It Could Be Worse...

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I just wanted to add two more cents about Army Wives.  I've read lots of complaints that the show isn't realistic enough for one reason or another.  Some of it is valid: the "soldiers don't want their wives to work" bit should've raised warning flags for everyone, and heinously untrue statements like that make us all look bad.  But some of the other complaints seem to lean toward the nitpicky.  I read a lot of guff about the citation the LeBlancs got for their grass being too long.  Granted, it probably wouldn't happen on the day you move in, but maybe she show just wanted to find a way to let viewers know how much control the military has over our on-post lives and how even the tiniest things are considered a reflection of you as a soldier.  Maybe?  I'd like to think they at least put that much thought into writing the show.


Big problems we should worry about.  Little quirks -- yeah, the LTC's collar bugged the heck out of me too -- shouldn't turn you off from watching the show completely.  If we worried about every little detail of every show, we couldn't watch anything!  You wouldn't refuse to watch House because Cuban boat refugees could never afford to go to the greatest medical specialist in the world, right?


Plus, it could always be worse.  Did anyone else watch the rerun of Cold Case the other day?


It was an episode called "The War at Home" about an OIF veteran who was murdered.  The errors in that show were so glaring that I had to laugh out loud.  You want to talk about stereotypes?  The husband's cheating on his wife with another lady in the FRG.  How about the Marine who hates women and beats his wife?.  And the cop and the Marine both saying that women don't belong in the service.  The cop made a comment about how all women in the military were like Lynndie England!  How many more bad things about the military could we include?  Oh, and then there were the little details, like the made-up "Medal of Valour" that she received, some hunk of gold hanging from a red, white, and blue ribbon.  Or the absolutely absurd gaff when the Marine says, "You don't belong in the miltary," and the soldier says, "I'm a soldier, same as you."  Ha, imagine calling a Marine a soldier to his face!


This soldier had been injured in Iraq and had a prosthetic arm.  I don't know if this was a prop issue for the show or what, but it was the only prosthetic arm I've ever seen of its kind.  It's my understanding that the military has pretty advanced prosthetics along the lines of these.  This TV soldier's prosthetic made her look like the robot Clamps from Futurama.  It was clunky and ugly and made her look bumbling.  I don't know if that was supposed to reflect treatment of veterans or if I'm overly sensitive to looking for agendas like that whenever the military is portrayed on TV, but it sure didn't seem right to me.


I've seen enough portrayal of soldiers on shows like Law & Order and Cold Case to know that Army Wives may not be perfect, but it isn't nearly as bad as it can get.  And hey, at least no one's said the words Abu Ghraib, right? 


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