… who isn’t a caricature!
Surfing through the channels last night, I stopped to watch “E-Ring,” the new Benjamin Bratt show that takes place at the Pentagon.
In this episode, Bratt’s character Maj. Tisnewski is wounded in a covert mission inside the Iranian border and has to make his way to safety in Iraq. As the folks back home are trying to engineer a rescue, Tisnewski’s aide, Marine Sgt. Jocelyn Pierce, pauses at the major’s desk. It is heaped with tokens and cards wishing him a safe return. She lays a well-used leather-bound Bible on the desk and stands there pensively for several moments. Could she be praying? There's no kitschy voice-over, so we can only guess.
Later, after Tisnewski is rescued, he tries to return the Bible to Pierce, saying, “I’m not a religious man.” She replies, “There’s a lot of good stories in there.”
He pauses for a moment and says, “What kind of God would allow so much killing?” Pierce answers, “Not the God that I know.”
Maybe “E-Ring” is a blatant attempt by the network to appeal to the conservative, church-going right. Maybe it’s a bid for the “Passion” audience. Certainly it presents a more sympathetic picture of the military than we’ve seen since the days of “Combat.”
But in presenting Sgt. Pierce as a tough, ethical, no-nonsense black woman in the military — who also happens to be a Christian — NBC may be breaking ground. I'll be tuning in to see if the writers do any more with this character.
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