The
2014 Presidential election represented a major security challenge for the
Coalition forces and the Kabul City Police Center (KCPC). A successful election
would be an important step in the nation’s healing process, embarrassing the
Taliban determined to undermine it. Top brass and the White House also would
also be happy facilitate Karzai’s exit from public life. Viewers will watch U.S.
Army units across the war-torn country risk their lives to protect Afghanistan’s
fragile democratic institutions in The Fighting Season (promo
here),
which premieres tomorrow night on
DirecTV’s Audience network.
Inconveniently,
the election largely coincides with the so-called “Fighting Season,” a rather
unfortunate tradition wherein Taliban terrorists take advantage of the spring thaw
to come down from the mountains to cause death and destruction. The men of
Bravo Company stationed near Forward Operating Base (FOB) Shank will try to
stop such Jihadis before they reach Kabul. For those that slip thorough, special
teams working for Lt. Gen. Joseph Anderson will try to coach and reinforce the
KCPC officers maintaining the three concentric rings of check-points known as
Kabul’s “Ring of Steel.”
Based
on the initial installment, the six part Fighting
Season might be one of the best embedded, boots-on-the-ground documents of
the Afghanistan Theater that has yet been produced for television. There will
be real firefights, but the most compelling part of episode one is the messy
uncertainty of intelligence-gathering and reconnaissance. A considerable
difference in perspective emerges between Col. John Graham, who believes in
face-to-face contact for winning over the Kabul citizenry, and his more
battle-hardened task force colleagues, who are concerned about the security
risks involved in his spontaneous approach. The problem is, viewers watching Season will be quickly convinced they
are both right.
There
is some amazing camera work in Season,
including some night vision sequences that are so clear and easy to follow, one
might think they were lifted from an action film. Executive producer Ricky
Schroder’s voice-overs also perfectly suit the program. Instead of a silky
smooth narrator, he sounds like enlisted man. It is also clear Schroder and the
rest of the Season team respect the
troops and believe in the War on Terror considerably more than Jeb Bush.
