FX gets real

Who needs reality TV? If you want real, the explosive premiere of “Over There” on FX was about as real as it gets short of being in Iraq. Never before has television featured a program about a current military operation…and seeing this spectacular program makes one wonder why. Though it certainly has a lot more gory detail than your average TV news, it feels a bit more true to life as well.

There are no heroes in “Over There” – and there doesn’t have to be. There’s no giving chocolate bars to kids. No John Wayne adopting orphans. No self-righteous monologues about honor and duty. There are only American kids trying to follow orders and stay alive.

Episode one introduces the squad in their deployment and first days at war. If you know anyone who has served in Iraq or Afghanistan and have heard their stories, it feels almost surreal to see it played out on a screen. One scene, where the new soldiers stand over their first kills in disbelief, particularly struck me as being someone’s true story.

In watching the exposition scenes, I personally felt as if I could know these young people. They seem so real because each and every one of them is flawed is some way that makes him or her seem that much more human: Angel is bitter about joining, Dim seems to have serious marital issues, Bo is overeager and Mrs. B is a hazard to her entire squad.

Producer Steven Bochco has set these characters into a landscape that draws viewers in both visually and emotionally. In the fast-paced and occasionally hazy camera work , he creates the feeling of “being there”…and in the juxtaposition of frenetic pacing and unexpected lulls, he has created a very real sense of dread in the viewer. Not since “Band of Brothers” has anyone truly captured icy cold worry in a weekly installment (I only hope it continues as such).

From the end of the first episode (Spoilers!), I can already tell this show will get a hard look from pro-war PC hounds. Young football player Bo looks to have lost a leg in his first week thanks to a roadside IED. I can hear the complaints now, “They depict the worst case scenario just to prove war is wrong. Blah blah blah.”

And I already disagree. How many boys are injured or killed their first week? How many promising athletes lose their dreams at war? How many young fathers and husbands haven’t come home? Is there such a thing as a worst-case scenario at war?

From the first episode alone, I give kudos not only to Bochco for taking on such a huge and controversial topic…but to FX for having the cojones to give it to us straight (complete with cursing, sex and bloody stumps of legs). Keep it coming.