chris lowell

A Salute to Enlisted

I was having dinner with Sage of Head Over Feels on Wednesday when her phone buzzed with the news that Enlisted had been canceled. We had just been saying ten minutes earlier that we really believed the show could find an audience if the network would give it a chance.

Enlisted deserved better than what it got, bumped to Fridays with a constantly changing lead-in and little promotion beyond a few posters in my subway station. And it deserved to air in order. The story was told on note cards that were shuffled up before airing; the fact that I loved every episode anyway, even when I was expected to know characters before we’d been properly introduced, says the show was doing its job better than most. Enlisted wore its heart on its sleeve without getting sappy. The Hill brothers were key in that area, not only because their relationship was the show’s core, but also because they grounded each other. If any one of them risked veering too far toward sentiment or irreverence, there was always someone to pull him back. (more…)