MovieChat Forums > Over There (2005) Discussion > Why 'Over There' failed.

Why 'Over There' failed.

posted 17 years ago by bdave121
15 replies | jump to latest

I have always been a Bochco fan since Hill Street Blues. I love all his shows, (well, maybe not Cop Rock).
I quite liked Over There when it first aired. I could not understand for the life of me why it failed as a series.

Upon watching the DVDs I finally get it. It is frankly INCREDIBLY sad. I mean almost every show is sad PLUS there is NO REDEMPTION. You can have sad shows, but you got to throw a little redemption in somewhere.

Now, you can say war IS sad and without redemption and you are probably right. But often total honesty does not for ratings make.
Take Band of Brothers...very similar in many ways. Bonding soldiers who fought and died together, but for a greater good (well from most people's view anyway). It had plenty of sadness, honor, death, but there was redemption also.

I think the writers would have finally worked some sort of redemption into "Over There" if given time. But maybe not. It is a pretty tall order to do that in a war that is still ongoing and no one knows about the final outcome.
War is NOT glorious or heroic by nature, but that is what viewers want to see at least some of the time.

"Over There" was too Hollywood for Gulf veterans and too real for civilians.
I thought it was totally brilliant despite it's "faults".

[–] medea05 17 years ago

Hi there! I just watched the entire season of 'Over There' and have been trying to work out why it was cancelled, and I think I agree with you, in part. Also, it might have been too early for such a series - the fact that conflict is still going on in Iraq might have hurt its chances, as successful series like M.A.S.H. or on a lesser scale, Tour of Duty were filmed when the wars they described were over.

I myself loved all the parts which regarded the soldiers in Iraq, but was bored to tears by most of the 'back home' storylines. However, I don't think that was what killed the show: I feel the same way about The Unit, and that's why I stopped watching it (that and David Mamet's usual treatment of women in his work), but ratings-wise The Unit is much more successful.

I was reading an article written around the time it was still being shown, and one of the reasons they gave was that "no women are watching"! Huh?! Since when do studio execs give a crap about women watching? Every time a show starts people are burbling about the male 18-34 demographic and I would have thought this kind of show is ideal for them (cutting out all the awful back home cliches); besides, I'm a woman and I just inhaled all 13 episodes over two days, and in the TWOP 'Over There' thread most (if not all) the posters were women.
No women watching!! Of course women were watching, if for nothing else, for the amazing Erik Palladino, who I had never heard of before, and who stunned me with his acting: the look on his face when the French woman put her hand on his cheek!

Oh, I suppose they mean, no women horribly tortured and raped on screen, that's what gets them going.
Don't mind me, just annoyed - I'm sure the show would have improved if it had been given the chance, and some better writers in Season 2.

[–] mark6785 17 years ago

maybe higher forces are at work , and its because the conflict is still going on that its been pulled

[–] bdave121 17 years ago

Thanks for your post Medea05. I'm glad you mentioned Palladino's work in the Orphans and the French woman's episode. He did such a superb job, much with body language only. It was my favorite episode.

[–] medea05 17 years ago

One of the saddest things about the cancellation is that in Season 2 I would think we would have gotten some background for Sarge's character. On the Twop forums there was speculation that maybe he had been in foster care - the way his walk through the orphanage is filmed (from his pov) it seems to have more of an effect on him than other events have.

I think if the film-makers had concentrated more on the soldiers and less on 'back home' (or made the backstory less cliched) they might have been given another season. On the other hand, you never know what's going on in the background, and at least it was given a full season (for cable) - this year shows have been pulled after one or two episodes.

. . . for hys verye wallet hath 'bad motherswyvere' on it ywrit.

[–] rjneb2 17 years ago

Actually my take on why it failed as a series is that it was simply too diffuse. It was very hard to get to grips with any of the main characters and very hard to tell them apart especially when they were in combat fatigues. This is not to fault the actors but more the writers who - in my view - failed to sufficiently differentiate the grunts (the ladies excluded).

Also, I couldn't really see where the series was headed. The soldiers being caught in endless ambushes was only going to get very repetitive, and it was inevitable that some of the main characters would get killed. The home front stories seemed to fizzle out too.

So, an honourable failure. Brave of them to tackle making a show about a contemporary conflict. But given that the wounds are still pretty raw, it's not that surprising that the audiences should not want to be reminded of a very contentious issue.

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[–] Sawyer1625 16 years ago

1 I have seen middleschool plays with better acting

2 The writing felt like a bad action movie mixed in with a daytime soap

3 The Characters sucked,you had the bad girl,the angry black guy from the hood,the nerdy white guy,the hick and of course the BAD MOTHER BEEPING Sergeant that deep down had a heart of gold and really cared for his unit.You need characters that stick out and grab you but this show didn't have anyone interesting or original.

4 Show's about war get old fast because they can be great for a 2 or 3 hour movie but for 13 episode's of the samething week after week

5 That BEEP song was so BEEP stupid and the writer of that song is a piece of BEEP that should never work again

RANT OVER

[–] jamesr87 16 years ago

Wow, for a guy who didn't like it he sure spends a lot of time on a discussion board about it.

Must be such an empty life.

Anyway ... Over There failed for the same reason all good Fox products fail.

Because Fox is *beep* stupid.

[–] 16 years ago

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[–] joekill162 15 years ago

Why 'Over There' failed. because we had to listen to that stupid *beep* song at the end of every episode.

[–] DuckMan51392 15 years ago

That BEEP Song did suck ans Sawyer has a point about the characters being boring

[–] nomen_meltdown 14 years ago

"War is NOT glorious or heroic by nature, but that is what viewers want to see at least some of the time."

It's also what the powers-that-be like to see depicted, too. It occurred to me very starkly the other day, watching the opening for The Pacific (which, don't get me wrong, was a mini-series I liked very much, and I really liked Over There, too). But what struck me was the whole uplifting music giving some BS noble feel to war.

But a stark, brutal story about war? A series where war might be shown for what it is-- old men sending young people to kill each other over land or money or pride, barely-adults dying face-down in the mud or the sand, bombs shredding flesh, gore and terror and cries for mom? And instead of any pretty orchestral score, just the rattle of gunfire and screams of people dying? Yeah... try getting that into syndication past the military-industrial complex and the army recruiters and the war-mongering politicians.

I'm an island- peopled by scientists, bards, judges, soldiers, artists, scholars, & warrior-poets.

[–] Cakez3 13 years ago

Agree with a lot of this.

The fater/spotter, killed.
The journalist, beheaded.
The prisoner, blown up together with a lot of other prisoners (The second Tariq heard him starting the death prayer, Tariq should have shot him).
The kid with the chessboard, lost the chessboard, then hurt (seen the series twice, and I'm at e07 for the third time, can't remember if the kid actually got killed, or just hurt).
Scream, reenlisted.
Dim and his wifes kid, lost.
Mad Cow, killed just after he started to get likeable.
Farm with stingers, blown to hell.
Imams wife, pretty f'd to be honest. No new building for the village.
Father, son, Private Dana, AND the medic, all dead.

Almost everything that happens always has the worst possible outcome that can happen without changing the whole series (e.g. some of the main characters dying, which wont happen because they're main characters). With some rare exceptions, e.g. Bo improving a lot and turning out ok, but in general, no redemption or all-out good outcomes whatsoever.

[–] testorca 12 years ago

i hated this show for one reason -- the characters were 100% UNbelievable... the writers used a cheezy formula to roung out the main cast... over the top tough sgt, intellectual, pacifist, urban youth/criminal type, noob, and a cpl chicks (one overly angry, one wimpy as hell)...

these characters were a joke!!!