ABSTRACT
Over There (F/X, 2005) was the first scripted series about a contemporary war to be broadcast on US television during the conflict it depicted. By the time it aired, however, a radical insurgency and torture scandal had made the war a tough sell to American audiences, which may explain in part why F/X ran only 13 episodes. The series debuted to mostly positive reviews, praising its gritty visuals, provocative story lines, and, as one critic remarked, the way it “crashes through television’s complacency like a Humvee with the pedal to the metal.” 1 Yet, it failed to find an audience and was canceled after only one season. 2 Still, despite its short run, Over There functions as what one critic described as “a first TV draft of history.” 3 It remains a grim index of the consequences and controversies associated with the US-led invasion of Iraq and, following Scott Laderman (chapter 10, this volume), a “primary document” animating both American fantasies about the US occupation of Iraq and its controversies. What the Bush administration promised would be a short, decisive, and profitable invasion was quickly undermined by corporate and military scandals involving bribery and corruption, as well as moral scandals related to the sidestepping of the Geneva Conventions on torture and the reduction of dead and injured Iraqi civilians to “collateral damage.” Perhaps most disastrously, the US failed to find the Weapons of Mass Destruction used to rationalize the invasion. 4 Put simply, the war did not turn out at all as planned.
