Dear Army Wives scribes,
What the mother of crap (Friends!) was Sunday night’s episode? A flashback episode … other people’s flashbacks, with our actors playing other roles? Really? Did you forget the high-pitched drama at the end of last week when Joan got “the call?”
I can’t imagine a single reason for this divergence, other than that it was aired out of sequence. Even so, what was your point? To show us how wives lost their husbands in World War II? Part of me is saying, “Just watch as this random episode comes back to play a major role in what’s to come before this season ends.” Even if that’s true, it does nothing for me now.
You didn’t even get creative, except maybe by having Terry Serpico (Frank) classified 4F and Catherine Bell (Denise) be in the Air Force. What might have made the hour worth it is if you’d switched up partners. They were playing other people anyway, so why did Brian McNamara (Michael) and Kim Delaney (Claudia Joy) still need to be a couple? I think McNamara and Brigid Brannagh (Pamela) might be interesting together….
Plus, what, we’re to believe that “our” characters were all defenders of black rights back in the 1940s? I think it stretches the realm of possibilities to imagine that it was all of them against the world, and I think honest viewers would have appreciated realism over political correctness.
Look, I’ve spent much of this third season struggling with how you decided to grow and evolve the characters and their stories. I still think there are some missing links, but overall I feel as if you’ve finally settled solidly into the familiar, albeit new for this show, territory of family drama. So why the vacation this week?
Like I said above, Joan is imminently deploying. Pamela has just realized that Chase was tortured (as incredulous as it is for her to have figured it out), Claudia Joy is finally coming to terms with her diabetes (eh), Denise is training for a new career, awaiting Jeremy’s return, and really clicking with Frank, Trevor and Roxy are going to start trying to get pregnant…. Did it really seem like the time to take a week off?
I know it’s tough to write for a 20 episode season (poor babies), but you had to come up with this crap, no? Why not have applied those creative juices to continuing the stories we’ve been watching these last few months? Like I said, I don’t know if there’s a bigger picture here, but the little picture is really, really bad. Don’t waste the next three weeks, too.
Sincerely yours,
Disgruntled
Clacked by Aryeh S.
on Sep 22, 2009 @ 13:00 EST5EDT
Wow, Aryeh, I have to say I am impressed. Not only that you actually watched this entire episode, but then you also took the time to sit down and write about it. That’s way more time than I gave it. Not even fifteen minutes in, I said forget it and changed the channel.
I really loved this show in the first season, and I’ve still watched it, but I think the quality of the storylines has been going steadily downhill. After this last ep, I’m just not sure how much more I can take.
*POST AUTHOR*
I may have been sitting at the computer for most of it while it played in the background…. ;)
Count me in the minority/opposition here, but this is actually the only episode of Army Wives I have watched all season (and I was a huge fan when the show started). I’ve always loved it when shows have done “alternative” episodes and I’m also a fan of the World War II “genre”, so the advertisements really pulled me in and I stayed up late to watch the re-airing on Sunday night. I guess not knowing what was going on in the rest of the season let the episode stand on its own merits, but for me, it was a great hour of television.
*POST AUTHOR*
I didn’t find the episode itself so interesting, but my bigger problem was that we were mid-serious story lines, and there are only a handful of episodes left to the season. There was absolutely no reason for wasting a week at this point, which is just really frustrating.
Ah, I think that is what makes the difference– you knew it was coming and hadn’t been watching the rest of the season; I had been looking forward to this week’s episode addressing some of the issues brought up last week, and since I hadn’t seen any preview commercials (I try to avoid them), I was surprised and disappointed by this episode. But watching it did make me appreciate even more what a great actress the person who plays Pamela is. I’m glad you enjoyed it!
*POST AUTHOR*
I don’t watch much on Lifetime (Army Wives and How I Met Your Mother reruns) but I didn’t see any advertising for this. Maybe if I’d known it would have been different, but like Abigail, I was looking forward to the continuation of ongoing stories.