thedrifter
08-13-09, 12:11 PM
August 13, 2009
Television Review | 'Special Ops Mission'
Military Mission, and You Are There
By MIKE HALE
“Special Ops Mission,” a new series beginning Thursday night on the Military Channel, sits on the spectrum of living-room heroics somewhere between “24” and a first-person-shooter video game. The premise is that actual special operators — former Army Rangers, members of the Navy Seals, Force Recon Marines — play out situations like terrorist-camp infiltrations or pirate takedowns as authentically as possible. Everything is real, we’re led to believe, except the bullets. Oh, and the presence of the camera crews.
The press notes refer to “simulated” and “dramatic” scenarios; the show itself, on the other hand, begins with an on-screen declaration, “This is an unscripted war game.” In the pilot episode the degree to which the action — the rescue of hostages from a large, empty, warrenlike building — has been choreographed (as opposed to “scripted,” an entirely different thing) is never addressed.
Perhaps younger viewers no longer care about, or even register, the extent to which what they’re watching has been prompted and staged for the camera. I’ve learned not to care with a whole range of programs, from “The Real World” to the real housewives. But when I’m watching men playing what purports to be an elaborate game of hide and seek with automatic weapons, that coyness about methods — the lie we’ve all agreed to participate in so that reality television can exist — bugs me more than usual and saps much of the interest from the show in question.
And “Special Ops Mission” doesn’t have a surplus to begin with. The star of the show is Wil Willis, an Army Ranger and Air Force pararescueman (we’re told), who will take on each week’s impossible mission with the help of his “commander,” identified as Master Sgt. Thomas Minder (as in hinder), who monitors Mr. Willis’s progress by video and gives him radio updates. Sergeant Minder appears to be the more charismatic of the two, and you begin to wish that he wasn’t stuck in the “remote command center.”
In fairness to Mr. Willis, he’s handicapped by his combat gear, which includes goggles and a helmet, and he has to spend nearly the entire hour whispering. Still, we spend much of the show focused on him — a camera mounted on his gun gives us frequent close-ups of his face — and his panting, nervous, downbeat affect quickly becomes off-putting. His opponents in the episode, four men with backgrounds in the Army, Navy and Marines, get to dress in the black sweaters that designate action villains, and their faces are uncovered. As a result they end up being more sympathetic than Mr. Willis, our hero.
The operation itself is basically a big game of paintball: the guns are loaded with Simunition, realistic-looking cartridges that are, well, paintballs designed to work in M4’s and M16’s. Helpful graphics show us where the players are at different moments, and a digital clock ticks away. By the time Mr. Willis concludes his first mission, six hours have passed; on “24” Kiefer Sutherland would be a quarter of the way toward saving the world from nuclear annihilation.
Some events leave you wondering about the qualifications of the participants. At one point Mr. Willis stumbles into his opponents’ lair and steals their maps of the building, which they have conveniently left lying on a table. Later two of them go off to hunt Mr. Willis when we can all see that what they should do is hunker down and ignore him. Finally they leave their hostages unguarded, which makes the satisfying conclusion of the episode a lot simpler.
One bonus of “Special Ops Mission” is the cool new jargon civilians can pick up. I didn’t know that “mike” meant “minute,” and I can now add “fatal funnel” and “pieing the corner” to my vocabulary. Best of all: “There’s a guy right up my six.” Just think for a second, it’ll come to you.
SPECIAL OPS MISSION
Military Channel, Thursday nights at 10, Eastern and Pacific times; 9, Central time.
Produced by MorningStar Entertainment for the Military Channel. For MorningStar Entertainment: Gary Tarpinian and Paninee Theeranuntawat, executive producers; Bob Niemack, series producer. For the Military Channel: Peter Rees, executive producer. Wil Willis, host.
Ellie
Television Review | 'Special Ops Mission'
Military Mission, and You Are There
By MIKE HALE
“Special Ops Mission,” a new series beginning Thursday night on the Military Channel, sits on the spectrum of living-room heroics somewhere between “24” and a first-person-shooter video game. The premise is that actual special operators — former Army Rangers, members of the Navy Seals, Force Recon Marines — play out situations like terrorist-camp infiltrations or pirate takedowns as authentically as possible. Everything is real, we’re led to believe, except the bullets. Oh, and the presence of the camera crews.
The press notes refer to “simulated” and “dramatic” scenarios; the show itself, on the other hand, begins with an on-screen declaration, “This is an unscripted war game.” In the pilot episode the degree to which the action — the rescue of hostages from a large, empty, warrenlike building — has been choreographed (as opposed to “scripted,” an entirely different thing) is never addressed.
Perhaps younger viewers no longer care about, or even register, the extent to which what they’re watching has been prompted and staged for the camera. I’ve learned not to care with a whole range of programs, from “The Real World” to the real housewives. But when I’m watching men playing what purports to be an elaborate game of hide and seek with automatic weapons, that coyness about methods — the lie we’ve all agreed to participate in so that reality television can exist — bugs me more than usual and saps much of the interest from the show in question.
And “Special Ops Mission” doesn’t have a surplus to begin with. The star of the show is Wil Willis, an Army Ranger and Air Force pararescueman (we’re told), who will take on each week’s impossible mission with the help of his “commander,” identified as Master Sgt. Thomas Minder (as in hinder), who monitors Mr. Willis’s progress by video and gives him radio updates. Sergeant Minder appears to be the more charismatic of the two, and you begin to wish that he wasn’t stuck in the “remote command center.”
In fairness to Mr. Willis, he’s handicapped by his combat gear, which includes goggles and a helmet, and he has to spend nearly the entire hour whispering. Still, we spend much of the show focused on him — a camera mounted on his gun gives us frequent close-ups of his face — and his panting, nervous, downbeat affect quickly becomes off-putting. His opponents in the episode, four men with backgrounds in the Army, Navy and Marines, get to dress in the black sweaters that designate action villains, and their faces are uncovered. As a result they end up being more sympathetic than Mr. Willis, our hero.
The operation itself is basically a big game of paintball: the guns are loaded with Simunition, realistic-looking cartridges that are, well, paintballs designed to work in M4’s and M16’s. Helpful graphics show us where the players are at different moments, and a digital clock ticks away. By the time Mr. Willis concludes his first mission, six hours have passed; on “24” Kiefer Sutherland would be a quarter of the way toward saving the world from nuclear annihilation.
Some events leave you wondering about the qualifications of the participants. At one point Mr. Willis stumbles into his opponents’ lair and steals their maps of the building, which they have conveniently left lying on a table. Later two of them go off to hunt Mr. Willis when we can all see that what they should do is hunker down and ignore him. Finally they leave their hostages unguarded, which makes the satisfying conclusion of the episode a lot simpler.
One bonus of “Special Ops Mission” is the cool new jargon civilians can pick up. I didn’t know that “mike” meant “minute,” and I can now add “fatal funnel” and “pieing the corner” to my vocabulary. Best of all: “There’s a guy right up my six.” Just think for a second, it’ll come to you.
SPECIAL OPS MISSION
Military Channel, Thursday nights at 10, Eastern and Pacific times; 9, Central time.
Produced by MorningStar Entertainment for the Military Channel. For MorningStar Entertainment: Gary Tarpinian and Paninee Theeranuntawat, executive producers; Bob Niemack, series producer. For the Military Channel: Peter Rees, executive producer. Wil Willis, host.
Ellie