JAG was a better TV show than critics gave it credit for. As network executives look for ways to repeat past successes, it was only a matter of time before they green-lit another military legal drama.
Actually, it's a bit of a surprise it's taken this long. Law & Order, Boston Legal, The Good Wife and probably almost every other legal drama on TV in the past decade and a half has had at least one episode involving military lawyers.
Now there is The Code, slated to premiere tonight on CBS, the same network for all of JAG’s 10-year run (except for its first season on NBC). To be clear, The Code is not a sequel to JAG, and the The Code focuses on Marine lawyers from the outset, whereas JAG didn’t add a Marine to the main cast until the second season.
Created by Craig Turk (whose name might be familiar to you from his producer credits on The Good Wife and Boston Legal), the show stars Dana Delany as Colonel Glenn Turnbull, Luke Mitchell as Captain John “Abe” Abraham, Anna Wood as Captain Maya Dobbins.
The “code” of the title is the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), which is Chapter 47 of Title 10 of the U. S. Code. Aside for some special provisions for when at sea, the UCMJ applies uniformly to the Army, the Air Force, the Navy (including the Marine Corps) and the Coast Guard.
JAG fans might be the most familiar with Article 32, which concerns investigations prior to courts-martial. Real life veterans might be more familiar with Article 15, which concerns “non-judicial punishment,” better known by its acronym, NJP.
NJP is very limited in terms of what punishments may be “awarded” (that’s authentic terminology right there), but it’s probably good enough for most minor infractions.
In theory, a servicemember can decline NJP and proceed to court-martial. In practice, you’d only want to to do that if you’re absolutely certain you’re completely in the right.
Of course courts-martial make for far more interesting television that NJP. Apparently military lawyers don’t specialize in prosecution or defense, but are called upon to do either one as the Judge Advocate General deems necessary.
And so on JAG we would see Admiral Chegwidden (John M. Jackson), the Judge Advocate General of the Navy, assign Commander Rabb (David James Elliott) to defend and Lt. Colonel MacKenzie (Catherine Bell) to prosecute one week, then Rabb to prosecute and MacKenzie to defend the next. The Code is also said to be like that, with presumably Colonel Turnbull assigning who prosecutes and who defends.
Another element of JAG the new show apparently seeks to emulate is the office romance for two of the leads. Among fans of JAG, I am atypical in that I really don’t care that much about the romance as long as the legal cases are interesting.
And JAG did have quite a few interesting legal cases, tackling such important and timely issues as undue command influence in a court-martial and accountability in a friendly fire incident, to name just two issues from the JAG episodes the H & I digital TV channel has slated to rerun tomorrow.
However, JAG could have done more to problematize the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy that was in effect during its original run. The “Offensive Action” episode, also among tomorrow’s reruns, went a little farther than anyone expected JAG to, but not far enough for the recapper at AfterEllen.com (I can’t find the link at the moment).
That task fell to The L Word, another CBS property (though it first ran on Showtime rather than CBS). In “Lay Down the Law,” civilian Alice Piezecki (Leisha Hailey) forcefully demonstrates to Army Colonel Gillian Davis (Kelly McGillis) how easily Don’t Ask Don’t Tell can be weaponized for career sniping, by suggesting the good colonel might be a closeted lesbian.
Presumably The Code will have stories ripped from the headlines just like JAG. In the years since the JAG series finale first aired, there have been quite a few interesting headlines to rip from.
I would like to suggest one about Lance Corporal Aaron Wixson, who, born female, transitioned to male while in the Marine Corps. With the so-called commander-in-chief’s half-baked transgender ban, what will happen to all the transgender servicemembers who have served our military so well?
I suggest the fictional story still be about a female-to-male transgender, but an officer. Then maybe Captain Abe, who is straight as far as I can tell, begins to fall for the trans man, in the process getting him and Captain Dobbins to confront their own prejudices about the transgendered.
Another headline to rip would be that of Army Captain Tajdeep Rattan Singh, a Sikh who was told by recruiters — you can already tell where this is going — that he would be allowed to have a turban and beard… after completing training.
JAG also set the gold standard for uniform accuracy. According to a moderator of a JAG interest group on Facebook, The Code is but a pale shadow of JAG that has already been criticized for inaccurate uniforms.
Veterans want to see active duty personnel portrayed in movies and TV in a respectful and authentic manner. This means, among other things, that uniforms are always correct unless there is a good story reason to have them wrong.
And don’t say that impersonating military personnel is a crime. The First Amendment rights of theatrical productions to depict military personnel correctly overrides the impersonation ordinance, provided of course the impersonation is limited to the stage. Though I suppose there is also a First Amendment right to depict military personnel incorrectly.
Indeed some of the uniforms in some of the publicity shots for The Code look kind of sloppy. In one such photo, with two Marines at a table, it looks like someone in the costume department stuffed one of the actors’ service alpha jackets into a seabag, then neglected to iron the damn thing before giving it to the actor.
Realistically, a Marine could plausibly need to hastily stuff a uniform into a seabag. But upon taking it out, couldn’t he ask someone for an iron if he doesn’t have one? Or he could go to the MCX or the AAFES PX to buy one, or, as a last resort, buy one at Walmart (ugh).
And on the publicity shot with Delany and Wood, the colonel eagle insignia for Delany’s character look wrong to me. Though, to be fair to the show’s costume department, since not many women have attained the rank of full-bird colonel in real life, there are not many images available online to use for reference.
By the way, in real life, our so-called commander-in-chief signed off on the elevation of Colonel Lorna Mahlock to the rank of Brigadier General, making her the first black woman to attain that rank in the Marine Corps. The MAGA racists were not happy about that.
However, one of the offensive pages I looked at (which I won’t dignify with a link) was by an author who seems to be a critic of Trump.
Brigadier General Mahlock is now the Director of Command, Control, Communications and Computers (C4) at Headquarters Marine Corps (HQMC), and the Deputy Department of the Navy Chief Information Officer (CIO) of the Marine Corps. By the way, she was born in Kingston, Jamaica, according to her HQMC bio.
Article 88 of the UCMJ prohibits military officers from making derogatory statements about the president of the United States and other elected officials.
JAG had an episode about that, it was titled “Contemptuous Words,” and the target of the contemptuous words in that episode was President Bill Clinton. But if there has ever been a president who deserves contemptuous words, that would be the current pretender to the title.
For what it’s worth, here’s one more story idea for The Code: the notoriously thin-skinned President Donald J. Corn demands a Marine second lieutenant be tried on Article 88 charges after saying some commonsense military facts that demonstrate while President Corn may claim to know more than the generals, he sure as hell doesn’t know more than the lieutenants.
According to TV Guide, the first episode of The Code, "Blowed Up," will air tonight at 9:00 p.m. (Eastern) and rerun Saturday, also at 9:00 p.m.
In the premiere, a soldier in Afghanistan murders his commanding officer, and Capt. John "Abe" Abraham and Capt. Maya Dobbins, working out of the Judge Advocate General Headquarters in Quantico, Va., are assigned to the case as prosecution and defense lawyers.
The second episode, “P.O.G.,” slated to air Monday at 9:00 p.m., sounds a little bit more interesting:
Captains John Abraham and Maya Dobbins head to a war zone when they are assigned to opposite sides of the courtroom in the case of Marine charged with abandoning his post during combat, resulting in the deaths of three soldiers. Also, Major Trey Ferry must iron out a diplomatic spat, and Lt. Harper Li works to balance her duties to the Corps with planning her wedding.
Maybe I’ll write a review, but I will hold off to until after the second episode, just in case that it turns out that, like Bull, they didn’t choose the most interesting case for the first episode.
Wednesday, Apr 10, 2019 · 5:05:23 AM +00:00
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Alonso del Arte
Just wanted to give a quick impression of the first episode. This Captain Abe fellow is one arrogant S.O.B. He waltzes in to the staff meeting late in his dress uniform (referred to as “the clothes” by two different characters), smooth talks his way into being second chair to Major Trey Ferry (Ato Essandoh), and then, to compensate for showing up late to the meeting, leaves early.
As they work on the case, Ferry reminds Abe who is the senior officer and who is the junior officer. But then Ferry just lets Abe be first chair and give all the orders. Looks like the writers forgot what the point was of having a woman and a black guy outrank Abe.
Still, the case was much more interesting than I expected, and I still intend to watch the second episode.