The New Top Ten, #7: Combat!

You have to understand something about the way I watch television to fully appreciate why Combat! makes it onto my Top Ten list, besides the fact that it's a consistently superior program.

Just because we spend our evenings watching television, it doesn't mean that's the only thing we're doing. For instance, I'm frequently working on this blog with the television on; for all you know, I may be writing these very words while Mannix is suffering yet another concussion. There are some shows that lend themselves to multitasking more than others; it's not a criticism, just a fact. 

On the other hand, some shows absolutely demand your attention—they engage all your senses, and don't let go until the episode is over. Combat! is one of those; I look forward to watching it each week, and it has my undivided attention for the full hour. That's a measure of how good it is: the dialogue, the cinematography, the framing of each shot, the music: it all becomes a sensory experience, an essential part of experiencing the show. Combat!, in its intensity, its storytelling, its performances, in the way it makes you think, is such a series; it engages, and it doesn't let go. That doesn't make it unique among the shows in our collection; it does make it good.

Combat!, properly understood, is not a war drama; rather, it's a drama about men during war. Without being strident or sanctimonious, as was often the case with a show like M*A*S*H, it manages to be both a forceful antiwar statement and a reminder of why war is sometimes necessary. It's also a tribute to the bravery of those men who put their lives on the line, often in situations that seem to make no sense, in defense of their country.

Oddly enough, I don't have any specific memories of having watched Combat! while I was growing up, unlike other shows that were set in World War II, Twelve O'clock High, The Rat Patrol, Hogan's Heroes, and McHale's Navy. And yet I must have been familiar with it; I recognized the ads for it in the old TV Guides, and when Vic Morrow was killed while filiming the Twilight Zone movie, I immediately associated him with Combat!. It wasn't until the show was featured on the late, lamented KXLI, which branded itself as "TV Heaven." Combat! was a part of the regular schedule, as well as the subject of occasional weekend marathons, and that's where I became reacquainted with it. Still, it took until I bought the box set for it to make the final impression that puts it on the list. 

Combat! tells the story of an American unit, beginning with its D-Day landing on the beaches of France and continuing as they make their way toward occupied Paris, and it has to be one of the grimmest, grittiest programs to air on television during the 1960s. It surrounds you with war: when the shells fall, you feel yourself flinching; when the soldiers are covered with muck and grime, you want to scrub it all off your face and hands and feet, if you can even remove the boots that you feel like you've lived in for half your life.* Most of all, it puts you in the middle of a line of American soldiers running toward German lines, running straight at guns that are shooting at you. It makes you wonder what you'd do. It makes you wonder how they did it, day after day, living in a kind of boring anxiety where you have to fight off hours of routine knowing that a bomb or a mine or a sniper could appear literally at any second. How do they relax, you wonder. How do they live their lives with such a heightened sense of danger constantly hanging over them? Why would you wish this on anyone?

*One of my favorite stories, according to the always-reliable Wikipedia: "During the battle of Hue during the Vietnam war US troops trying to retake the city, not having been trained in urban combat, resorted to using tactics for assaulting buildings and clearing rooms they learned from watching Combat!, reportedly to great effect."

At the same time that Combat! takes you into the horrors of war, it also takes you into the lives of these men, men who've learned how to do all the things I mentioned because, in James Burnham's words, "When there's no alternative, there's no problem." You learn to do what you have to do, and if you don't exactly become used to it, you do come to terms with it. These are the kind of characters that make it easy for viewers to root for them, to become vested in their welfare, perhaps even to identify with them. And that's before you even get to know them.

 

The alternate leads in Combat! are Rick Jason, who plays the leader of the platoon, Lieutenant Hanley; and Vic Morrow, who plays the veteran Sergeant Saunders. The episodes starring Morrow generally focus on the missions of him and his men, checking out seemingly deserted towns or doing reconnaissance work to sniff out German troop locations; Jason's episodes deal with the challenges of being in command or leading special missions. Each will occasionally appear in the other's episodes, although in a more incidental role, and many of the stories are built around guest stars and their own stories; it's a mark of the excellence of the writing and acting that the stories of rear echelon replacements, played by character actors, can be as engrossing as that of a tank commander, played by Jeffrey Hunter, who before the war was a failed priest.  

It's often the case with a superior show that one episode typifies its sustained excellence, and in the case of Combat!, that episode comes from the very first season, the Robert Altman-directed "I Swear by Apollo," which finds the squad holed up in a French convent with a gravely injured member of the Resistance. Their mission is to get him to French intelligence so he can give them vital information. Without a doctor of their own, they are forced to kidnap a Nazi doctor to perform life-saving surgery. Virtually the entire final act is conducted in silence—no music, no dialog, only the sound of the Frenchman’s labored breathing. Altman’s hand is evident in the way the story cuts between scenes of the surgery, the soldiers watching as burning candles drip wax, the contemplative nuns silently praying in their chapel, the sweat on the brow of the doctor (Sanders has threatened to kill him if he allows the Frenchman to die) and a large Crucifix mounted on the wall, with the crucified Christ looking down on the makeshift operating room; the blood He sheds may well be the blood of the gravely-injured Frenchman. 

The episode "I Swear by Apollo"

It’s gripping television; there is no guarantee that the patient will survive the operation, and the confidence that viewers have when watching a regular cast member in the same situation is nowhere present here. In the end, the Frenchman lives—and as the doctor prepares to leave (it would have been against the rules of engagement to take a non-combatant prisoner), he asks Saunders whether he would have cared about the Frenchman so much if he didn’t have military information; Saunders, in turn, asks him if he would have worked as hard to save the Frenchman's life without Saunders' threat of death. The war takes its toll on the living as well as the dead, a message that comes through in virtually every episode of the series.

Combat! runs for five seasons—longer, as more than one person has pointed out, than the actual campaign that took the troops from D-Day to Paris. For the final season, the show transitions from black-and-white to color, and I don't think the series is served well by that change—warfare, like pool halls, is more fitting when it's done in B&W, not to mention color makes it a bit easier to tell when they're shooting on a backlot. Regardless, there's a weight to the battle scenes and the drama that still comes through, that still makes Combat! television's definitive drama about men in war. And that's enough to earn a spot on anyone's Top Ten. TV  

This week in TV Guide: May 9, 1964

This TV Guide came out the day after my fourth birthday, but that's not why I picked it up. No, I ran across this isolated copy in an antique store and, despite the fact it was somewhat battered and missing a page, I bought it to find out just what that outlandish TV spoof was that fooled a nation. After all, how can you pass up a teaser like that?

Somewhat to my surprise, it turns out the answer is the classic British series The Avengers. Perhaps it's our American sensibilities, the era in which the show first came to our shores, the episodes that were shown here, or the fact that I'm looking back on it with the perspective of many years, but I have a hard time believing that anyone could ever have taken The Avengers seriously as a spy thriller.

That doesn't mean I'm taking the series lightly or putting it down. If you're been a regular reader, you know The Avengers is a favorite of mine, particularly Patrick Macnee's dapper John Steed. (Of course, there's the beautiful Honor Blackman, the painfully young Diana Rigg, and the shapely Linda Thorson, but that is a topic—or two, or three—for another day. Or week.) But really. Considering the leather catsuits that Honor Blackman wore, could you really have thought this was straight drama? Apparently so, based on the frustration expressed by producer John Bryce, who after two seasons has finally admitted that "The Avengers was conceived as a satire of counterespionage thrillers, but the British public still insists on taking it seriously."

To be fair about it, the early episodes when Steed was partnered with Ian Hendry, John Rollason and Julie Stevens, were of quite a different tenor. The series was in black and white back then, and shot on tape rather than film, giving the shows a somewhat stagebound feeling. Cathy Gale, Blackman's character, was smart, independent, and tough—every bit the equal of her male counterparts. And the villains were typical spies, not fantastic, Doctor Who-type creations that came later, such as the Aquanauts and the Cybernauts. Seeing these episodes in isolation, one could understand how viewers might have seen The Avengers as pretty much of a straight drama, albeit with some lighthearted moments.

Mrs. Peel and one of her own leather outfits

The straw that broke the camel's back, apparently, came a year or so into the run when critic Lionel Hale, appearing on a television panel show, expressed amazement that people didn't realize the show "was being played for laughs." The others on the panel protested—The Avengers didn't bill itself as satire, so how could this be the case? Such a British attitude, don't you think? After this little exchange, producer Bryce started looking back at past episodes, "moodily wonder[ing] what more he could do in the realm of wild unreality to get the idea over." After all, the show had already featured (1) a neo-Caesar, planning to conquer the world from the headquarters of his fertilizer factory, (2) Mrs. Gale running for Parliament while someone plants to detonate an H-bomb underneath the foundation, (3) Steed being brainwashed into thinking World War III has started, and (4) a pair of lawyers who sell perfect legal defenses to criminals before they commit crimes, with guaranteed acquittal promised. Bryce even contemplated "a program in which Mrs. Gale would be tied to the railroad tracks with the midnight express swiftly approaching. He said this was bound to give the game away."

By the time The Avengers made it over here, it fit in perfectly with shows like The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Batman, and other over-the-top adventure series; besides, American viewers never did get to see episodes with Mrs. Gale until they appeared on cable years later, and the earliest episodes would have been phantoms until the DVDs appeared. So perhaps we were already well prepared for the joke by that time. Still, I have to admit that the hook for this article turned out to be something of a letdown. I guess the joke was on me this time.

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During the 60s, the Ed Sullivan Show and The Hollywood Palace were the premiere variety shows on television. Whenever they appear in TV Guide together, we'll match them up and see who has the best lineup..

Sullivan: Scheduled guests include comediennes Phyllis Diller and Mary Tyler Moore; violinist Itzhac Perlman; vocalist Dusty Springfield; the Brooks Sisters, instrumental trio; comic Jackie Mason; the Cinco Latinos, vocal-instrumentalist quintet; and comic acrobat Doug Hart.

Palace:  Host Dale Robertson introduces actress-songstress Betty Hutton; comics Paul Lynde and Carole Cook; vocalist John Gary; French singers Varel, Bailly and Les Chanteurs de Paris; comedians Davis and Reese; juggler Dave Parker; the Bumpy Spectaculars, acrobats; Cueno's Horse Fantasy; and the Womenfolk, a singing group.

It's true that when it comes to someone like Phyllis Diller, your mileage may vary. (It may also be true that there's a lot of mileage there in the first place.) The same can't be said for the delightful Mary Tyler Moore, though, and the great Itzhac Perlman is evidence of the middlebrow culture that Sullivan understood so well—while, at the same time, Dusty Springfield represents the new pop mentality that's on the way. And Jackie Mason's a Sullivan favorite, at least for a few more months. Over at the Palace, I like Dale Robertson; he's my kind of guy. But I never was a fan of Betty Hutton; always thought she was too much over the top. Paul Lynde is good, but he needs to be playing off of someone else. The rest of the show doesn't do a lot for me, which means that this week, I'm giving the nod this week to Sullivan.

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Throughout the 60s and early 70s, TV Guide's weekly reviews were written by the witty and acerbic Cleveland Amory. Whenever we get the chance, we'll look at Cleve's latest take on the shows of the era. 

Although television is a medium that could still be said to be in its infancy, it's not too early to talk about traditions being formed and followed. And, says Cleveland Amory, if there's any program on the air today that can lay claim to being part of a tradition, it's CBS Reports. An outgrowth of the legacy belonging to Fred Friendly and Edward R. Murrow, CBS Reports operates on two basic principles: "What we don't know can kill us," and "We are nobody's kept men—not even our own company's." One can see, especially from that last quote of Friendly's, how there would eventually be a break between Friendly and CBS, but that's a couple of years in the future.

The result, according to Cleve, is that CBS Reports has, "season after season, come up with the finest documentaries this side of a good book." He cites such landmark presentations as "The Silent Spring of Rachel Carson" and "Harvest of Shame" as a retort to those who don't think there's anything worth watching on television today (see the stories below as examples), and adds that for much of the country, where newspapers and magazines are "either begging the issue or outright ducking it," it is the only news source that presents these stories from all sides; in typical Amory-speak, it is "on the side of the angels—not the angles." It's also ahead of the news: as early as 1962, before the Surgeon General's report on the effects of smoking, the show looked at "The Teen-Age Smoker."

This season alone has seen stalwart programs such as "The Legacy of the Thresher," which served both as a tribute to the men who lost their lives in the sinking of the atomic submarine and the lessons learned from what happened, that their loss might not be in vain; and "Case History of a Rumor," and how a whispered rumor about 124 foreign officers serving with American troops in a military maneuver in Georgia eventually became "100,000 Mongolians"—"barefoot" and "with rings in their noses." These shows have "both a point and a point of view—and, by the same token, there was a point to viewing them." (As I said last week, that "point of view" thing can be a problem, but we'll let it pass for now.) What is the secret to the success of CBS Reports in consistently producing such high-quality programs? Well, Amory says, among the many aspects, one stands out: "in five long years no member of the CBS Reports staff has ever been known to ask for, look at or even ask about a single, solitary rating report."

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I'm noticing a theme developing this week, that of quality television. It's interesting that in 1964 people are already looking back to the "good old days" of television, or at least taking stock of the industry and seeing what kind of progress has—or hasn't—been made. In the fourth part of a continuing series, TV Guide's editors have asked celebrities what they think of the current state of TV: has programming improved, what kinds of shows would you like to see, and what is the medium's greatest need.

I haven't seen the other articles in the series, but the respondents in this series seem like a pretty good cross-section of knowledgeable people: satirist and TV veteran Henry Morgan, writer and occasional teleplay author Gore Vidal, Dobie Gillis creator Max Shulman, novelist John Dos Passos, artist Leonard Baskin, photographer Philippe Halsman, TV host Lawrence Welk and Peanuts cartoonist Charles Schulz.

A portrait of your blogger as a young man  

In general, the consensus seems to be that TV has improved technically and in its ability to cover news and sports, but that the overall quality is either stagnant or has actually gone down. Vidal sees television with an "enthusiastic commitment" to producing junk, while Shulman blames a lack of talented writers and interference from network executives, and Baskin describes programming as "essentially pap." All bemoan the loss of live drama and anthology, and agree that there are too many commercials and too much pressure from advertisers (Halsman has the kindest word, saying that today's commercials "are now often more original and visually exciting than the shows they sponsor."), and Schulz talks of the need for the "artist to be able to record his work without its being torn apart and put together again by a host of others in authority." When asked what TV needs for the future, there are few surprises. The comedian Morgan would like more sketch comedy, comedy specials and comedy dramas; the musician Welk would like music "well played and in good taste"; the artist Baskin longs for the elimination of advertising, the novelist and historian Dos Passos would like more non-partisan news and analysis. Vidal comments acidly (and correctly) that television needs "a sense that getting people to buy things they do not need is morally indefensible," and Halsman looks back with nostalgia "of the time laughter came out of me and not out of a can."

In many ways, we could be having this conversation today. You'd see some of the same complaints about commercials and commercialism, you'd read comments about a need for more serious (and non-partisan) coverage of the news, you'd hear calls for more creativity and less interference. And yet this isn't really a situation where we look back at an era that was never as good as we thought it was, one that's been burnished by time. For those who know television history, one could indeed say that by 1964, the decline of TV from the Golden Age was well under way. Anthologies, the lifeblood of early television, were mostly gone, being replaced by sitcoms such as The Beverly Hillbillies—shows that, fairly or unfairly (and in the case of Hillbillies, I think the latter). 

In retrospect, of course, many of these shows—from Hillbillies and other sitcoms like The Addams Family, Ozzie & Harriet, and more—to programs such as The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Combat!, Burke's Law, The Bell Telephone Hour, Mr. Novak, The Defenders, The Fugitive, Slattery's People—are either critically acclaimed or fondly remembered. True, those critics from 1964 might reply that this says more, and not in a positive way, about our own tastes, but with the benefit of looking back, perhaps things weren't quite as bad as they seemed. Maybe the "new" shows didn't quite measure up to those of the past, maybe collective audience tastes were diminishing, but how many of us wouldn't gladly exchange them for what we have today? 

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Speaking of the sitcom (dumbed down or not), word on the street (or at least from TV Teletype) is that "Producers of Gilligan's Island are looking for three more regulars to co-star in the new comedy with Bob Denver, Alan Hale, Jim Backus and Natalie Schafer."  hose three would turn out to be Tina Louise, Russell Johnson and Dawn Wells. I don't know that I'd ever have considered myself a big fan of Gilligan, but I liked most of those people on it. And, as we read in books like Paul Cantor's Gilligan Unbound: Pop Culture in the Age of Globalization, Gilligan has a lot more to tell us than those critics back in the day might have thought.

There's also a note about some of the stories planned next season for The Famous Adventures of Mr. Magoo, and all this reminds me that these two shows were on opposite each other for Gilligan's first season, meaning that Jim Backus, the voice of Magoo, is the first—and, I think, the only—person in the history of television to appear on two different shows on two different networks on the same day and at the same time. He was, essentially, competing with himself, playing two distinct, and beloved, characters. Hard to imagine that nowadays.

I'd tell you more of the Teletype news from New York, but that's one of the pages ripped out of this issue. Someone thought a coupon for Kraft mustard was more important. They were probably right.

Keeping with industry news, the 1963 Emmy Award nominations have just been announced. The categories are a bit different from what we're used to today; in addition to best comedy, drama and variety series, there's an award for "the best program of the year." The nominees are "Blacklist," an episode from the CBS drama The Defenders (also nominated for best drama); a news special, "Town Meeting of the World" (CBS); and three documentaries: American Revolution of '63 (NBC), The Kremlin (NBC), and The Making of the President 1960 (ABC). Not surprisingly, "Making of the President" won, and while it would have been very difficult not to vote for a program about the election of a man who had been dead for six months, I think that on the whole, it probably won on its own merits. As I mentioned in this space last week, documentaries that are well done are very good.

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Continuing on this theme, a look at a couple of medical dramas posing provocative questions for the viewer.

In 1964, there are two major medical series on television: Ben Casey on ABC, and Dr. Kildare on NBC. The shows are quite different in many ways, but they share a similar structure, that of a young doctor paired up with an older mentor (Vincent Edwards and Sam Jaffe on Casey, Richard Chamberlain and Raymond Massey on Kildare.) They've also spawned similar shows about psychiatrists: Breaking Point, which spun off from Casey, featured Paul Richards and Eduard Franz as the junior and senior psychiatrists, while Kildare's companion*, The Eleventh Hour, had Wendell Corey (first season) and Ralph Bellamy (second season; there's also a pretty good article about him in this edition by Richard Warren Lewis) as the elder doctor, and Jack Ging as the young psychologist.

*Not technically a spinoff, but since it was originally conceived as an episode of Kildare, we'll count it.

Each of these series features plotlines this week that I think would be told differently were they on TV today. In Breaking Point (Tuesday, 9:00 p.m. CT, ABC), the subject is autism, in the story "And James Was a Very Small Snail." Autism wasn't a very well-known or understood condition in 1964, so the material was probably much fresher than it would be today. Dr. Thompson's (Richards) small patient is seven-year-old Petey Babcock, whose only means of communication  with his therapist is through a crayon. Thompson's burden is to convince Petey's parents and older brother that Petey's only chance at making progress is if he remains at the clinic. Meanwhile, later that week, The Eleventh Hour (Wednesday, 9:00 p.m., NBC) presents "This Wonderful Madman Calls Me 'Beauty," the story of a biochemist recently diagnosed with a brain tumor, who wants to forego treatment until he's concluded his research on isolating a life-prolonging enzyme, work that he feels is on the threshold of success.

In each of these episodes, we're presented with something of an existential dilemma that in my opinion would be missed by today's television. Kenneth Newell, the biochemist in Eleventh Hour, is emblematic of a man driven to succeed, so much so that he's willing to jeopardize his own life in the quest for an answer that may save many other lives. Not having seen the episode, I can't say for sure whether or not Newell acts from ego or altruism, which I suppose is why it's being told on a drama about psychiatrists instead of brain surgeons, but at the very least there's a potential for a real philosophical debate about the meaning of life and whether or not Newell's potential breakthrough is more important for him that to simply preserve his own life.

Breaking Point is, I think, even more fertile ground. Today this story would be on a legal show (something like The Good Wife, probably), debating the legal rights of the family vs. the health of Petey, not to mention the various theories on the causes of autism, hotly debated today, which cause nary a ripple in the water in this episode. All this, I think, overlooks the heart of the drama: the mystery of existence, the depth of the human mind, the dynamics of family relationships, what "quality of life" really means. It's handled sensitively and effectively, with understanding for all concerned: the doctors, the family, and Petey himself. I thought it was very well done, even considering that Breaking Point is a favorite show of mine.

I should add that this week's drama isn't confined to medical shows; this week, the legal drama The Defenders (Saturday, 7:30 p.m., CBS) presents James Coburn in "The Man Who Saved His Country."  Coburn plays Earl Chaffee, an ordinary man who becomes an overnight celebrity after killing a man in self defense. The man just happens to be a top Cuban communist, traveling around the country incognito. A lot of people, the Prestons discover, have a stake in this case—including the Federal government. The question persists: does Chaffee automatically become a hero for acting in self-defense, even though he didn't know the man he killed was a communist? And does it matter that Chaffee wasn't even aware of it at the time? Is someone justified in killing a person who "deserves" killing, regardless of the circumstances motivating the killing? You can see how this can lead to other questions, other scenarios, even ones that aren't part of the specific story. 

My point here is that these shows, and ones like them, are what I'd call idea shows. These aren't prime time soaps, serialized dramas, or shows featuring explicit violence or sex. Whether by design or not, their stories contain themes and plot points that can be thought about, discussed, debated. One of the themes that ran through last week's lead story on documentaries is the importance of packaging, of acknowledging "the dramatic composition to life." The existential point of the story doesn't have to be dull. Neither does scripted drama. And viewers don't have to be afraid of it, either.

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If I haven't put you to sleep completely with that last section, a brief mention of this week's cover story should be a good way to wrap things up. Combat! was not only the best of World War II dramas of the 1960s, it was one of television's best dramas, period, a gritty, realistic portrayal of an American squad of troops working their way across Europe following D-Day. (It also didn't hurt that all but the last season was done in black and white.) The stars, Vic Morrow and Rick Jason, more or less alternated leads each week, though they also could appear together in stories. Morrow is probably the better known of the two, but Jason was thought by many to be the likely star of the series when it began, and he's the focus of this week's unbylined cover story.

The portrait of Jason we're given reminds me a bit of a similar profile of Jack Lord that was done a year and a half ago; both come across as men trying just a little too hard to show everyone what Renaissance men they are. In Jason's case, it's how he prides himself on sculpting, painting, woodworking, leathercraft, carpentry, plumbing, landscaping, cooking, photography, dog training, fish breeding, guitar playing, singing, writing, bridge, chess, hunting, fishing, underwater swimming, and karate, in addition to starring in a weekly hour drama. He also reads "everything from Aristotle and Plato to Henry Miller," pilots an airplane, and speaks Spanish, French, Italian and Chinese. Makes me tired just to type that.

The typically unnamed friend concedes that Jason probably does "most, if not all, of these things" but adds that "he's not as much of an expert as he'd like you to think." His first wife (of three, one of whom Jason says he wasn't legally married to at all) says "he is very handy—but he never finishes anything." Like Lord, he's seen as something of a throwback to Hollywood's larger-than-life stars of its glamorous past; "Vic is more of an actor," another unnamed source says, "Rick is a star." But whereas Jack Lord clearly rubs some people the wrong way, Rick Jason is inherently more likable, with "a naiveté which might leave him open to ridicule were it not for his very guilelessness." 

Hidden behind that façade, though, one suspects that sadness lurks; Jason himself says that "I enjoy being an actor because I can stop being me. Like many actors, I don't particularly like myself." His parents never really accepted or acknowledged his success in acting, and for all the various activities he say he's engaged in, acting appears to be what really matters. "I can't remember ever wanting to be anything but an actor," he says. 

As Combat! progressed through its five seasons, Morrow came to be perceived as the face of the series; although Jason still received top billing every other episode, more and more of the stories focused on his character, and he wound up directing seven episodes in addition. Jason is philosophical about it all: "If those are the conditions that prevail, I won't chafe under them. I can't say I have any complaints about this business." The two actors bring different strengths to their episodes; it's really impossible to say that the series could have survived for five seasons without each one of them bringing his own particular talent to the story. Combat! is a show that has aged well, primarily because it combines the storylines of a period piece with the eternal truths of the human condition, making for an intense, gritty, occasionally heartrending series. Perhaps it isn't part of the top ten, but it's very close.

However, I can promise that after I've watched an episode featuring Rick Jason, I've had no particular desire to get up and do some woodworking, fix the plumbing, whip up a gourmet meal, train a dog, study Chinese, . . . TV  

How to watch TV

I imagine the answer to this must be self-evident to most of you; after all, you wouldn't be here unless you already knew how to watch TV, right? (It certainly can't be for my sparkling, rapier-like wit and charm.) 

But when you think about it—and, believe me, I have—there are different ways to watch TV, depending on the type of show you're watching. Sometimes, of course, all you need is some white noise, some background chatter to keep you from being distracted by doing something more important. (Like reading this esasy, for instance.) There are other times, though, when you find yourself drawn in by the storytelling, invited into a universe inhabited by the characters you see on screen. This is storytelling at its best. It causes you to think—not in the sense that you're attending a class or listening to a lecture, but because you become an active participant, either in confronting the challenges faced by the characters, or dealing with the issues raised in the story.

For example, let's look at a question raised in a recent episode of Sam Benedict, the legal drama I've been watching: should an attorney leave himself open to severe discipline, perhaps even disbarrment, for failing to provide an adequate defense for a man he knew was guilty? His secretary thinks not: she knows her boss as a good and decent man, and argues that he shouldn't be forced to put his own career on the line for a man who was clearly guilty. (The jury came in with a guilty verdict and death sentence in forty minutes.) Even if an appeal is upheld, the defendant will just be retried, convicted again, and executed anyway; why sacrifice yourself when you're not going to change anything? 

For Sam Benedict, the issue is that everyone, regardless of their guilt or innocence, is entitled to a fair trial, and this man—regardless of his guilt or innocence—didn't receive one. His Sixth Amendment rights were violated because he didn't have an adequate defense. And now, hours from the scheduled execution, the attorney has no choice; he is duty-bound to act in the best interests of his client.

So what do you think? I know people who'd agree with the secretary, who'd say that there's no sense in giving up your own career over defending a man who was guilty anyway. People are funny that way; they're the same ones who are always saying that "if you're innocent, you don't have anything to fear." But we all know, or should know by now, that this ain't necessarily so. Sure, crime offends us, especially when the victim is a child or a senior citizen, innocent or defenseless. It's the same rationale used by cops who plant evidence on a suspect in order to guarantee a conviction. He's guilty anyway, they say to themselves and others; this is just to ensure nothing funny happens, whether you get a slick lawyer or a lenient judge or jury nullification. It's an easy call when guilt is obvious, right? Well, it is easy to be favor of justice for everyone in the abstract, but what happens when push comes to shove? 

This is an example of a story that forces you to think about the questions being raised. You might wonder what you'd do in the same situation, but more likely you're finding that the episode may be challenging your beliefs, questioning your ideas; it might even force you to change your mind.

Then, there's a show like Combat!, where you find yourself in the middle of the action, with bombs bursting around you and bullets whizzing past your head. I don't know about you, but I find it impossible not to put myself in the battlefield, wondering what I'd do if it were me in that trench, seeing death and destruction everywhere—and being grateful that I was never in such a situation. Does it make you consider your opinion toward war and peace? You understand that you're being manipulated; after all, every storyteller tries to control the reaction that story produces, and the producers of Combat! made no bones about it being an anti-war drama, though not in a political sense.

But what happens when a storyline forces you to consider the wounded German soldier, perhaps the very one who was shooting at you just a few minutes ago, as a fellow human being? Is it still a situation of kill-or-be-killed, or do you look at him as a creation of God, deserving of being treated with dignity? You might argue that things are different in wartime, but Christ was well aware of war, yet He still admonished His followers to love their enemies. And again, you find yourself being asked: What would you do? Can you expect the Germans to live up to the Geneva Convention regarding prisoners of war if you're not prepared to do the same? 

Granted, with shows like these, it's easy to sit back on your couch and declare your certainty that you'd do the right thing if it came to that, but in truth we can't know for sure; things are different when people are shooting at you, or if it's your daughter's killer on trial. One thing is for sure: it's an excellent way for you to come face-to-face with some uncomfortable truths.

Finally, there are those series that invite you to speculate on what Paul Harvey used to call the rest of the story. Hogan's Heroes is a perfect example of this kind of show; lacking a final episode, it's become something of a cottage industry for people to speculate on what happened after the series ended; I engaged in a bit of that myself, in one of the more popular pieces I've written here. But when people come to feel that they know and love the characters they see on screen, it becomes natural to speculate on what happens next. 

One series that seems to be ripe for this kind of treatment is another World War II drama, Garrison's Gorillas. Unlike Combat!, Garrison's Gorillas is a more conventional action-adventure program, in which a team of convicts, each with a particular talent, is assembled into a fighting unit designed to carry out particularly difficult missions requiring the kinds of skills which Garrison's men possess. In return for taking part in these missions, the men are promised their freedom—six months after the war ends. But since the show was cancelled after a single season, we never know what the rest of the story is. Do they make it all the way through, or are some of them killed along the way? And does the government hold up their part of the bargain in the end?

After one particular mission, I had the disturbing thought that, in real life, things would not have gone so well for our heroes after the war. Remember, for instance, the pains to which Allen Dulles and the wartime spy machine took to ensure the secrecy of Operation Paperclip, the project that utlized German scientists, some of them war criminals, in the American rocket program. Would Dulles have been sanguine about the American public—or, even worse, American lawmakers—finding out that the U.S. military had recruited convicts, some of them perhaps dangerous, some of them perhaps security risks, to take part in missions that might well have involved documents that, after the war, could have been sold to the highest bidder? And that, as part of the deal, these convicts had been promised their freedom in return? 

I wonder. Dulles was a devious type, likely part of the cabal to which Taylor Caldwell referred in last week's piece, and I think he would have wanted to keep this operation as secret as possible. Given the nature of criminals, I doubt he would have trusted them either to behave themselves or to keep quite. Therefore, the logical solution would be to have them all killed in the last days of the war. When I expressed this opinion to my wife, she sensibly pointed out that Garrison himself would never stand for such a thing. She's right, of course, which is why Garrision would also have to die. It probably would have been some kind of plane crash on the way back from a final mission, the kind of crash that often occurs to those whom the government views as a liability. A dark conclusion to the story, perhaps, but no less logical than many fan fictions that people write.

And when it comes to it, that's what this is all about. Fan fiction, like any other involvement in the characters and storylines of a television series, is nothing to be ridiculed. Whether or not the stories are logical and well-written or elementary pieces of tripe doesn't matter—what does is that people have engaged in these stories in a way that demonstrates how these programs made them think, rather than sit dully in front of a flickering screen doing their best impressions of someone in a vegetative state. People who say they don't want to be challenged by television shows, that they don't want to be made to think, are missing the whole point. (Remember a few weeks ago I wrote about how even game shows like Supermarket Sweep required the viewer to have a "detailed knowledge of market prices plus the ability to make arithmetical calculations, involving fractions, at high speed."

This isn't to say that every television show is a college-level ethics class masquerading as entertainment; there's enough evidence to the contrary to disabuse anyone of that notion. But a viewer shouldn't be intimidated by the idea of a television show causing those little gray cells to work. That, I think, is the way to watch television. And who knows—they might even find they like it. TV  

The live Top Ten

Time flies. It was ten years ago that I prepared my Top Ten list that's been residing over there on the sidebar. Most of those shows had been part of my informal top ten, the one I kept in my head, for years, and given my disinclination to watch contemporary television, there was no particular reason to think those choices would be changing any time soon. 

Recently, though, I've been thinking. (Granted, that's often cause for alarm among you readers, but it's a habit I've had trouble breaking.) Ten years is a long time, and while it’s true the classic era of television (which encompasses most of the shows on that list) is long since over, that doesn’t mean I’m done discovering classics that are new to me; indeed, thanks to the wonders of YouTube and the Internet Archive, I probably have more access to unseen shows from the 1950s through the 1970s than ever before. And so it sees to me that it’s about time for a reappraisal—or perhaps, using today's industry lingo, I should call it a "reboot."

This first list is one made up of shows that have been my favorites over the last year or so. Think of it as a "live" list—in other words, (spoiler alert!) while The Prisoner will always be one of my all-timers, it's been a few years since I've watched it. Therefore, it wouldn't make a list of current favorites. Conversely, there are shows that I really enjoy right now, but when they're stacked up against the rest, they might fall just outside the top ten. That's not a knock on them; it just shows how tough it is to crack that list. Later on in the year, I'll be introducing an all-new all-time Top Ten. I wouldn't expect too many changes if I were you, but it will definitely have some additions, not to mention revised comments on some of the shows that remain. 

Having already gone on altogether too long, I'll now get to the point with two legal dramas that rise to the top of the list: Judd, for the Defense and Sam Benedict. I reviewed Sam Benedict just a couple of weeks ago, while I shared my feelings for Judd last year. Each of them represent a welcome break from the formulaic Perry Mason; while Mason is still a favorite, the Perry/Della/Paul triangle gets old after a time, while Hamilton Burger's incompetence remains beyond comprehension. Both Judd and Benedict give us what is probably a more realistic look at the high-octane life of a big-time trial lawyer. It's also quite a different view of the legal system, though; for example, in one case Sam gets his client acquitted, but we never find out who actually did commit the crime. That's not Sam's job, though; he was hired to ensure justice for his client, and that's what he did. 

Both men share a passion for that concept, justice, which causes them to occasionally take cases against their better judgment, representing unpopular causes or defending people they don't like—but, as Clinton Judd reminds us, everyone is entitled to a fair trial, even those with whom you might not agree, and what's popular is not always what's right. (By the way, it's also nice to see clients who behave like real people, with well thought-out backstories, rather than the cartoonish caricatures that too often comprise the Mason universe.) Our heroes aren't assured of winning, either; a couple of Judd's cases go to the jury without us ever finding out the verdict, while one of Benedict's clients turns out to be guilty, and another is only saved from a long prison term by a plea deal that Sam arranges for him. We may not be used to seeing that, but it's a fact of life, and in these stories the casees were just background; there was something much more fundamental at stake, which is what the stories were actually about. These shows have hard edges and deal with hard issues, and they've both earned top places on this list.  

Also on the list, and this won't come as any surprise to longtime readers, is Mystery Science Theater 3000. As many times as I've seen some of these movies, there's invariably a riff or two that I hadn't caught before, or one that just hits me the right way; along with the original British version of Top Gear, it's one of the few shows that actually makes me laugh out loud. I've gained a real appreciation for the various casts that appeared on the show over the years, particularly the dry wit of Mike Nelson, the voice talents of Trace Beaulieu, and the offbeat riffs from J. Elvis Weinstein, who started on the show when MST3K was just a local program in the Twin Cities, and stayed for the first year of its national run. (I remember seeing the very first MST3K, a double-feature that aired on a Thanksgiving evening, and was a fan from the start.) I also learned how a bad serial like Radar Men from the Moon can be that entertaining.

There are a couple of war dramas on the list as well. I took on Garrison's Gorillas here, and followed it up with the show that succeeded it on our schedule, Combat! Garrison's Gorillas is action-adventure at its finest, with a very good ensemble cast (as opposed to, say, The Rat Patrol) and entertaining stories; at the same time, it never forgets (nor lets you forget) that war is no game, and it's fought for the highest possible stakes. That's a message that's driven home relentlessly in Combat!, which is not only perhaps the best war drama ever seen on television, but one of its best dramas period. Its well-drawn characters and literate plots give us a graphic look at the horrors of war; it makes those of us who never fought profoundly grateful for our good fortune, and even more appreciative of those who have. If you're not anti-war after watching Combat!, you haven't been paying attention.

The British police series Maigret, starring Rupert Davies, got my treatment here, and my enjoyment of it continues to increase each week. Davies's portrayal of the famous French detective is spot-on, capturing the world-weariness and hard edge of the character perfectly, while also portraying his warmth and good humor, seen both with his wife and his colleagues. Maigret is shrewd, intuitative, and, in contrast to most American police dramas, demonstrates both respect and empathy for many of the accused that he investigates, including some that he arrests; "Some people criticize me for being too sympathetic," he comments in one episode. American detectives would probably accuse him of being soft; they fail to understand what humanity is all about, primarily because they've already lost their own.

The Twilight Zone is already on the Top Ten list, but it's been many years since I've given the series a proper look, and my new BluRay set has been the perfect excuse to start watching it again from the very beginning, with spotless and uncut episodes. It's provided me with a reminder of how brilliant the show's first season is; I wonder what people thought back in 1959 when they were seeing these episodes for the first time? We can look it up, of course; there's been a plethoria of material written about the show. Still, it's interesting to see how well those first season episodes reflect the tenor of the times: several early stories depicting military themes (how many men back then would have found these settings familiar; after all, it was what they'd experienced), while others involve man's quest for space, or just a general unease with the modern world. Add to that a layer of the unexplainable, and it's hard to top.

My relationship with Twin Peaks remains an ambiguous one, in light of a brilliant premiere episode, a solid first season, and a disastrous second one. I'm in the midst of watching Twin Peaks: The Return right now (six episodes in), and I'll write it up when it's over. But right now I'm at a point where each week's episode is highly anticipated, if for no other reason than to see if things begin to make sense. Bit by bit some pieces of the story come together each week, but there's a long way to go. Still, when you're dealing with David Lynch, you either trust him or you don't, and The Return has still paid off in a way that season two never quite managed. Besides, remember how I said this was a live list? Well, I look forward to it each week, and if that doesn't earn a show a spot on the list, what does? We'll see if it's still there the next time we try this little experiment.

Hawaiian Eye is probably the third-best of the WB detective dramas, behind 77 Sunset Strip and the underrated Bourbon Street Beat, and the quality of episodes varies wildly, but in a TV diet that, at the moment, is a very intense one, it's the kind of show that you can relax and watch, knowing you don't have to listen carefully for the smallest verbal clue, react to the injustice you see on the screen, or wince once again at man's inhumanity to man. You just watch it and accept it for what it is, and believe me, there's a lot to be said for that. I first wrote about it here, and since then Grant Williams has joined the cast; he doesn't really add anything to the show, but he doesn't hurt it either. Otherwise, the only changes I'd make to what I said then are that I've come to enjoy Anthony Eisley much more—I might have mischaracterized him as being stiff back then, and he's grown on me since; I'll miss him when he leaves the show for the final season—and Connie Stevens is starting to get on my nerves. Her Cricket Blake character keeps complaining that she's not treated like a grown-up, but for my money she doesn't give us any reason to think otherwise. Hopefully, as it is with so many immature people, it's just a phase.

Finally, I wrote about Burke's Law just recently; there's a reason why we're watching the series again from the very start. It's as charming now as it was the first time, and with the passage of time there's still some mystery as to whodunnit; what more can you ask for in an encore showing? It's the perfect Saturday-night compliment to a movie from the Criterion Channel that's often intensity ramped up to eleven on the dial. (Have you ever watched Japanese noir? Try it sometime.)

As I mentioned, I'll have a complete revised Top Ten later in the year, but looking at it in real time has been an interesting exercise. Maybe we'll do it again sometime. TV  

Around the dial

I think we'll start this week with Cult TV Lounge, and a look at the Lost in Space TV tie-in novel written by Dave van Arnam and Ron Archer in 1967, while the show was still on the air. It contains three interrelated stories, and as you'll see, it takes quite a different tone from the series itself.

At The Lucky Strike Papers, my friend Andrew Lee Fielding gives a very nice credit to me by way of mentioning Peace, my friend Jodie's new Dave Garroway biography. If you've not ordered Peace yet, you should. And if you've not read Andrew's wonderful book The Lucky Strike Papers, you should; I reviewed that here.

The emphasis on TV books continues at A Shroud of Thoughts with Terence's review of the book Popeye the Sailor: The 1960s TV Cartoons, by Fred M. Grandenetti. If you're around my age, you'll have fond memories of these cartoons, which often showed up on local kids' shows (at least in my experience), and Mr. Grandenetti makes the case that these cartoons deserve more respect than they've gotten.

At bare-bones e-zine, Jack's Hitchcock Project takes him to the third teleplay from Halsted Welles, the seventh-season episode "Strange Miracle," with David Opatoshu and Miriam Colon. It's a neat little story that has a devilish—or, actually, a quite angelic—twist at the end. I'm looking forward to seeing this one.

Robert celebrates 20 years of his site Television Obscurities this week, and let me take the opportunity to credit his fine work over those 20 years in bringing so much of obscure television to light; I've often consulted it in researching things you read about here, and I never fail to come away from it knowing more than I did beforehand.

At Those Were the Days, a look at the June 15, 1963 issue of TV Guide, and the cover story on the series Combat!, with its two stars, Vic Morrow and Rick Jason, sharing a rare (for that show) lighthearted moment. If you've never watched Combat!, you should; it's one of the best, most intense, dramas of its time—not a show about war as much as it is about men in a war.

It seems as if I'm always focusing on The Avengers over at The View from the Junkyard, so this week I thought I'd link to Roger's look at "Columbo Cries Wolf," the first 1990s episode of the revived series, and one that presents us with a format and a story quite unlike anything we've eseen before. Does it work? That's for you to decide.

Remember the clever puns used on The Flintsones whenever a contemporary figure appeared in Bedrock? David does, and at Comfort TV he recalls one of the best-known and most-loved examples, that of Ann Margrock, alias Ann-Margret, and the sweet lullaby she sings to baby Pebbles. It's the essence of what comfort TV is all about.

At Cult TV Blog, John continues his series on TV episodes related to the circus, with "From Out of the Rain," from the Doctor Who spinoff Torchwood. The episode itself is reminiscent of the 1970s series Saphire and Steel, and while it's not a particularly popular episode of the series, John suggests it's well-worth checking out.

Finally, at the Broadcast Archives, a look at futurist Hugo Gernsbank (afther whom the science fiction Hugos are named) displaying, among other things, what might be the world's first portable television set, called "teleyeglasses"—so small that you actually wear it. Talk about total immersion!  TV  

What I've been watching: January, 2023

Shows I’ve Watched:	Shows I've Added:
Combat!	Twin Peaks (Original)
	Captains and the Kings Sam Benedict Omnibus (Interviews)

As I've mentioned before, I enjoy watching programs that are just plain fun, but I also like ones that can make me think. Since we've completed Garrison's Gorillas, there are only two war dramas on the weekly schedule: The Rat Patrol, which is almost over, and Combat! And both of these shows do make me think. The Rat Patrol makes me think, "How much longer does this episode have to run?" Combat!, on the other hand, makes me think, "I've never been so thankful to God that I never had to fight in a war."

The Rat Patrol can be fun at times to watch (although it seems to me that the quality started somewhere in the middle and went steadily downhill), but it strikes me as a Saturday morning version of war: all thrills and action and leaping jeeps, fine if you're an energetic boy playing war with your friends (or on a video game), but it never puts you in the middle of what's happening, makes you ask yourself what you'd do in a situation like this. 

Combat! tells the story of an American unit, beginning with its D-Day landing on the beaches of France and continuing as they make their way toward occupied Paris, and it has to be one of the grimmest, grittiest programs to air on television during the 1960s. It surrounds you with war: when the shells fall, you feel yourself flinching; when the soldiers are covered with muck and grime, you want to scrub it all off your face and hands and feet, if you can even remove the boots that you feel like you've lived in for half your life. Most of all, it puts you in the middle of a line of American soldiers running toward German lines, running straight at guns that are shooting at you. It makes you wonder what you'd do. It makes you wonder how they did it, day after day, living in a kind of boring anxiety where you have to fight off hours of routine knowing that a bomb or a mine or a sniper could appear literally at any second. How do they relax? you wonder. How do they live their lives with such a heightened sense of danger constantly hanging over them? Why would you wish this on anyone?

If I make this sound grim and depressing, the kind of show that makes you want to take a handful of Prozac, then the most remarkable thing about Combat! may be that it never fails to keep your interest. It takes you into the horrors of war, yes, but it also takes you into the lives of these men, men who've learned how to do all the things I mentioned because, in James Burnham's words, "When there's no alternative, there's no problem." You learn to do what you have to do, and if you don't exactly become used to it, you do come to terms with it. These are the kind of characters that make it easy for viewers to root for them, to become vested in their welfare, perhaps even to identify with them. And that's before you even get to know them.

The alternate leads in Combat! are Rick Jason, who plays the leader of the platoon, Lieutenant Hanley; and Vic Morrow, who plays the veteran Sergeant Saunders. The episodes starring Morrow generally focus on the missions of him and his men, checking out seemingly deserted towns or doing reconnaissance work to sniff out German troop locations; Jason's episodes deal with the challenges of being in command or leading special missions. Each will occasionally appear in the other's episodes, although in a more incidental role, and many of the stories are built around guest stars and their own stories; it's a mark of the excellence of the writing and acting that the stories of rear echelon replacements, played by character actors, can be as engrossing as that of a tank commander who before the war was a failed priest, played by Jeffrey Hunter.  

Several factors enhanced the show's realism; for one thing, most of the cast and crew had served in either WWII or Korea, and knew what it was like to slog through the mud of combat. Executive producer Selig Seligman (don't you love that name) was so insistent on creating a realistic environment (knowing, of course, that many of the show's male viewers would have served in the military as well) had the principal cast go through a week of basic training at Fort Ord; Jason would later say that it was harder than his actual basic training in the Air Corps.* In addition, the show was blessed with talent behind the scenes, beginning with Robert Altman, who directed ten episodes in the first season; The most frequent directors during the show's run were Bernard McEveety and John Peyser, but Richard Donner, Burt Kennedy, and Tom Gries also worked on the show, and Vic Morrow himself directed seven episodes. 

*One of my favorite stories, according to the always-reliable Wikipedia: "During the battle of Hue during the Vietnam war US troops trying to retake the city, not having been trained in urban combat, resorted to using tactics for assaulting buildings and clearing rooms they learned from watching Combat!, reportedly to great effect."

While Jason and Morrow are the above-the-title stars, the unit is comprised of a very tight group of supporting players, each of whom gets opportunities to play crucial parts in stories. Pierre Jalbert (Caje), Jack Hogan (Kirby), and Dick Peabody (Littlejohn) all remained with the show for all five seasons; Conlan Carter (Doc) is in the final four. One of the most interesting casting decisions was that of stand-up comedian Shecky Greene as Braddock, serving mostly as comic relief. Although he only appears in the first season, he shines in a lighter episode where he is taken prisoner by the Germans, who mistake him for a colonel (Keenan Wynn). He repeatedly tries to convince the Germans he's really just a private, until he realizes he can leverage their misidentification into getting better treatment for his fellow prisoners; it's a fine example of rising to the occasion.

As was the case with so many of the best dramas of the 1960s, Combat! has a terrific lineup of stars, both current and future, in guest appearances; in addition to the aforementioned episode with Jeffrey Hunter, you've got Lee Marvin (in a great second-season episode), Roddy McDowell, Ed Nelson, Harry Dean Stanton, Leonard Nimoy, Mickey Rooney, Jack Lord, Robert Duval, Charles Bronson, John Cassavetes, Sal Mineo, James Coburn—the list goes on. Some of them are rough and tough heroes, while others are simply trying to hold on through the next barrage. And there are no guarantees that they'll make it intact to the end of the episode; there is no false sentimentality involved. In fact, as the series progresses through the first season, you see the combat vet Sanders struggling to accept the death of yet another member of his unit; in one memorable scene, he recalls how he didn't even know the first name of one of his men, a replacement who gets killed during a scouting mission, and determines to avoid that in the future.

One of the most striking episodes of the series is an Altman-directed first-season story, "I Swear by Apollo," which finds the men holed up in a French convent with a gravely injured French operative. Their mission is to get him to French intelligence so he can give them vital information. Without a doctor, they are forced to kidnap a Nazi doctor (Gunnar Helstrom) to perform life-saving surgery. Virtually the entire final act is conducted in silence—no music, no dialog, only the sound of the Frenchman’s labored breathing. Altman’s hand is evident in the way the act cuts between scenes of the surgery, the soldiers watching as burning candles drip wax, the contemplative nuns silently praying in their chapel, the sweat on the brow of the doctor (Sanders has threatened to kill him if he allows the Frenchman to die) and a large Crucifix mounted on the wall, the crucified Christ looking down from the Cross upon the makeshift operating room. It’s gripping television; there is no guarantee that the Frenchman will survive the operation, and the confidence viewers would have from watching a regular in the same situation is not present. In the end, the Frenchman lives, but one of Saunders’ men, critically injured by a mine, dies despite the doctor’s efforts. As the doctor prepares to leave (it would have been against the rules of engagement to take a doctor prisoner), he asks Saunders if he would have cared about the Frenchman so much if he didn’t have military information; Saunders, in turn, asks him if he would have worked so hard to save his life if it hadn’t been under threat of death. The war takes its toll on the living as well as the dead, a message that comes through in virtually every episode of the series.

Combat! runs for five seasons—longer, as more than one person has pointed out, than the actual campaign that took the troops from D-Day to Paris. For the final season, the show transitions from black-and-white to color, and I don't think the series is served well by that change—warfare, like pool halls, is more fitting when it's done in B&W, not to mention color makes it a bit easier to tell when they're shooting on a backlot. But no matter how it's photographed, there's a weight to the battle scenes and the drama that still comes through, that still makes Combat! television's definitive war drama.

You'll recall my favorable review of Garrison's Gorillas, the series which preceded Combat! in the Hadley Tuesday night lineup. Where the two shows differ, though, is in tone. Garrison's Gorillas is well-written and well-acted, but the emphasis—which works quite to the show's advantage—is on action and adventure. Combat!, however, focuses on the micro view of war; not the maps and the battles, but the human stories and the human cost of war. It carries an avowedly anti-war message, but one that, unlike, say, M*A*S*H, is not ideological. It is a show that makes clear that war is sometimes unavoidable, sometimes necessary, but something never to be sought, never to be glorified, never to be used as a political solution—a Pax Americana,  say—by those who fight in the trenches. It presents war the only way it should be experienced: on television.

l  l  l

Believe it or not, that's all there is to report this month; we're at a point right now where the schedules have been running pretty smoothly for awhile. But, as you can see from the "Shows I've Added" column, there are more in the pipeline, just waiting to take their rightful place in the primetime schedule. Next time, things should look a little different. TV