Lifetime's Army Wives Gets it Right

Have you ever wondered what it was like to be married to an Army soldier? Thanks to Lifetime, you can now experience the ups and downs of life inside the Army, from a spouse's perspective. On Sunday, June 3, 2007, Lifetime launched its new television series Army Wives. Prior to the show launching, I had not even heard of the show, but as an Army wife, I immediately tuned in for what was a very real and pleasant show.

Army Wives is produced by Mark Gordon, who also produces Grey's Anatomy on ABC. The show is very realistic and candid. Granted, there might be some Army spouses who would not be happy by the portrayal of certain characters, namely officers' wives. I, on the other hand, thought the show did an excellent job of showing just how catty and snobby some of the higher ranks wives really are.

With the realistic portrayals of the various ranks, there is also an even more realistic view of how Army families handle the difficulties of military life. For example, one of the lead characters married her husband and has only known him for a total of seventeen days. While this may sound shocking, it is not that uncommon to hear of soldiers doing such an outrageous thing.

Another family dynamic is the deployment effects on soldiers and their families. On Army Wives there is a bar, known as the "Jody bar", where spouses of deployed soldiers tend to hang out and seek for the comfort of another. While I have never been to such a bar and would never go, these really do exist. The show does a great job depicting the marital issues many military couples deal with, during deployment.

Army Wives definitely gets it right when it comes to the rumor mills on Army posts. There never goes a day without hearing a new rumor about someone, and usually it is the same person. The show gives viewers an insight as to what the true-life Army wife goes through.

The rumors go hand in hand with the phoniness of higher ranking spouses. In Army Wives, the officer wives really turn their noses up and talk down to lower ranking spouses. In my experience, I have not met more than five wives of officers who were not phony, nor did they talk down to me.