysteries within the service. The crime to be investigated in the premiere is the death of a young woman cadet who either slipped off the deck of the aircraft carrier during a storm or was pushed, and not by a wave, either.
Certainly the show is timely. Not only does the matter of male attitudes toward women in the military come up, but the mission of the hour is to shoot down Serb planes that violate forbidden airspace over what used to be Yugoslavia. But none of this helps make the drama any more dramatic.
In the pilot, David James Elliott, stiff as a dead parrot, plays the hero, Lt. Harmon Rabb Jr., with Andrea Parker as a fellow lawyer. After the pilot, Parker will be replaced by Tracey Needham in roughly the same role. Somebody should have thought about replacing Elliott, who seems to have a range of two expressions, one of which is dumbfounded and the other of which is confused.
``JAG'' was created and produced by Donald P. Bellisario, who obviously wanted to do a mainly manly series about mainly manly men doing many mainly manly things. There's something inherently restricting, though, about military dramas - everybody running around in those uniforms and talking that infernal jargon.
For instance: On a Navy aircraft carrier, we are told, ``six'' is the preferred word for ``tail'' or, as many would put it, ``butt,'' so we get an almost endless array of variations - ``stick to my six,'' ``cover my six,'' ``a sidewinder up your six,'' and so on. The show is six-crazed. There's also such indecipherable gobbledygook as, ``When Hammer went down, I called the Sandies and flew cap 'til I was bingo fuel.''
Little boys and grown men who are still in touch with their inner little boys may take to ``JAG'' like yuppies to yogurt, and NBC executives firmly believe that Elliott will steal the hearts of female viewers, but somehow, it seems awfully unlikely.
All the expensive-looking production details and explosive special effects (the pilot reportedly cost $3.5 million) can't hide the moldy old ideas at the heart of the show. In a word, ``JAG'' tanks. Right on its big fat six.
- Washington Post Writers Group
by CNB