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"OVER THERE" SHOWS THE HORRORS OF WAR, BUT CHARACTERS CAN'T SUSTAIN THE DRAMA
August 19, 2005
In FX's new original drama, "Over There," war is hell … just as it has been in thousands of books, movies, and television shows dating back to the beginning of such things. The difference in this case is that this war is also current. Men and women just like the characters in "Over There" are dying now, today, every day in the Middle East, and that immediacy, the near instantaneous turning of headlines into drama, have made the FX series a tricky proposition.
Producers Chris Gerolmo and Steven Bochco need to show the horrors of this war without becoming too politically preachy or misrepresenting the struggles facing our real-life soldiers stationed in Iraq. In that regard, they've succeeded admirably. In its first three episodes, "Over There," airing Wednesdays at 10 p.m., has used fiction that looks a lot like fact to examine what is individually at stake for those Americans on the front lines.
An early theme is the way that war tears apart husbands, wives, and children, leaving families torn to shreds in its bloody wake. Not only does "Over There" chronicle the lives of U.S. soldiers fighting overseas, it also tells the stories of their loved ones, back home worrying, trying to live on, breaking down, falling apart. While Pvt. Frank "Dim" Dumphy (Luke MacFarlane) tries to rationalize the war he's fighting in, his wife cheats on him and fails to give Dim's saddened stepson the shoulder he needs to cry on. "Over There" takes the stories of military families and follows them on each side of the world.
That duality is one of the show's strengths, as is "Over There"'s seemingly realistic depiction of life in a war zone. "Over There" is not filled with not-stop action, but instead offers long sections of troops sitting and waiting, either in a ditch or alongside an abandoned building, while occasional gunfire pops overhead. Early on in the series, while camped in a trench, a soldier asks something she'd never considered - where do they go to the bathroom?
It sure seems that Gerolmo and Bochco have the details down, or at least enough of them to show the viewer a sliver of what life must be like for those in Iraq taking orders and facing death while still having to piece together some kind of normal existence. At times, those details make "Over There" remarkably interesting TV. The problem, and this show does indeed have a big one, is that the paper-thin characters usually cannot sustain the drama that springs from these events.
Dim is often placed at the center of things, but his smart-guy-trying-to-reconcile-with-his-duty-as-a-soldier struggle has been done many times before. He's essentially Matthew Modine's Pvt. Joker in "Full Metal Jacket," pulled from the Vietnam War and plunged into our current war in Iraq, guilty conscience firmly intact. In addition to Dim, "Over There" also features the angry, racist black man, the battle-hardened, no-nonsense sergeant, etc.
The worst offender by far, however, is Pfc. Bo Ryder (Josh Henderson), a Texan with dreams of playing college football who joined the Army to help pay for his tuition to Texas A&M. By the end of "Over There"'s first hour, Ryder is sitting in military vehicle that rolls over a land mine. He loses a leg in the devastating explosion. By the end of hour three, he's fighting his way through withdrawal after demanding that his doctor take him off morphine. All of this might be moving if we had any time to like Ryder in the first place. But when the tragedy starts coming, we know little more about him than he speaks with a heavy southern drawl. Since we're not yet emotionally invested, his storyline has stopped the show cold every single week thus far.
One final thing - "Over There" does something I've never seen before. The credits and sad, slow theme song are actually at the end of the show, running over the final scene. It's an awful idea that results in every single episode ending on the exact same solemn note. I know there can't be many happy times when you're far away from home, fighting for your life. But not all stories of war need have an identical melancholy finale.
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