Body of Proof & Crazy Soldiers, Revisited

I don’t have a television or cable, but there are several shows I watch online as “guilty pleasures.” One of them is Body of Proof on ABC. Yes, I know, I know: it’s silly beyond all beliefs; the science is bad, the procedures are insane, and the plots… Well, the plots are the source of this post.

I remember all those horrible movies in the 70’s and 80’s. Crazed Vietnam vets were a wonderful plot card to play. The first two episodes of this show were just new clothes on the old dummy: crazed vets doing crazy things because of what they endured at war, and came home unappreciated, ignored, or discriminated against.

There’s more reason now than before to not just honor, but actively assist the vets in our communities. Many survived injuries to which their counterparts from the 70’s would have succumbed. We have more treatments, and more understanding of, PTSD (from which I suffer).

While shooting scripts need to pull in the target demographics, we need not denigrate military veterans in the process. It’s time the entertainment industry took the easy joke, easy madman, easy antagonist off the eye-level shelf, and put it behind glass. Respect is harder earned, easier lost in our instantaneous communication culture. They risked their lives in their country’s service: let’s give them preferential treatment.