TV Retrospective: Enlisted - Season 1

Left to right: Parker Young and Geoff Stults

As we are about to enter July, the year of TV is already half gone. It is as good of a time as any to look back on the new series that deserves a mention. While the drama category has several high caliber shows in spades, comedy has been more problematic with a limited camp, including Broad City and Silicon Valley. Even then, there has been one show that has been undermined by lousy scheduling and even an inexplicable hiatus that has kept audiences from ever appreciating its ingenuity. Enlisted was a comedy with heart and as the final scene played out in "Alive Day," the culmination of 13 episodes was made clear. It was a series about brotherhood and unity that never skimped on humor or sentiments. It had the power to move better than any freshman comedy series. Unless it finds a new home, this may go down as the best cancelled series of 2014.

When it first aired back in January, the prospects were a different story. The story of the Hill Brothers working at the Army Reserve in Florida seemed a little broad. With characters that looked more like stereotypes, this felt like a sanitized version of Stripes. There was the heart, but as the case with most pilots, it wasn't the best representation of what was to come. While it dived into brother Sgt. Pete Hill's (Geoff Stults) traumatic events, it also focused on families and the vulnerabilities of individual troops. Packed with a lot of jokes, each episode managed to be increasingly funny the more that these characters felt real. Even if many characters were initially reduced to asides, they became something endearing. While it is easy to call this an Army version of Brooklyn Nine-Nine (which I feel was the ultimate selling point) with an impressive ensemble cast, it exceeded the show in many ways. It didn't do as much satire as the more successful Golden Globe-winning program, but it felt more rooted.

The first evidence of the show's greatness came in the second episode "Randy Get Your Gun" in which trauma keeps Pvt. Randy Hill (Parker Young) from shooting a gun. With the help of Pete, he goes through mental training to better himself. How is this done? In one of the series' best jokes, Randy is forced to recite the plot to Toy Story 3 without crying. If he can do so, he has mastered his trauma. It is an effective tool that not only drops a pop culture reference, but applies it to character traits. Every moment in this series delved into characters' aspirations and while the Army Reserves is the base for many plots, there were moments that went to exterior locations, giving us a glance into their personal lives. People were drunk, depressed, in love, jealous, and questionably crazy during the series' entire run. They were human, but the show knew how to play these moments for laughs without recreating everyone as a caricature.

In case there was concern that the show was strictly an affair of comedy based on emotional problems, the show did provide many fun moments. There were moments in which Pete and his group would do landscaping, ride around a diabolical paint ball machine, hold prank wars, and even do a Donkey Kong video game parody. The show had an endless recess of great moments that along with the rather funny Sgt. Cody (Keith David), created a well oiled machined. There wasn't much lapse in the realism of the Army Reserve. There was a sense of pride in their jobs, even if the credits have David with a comedic phrasing of "Yes, we're soldiers." 

When pitted against the personal moments, as in "Homecoming," things began to click. Where most shows exist solely for laughs, this show wanted to make an honest show about the Army. In this episode, there is a football game that leads to the revelation of a soldier returning home to surprise their kid. It is a powerful moment not only because of context, but because this show has a loving respect for their source material. In "Alive Day," they even have a cameo from an actual group of soldiers from overseas. For all of the fun that the show had, it was foremost patriotic to its profession. If only more shows knew how to play the sentimental moments, then maybe they would be on par with Enlisted's many, many highs.

Along with Sgt. Perez (Don't Trust the B. in Apt. 23's Angelique Cabral) and characters such as Private Park (Tania Gunadi), Private Gumble (Mort Burke), and Specialist Chubowski (Mel Rodriguez), the cast had a playful chemistry that went not focused on the Hill Brothers, allowed for the show to let loose. The supporting cast is probably the show's greatest strength, in that where there was initial dismay that the fat person was named Chubowski, it actually evolved through missions within an episode. They comforted each other and helped them to grow, often through humor. Not every moment clicked, but by the time that we say goodbye to everyone in "Alive Day," we have grown with them to an endearingly resonant degree that few modern shows have been able to achieve. It is a sweet moment that ties all of the themes of the season together, which is saying something for an episode featuring a lot of alcohol jokes and missing fake leg.

Enlisted was inevitably great because it defied its own expectations. Where it started off sort of flimsy and like a caricature, it revealed itself to have more. A lot of its charm came from the heart of diving into war trauma without making it cliche. Sometimes it was like "Pete's Airstream" and progressed in subtle ways. Others, it was like "Army Men," where symbolism flies heavily as Pete and Randy do trial runs just to try and impress Perez. With a solid ensemble, the show held more gravitas than its more successful counterpart Brooklyn Nine-Nine by making us care about everyone at whatever the cost. If more shows were like Enlisted, TV may be a better place in which sentiments weren't tacked on and struggles would feel more grounded. The show was great because it wasn't just a comedy, but a respectful tribute with complexity and depth that unfortunately landed on a network that never cared about it. Even then, we will always have these 13 episodes to laugh, cry, and enjoy.

Overall Rating: 4 out of 5