-By Warner Todd Huston
Most reviewers of the new Fox 1/2 hour Army sitcom, Enlisted, felt the show was affecting, even sweet. While that isn’t far off the mark, it is nonetheless a bit hard to feel that making fun of our armed forces is a good idea when so many of them are still facing combat overseas.
Enlisted starts off with super solder Sgt. Pete Hill (7th Heaven star Geoff Stults) who is forced to leave the front lines in Afghanistan because he punched a Colonel who refused to send him support during a fire fight.
He is sent to a fort in Florida where his two brothers (Chris Lowell, Private Practice and Parker Young, Suburgatory) serve in a “rear D” unit–meaning “rear deployment. The show makes it clear that “rear D” soldiers are screw-ups and “not even real soldiers.”
This characterization is a bit hard to swallow and the show would do best to moderate this harsh assessment of soldiers that serve away from the front lines. After all, our state National Guard units are considered “rear D” but have born quite a lot of combat since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
It would have been better had the show simply found a screw up unit to highlight instead of branding every soldier who isn’t fighting hand-to-hand with the Taliban a “screw-up” much less being characterized as not being “a real soldier” merely because they aren’t in direct, front line combat.
The days when soldiers who served away from the front lines could comfortably satirized as “not real soldiers” is in the distant past with shows like McHale’s Navy or Gomer Pyle, USMC.
Today, any soldier could be a front line soldier at nearly any time.
Another bit that fell flat was the amputee joke. Command Sergeant Major Donald Cody, who is in command of Sgt. Hill and his screw-up unit, (veteran actor Keith David, maybe best known for Platoon, 1996), is portrayed as having lost a foot in combat and uses a white prosthesis because “my size only comes in white.”
Amputee jokes should probably be out of bounds when we have soldiers facing that possibility every single day.
Still, reviewers weren’t totally off the mark to call the show “sweet.” In fact, it could be called a throw back to the old days of military sitcoms in that the show isn’t overly sexualized (though there were a few double-entendres), isn’t trying to be edgy–like MASH was, for instance–and doesn’t seem to be mean spirited.
Perhaps the most affecting character is actor Parker Young’s brother Randy Hill who is a big hearted, deadly earnest, entirely goofy but totally lovable. Brother Randy serves as a great foil for the sardonic middle brother Derrick (Lowell) and big brother Pete (Stults).
The three brothers, whom we discover lost a father in combat when they were young, are a rambunctious, offhanded, goofy lot and the viewer can easily believe they really care about each other. The three actors gel well together as a believable band of brothers.
Further, with the first episode, at least, the writers do not treat the cast of characters of the screw-up unit with contempt, which is refreshing.
As to the comedy, the show did offer several smiles and even a couple of guffaws. One thing that the viewer can be thankful for is that the show does not try for any dark comedic commentaries on war. At least in the premier episode, Hollywood isn’t trying to shove its left-wing principles down our throats disguised as “comedy.”
Enlisted is worth giving a chance with a few reservations understood.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, MrConservative.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, Wizbang.com, among many, many others. Huston has also appeared on Fox News, Fox Business Network, CNN, and many local TV shows as well as numerous talk radio shows throughout the country.
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