If the writers of Army Wives haven’t been reading my episode reviews, than my name isn’t Curly Sue … oops! Did I just let that slip?
Seriously though, folks, can you deny that we seem to have a direct line to the writers’ room over there? “Pamela’s under-utilized, and tossed crappy stories.” “Okay, then, here’s a whopper of an emotional roller-coaster for her: where’s Chase?” As my wife said to me during one of the commercial breaks last night, even if it turns out to be nothing, at least Pamela’s getting some real meat to chew on. Finally.
Actually, there were a number of interesting things going on last night. First of all, the Sherwoods and the Holdens seem to have reversed roles, at least as far as happy marriages go. While Frank and Denise are all lovey-dovey and gooey, Michael and Claudia Joy are struggling with the diagnosis of Claudia Joy’s diabetes. Or, I should say that Claudia Joy is pushing back at Michael, and at Emmalin, as they try to rally around her for support. Yes, it’s not an atypical reaction to such a thing, but I would have always imagined Claudia Joy to be a different kind of person than that. But, I guess everyone has their breaking point.
Trevor seems to have hit the recruitment wall over at his new job. It’s no secret that the push for new troops is constant, and that the pressure placed right on down the chain of command is almost unbearable. It actually occurs to me now that there have been stories of late involving recruitment officer suicides … maybe Trevor’s plot isn’t just a lightweight one for him. It would impress me tremendously if Army Wives aims to address this very serious issue. And beyond the pressure to sign two new recruits a month (not to minimize it, of course), if a recruit that Trevor brings in dies in combat — it will take some time for that to happen, so I wonder what drama they’ll toss him in the meantime — I imagine it will crush him. He’s that kind of a good guy.
At a far distance from good is this ongoing goodbye between Roland and Joan. I can’t speak to a spouse going off to war. The only thing I will say is that I think Roland is the only one who puts any effort into their relationship. Maybe he’s no different than Denise was or Pamela is, but I guess stereotypes make Joan’s preoccupation stick out more to me than Chase’s or Frank’s.
Of course, let’s not forget the big question we’ve been left with: what’s with Chase? I think in general it could be anything, because shows love to focus on the expression on the face of one person, without showing us the other (in this case, we watched Pamela see Chase, but we did not see him). Many times, that ends up being nothing more than happiness to see a person. In this case, I think something’s really wrong. Pamela had a real look of fear and terror on her face. Chase may be okay in the long run, but my guess is that he looks really bad.
That being said, I don’t get why Pamela was let in to see him. Nothing changed about the need for her to be escorted in by her husband. Anyone familiar with Delta out there able to shed some light on what would have really happened?
Two thoughts on music-related points of the episode that I thought of as I lay in bed last night, wistfully staring into nothingness, music playing in the background (there’s one; anyone out there ever lie in bed and ponder as often as TV characters do?).
The second is in a bit of poor taste, but I will share it with you nonetheless. Right after Claudia Joy fell, they went to commercial, but not before we got the little montage of the wives galloping toward us in their dresses and heels. I imagined it would have been really funny if, special for this episode, Claudia Joy had tripped and toppled over while running towards us that time.
Hey — it made my wife laugh when I told her.
Clacked by Aryeh S.
on Aug 31, 2009 @ 15:00 EST5EDT
