Dial File: TV is tryin' but can't copy 'Ryan'

TOO LATE, grunts: The pin's out of the grenade, the grenade's airborne and the explosion's imminent.

That's war, soldier.

And that's TV, which is about to explode in a rediscovery of mankind's most miserable creation.

Not the Korean War -- it starred in "M*A*S*H" (even if it was a thinly veiled commentary about the Vietnam War). Not the Vietnam War -- it starred on the evening news for much of the '60s and early '70s. And not the Gulf War -- it was a TV show in and of itself, just another regularly scheduled series on the schedule:

("Join us for the bombing of Baghdad as "Showdown with Saddam" returns tonight at 8 on CNN -- followed by 'Larry King Live' with his special guest, Sharon Stone"!)

No, just rewind to four wars and more than five decades ago -- then fast forward back to Steven Spielberg's "Saving Private Ryan" -- and you'll find yourself cued up to TV's latest obsession.

Welcome back to The Big One. Double-ya Double-ya Deuce.

In television, where imitation is the sincerest form of programming, "the good war" is poised to trigger the next great ratings battle. Even as the new fall shows spray the schedule like machine-gun fire, TV is looking through the cross-hairs of its future by rifling through the past.

TV Guide is reporting that, on the combat boot heels of the phenomenal success of "Ryan," WWII projects are carpet bombing prime-time. CBS is arming itself with a war drama based in the South Pacific. ABC, which just shelled out a breathtaking $30 million for the "Ryan" broadcast rights, is also mapping out a battlefield series. Dreamworks SKG is trying to invade network territory by coaxing ABC, CBS or NBC to shoot a TV movie based on historian/"Ryan" advisor Stephen Ambrose's book "Citizen Soldiers." And PBS and cable have numerous soldier stories stockpiled as programming ammo.

It's been a long time since "The Rat Patrol" and "Combat." Or even "Hogan's Heroes."

Good trend or bad? Actually ... both -- depending on how you balance TV's tendency toward trivialization against a desperate need right now in cynical, Zippergated America to reconnect with the forgotten values and purpose of an earlier time and generation.

On the downside, oddly enough, is the brilliant "Saving Private Ryan" itself. Free of the cinematic restraints on graphic violence that handcuffed decades of World War II films, Spielberg bombarded audiences with a barrage of blood, guts, gory, gaping wounds, splayed brain tissue and grisly separations of bodies from limbs -- all spiced with the sheer terror and chaotic insanity of battle.

And not one second of it was gratuitious. The half-hour-long re-creation of the D-Day invasion left my insides quivering. It was that visceral, no-mercy assault on our senses that shattered the polite separation between art and reality and shoved the horror of war down our throats the way no other movie ever has.

As much as pop culture can, "Saving Private Ryan" -- created by a baby boomer filmmaker -- grabbed baby boomers by their starched, stylish collars and made them stare straight at the sacrifices made by the generation that bore them.

TV can't compete. As far as television has progressed -- or regressed, if you prefer -- in the depiction of violence, it's still largely cop-out, consequence-free violence. And that's the real rap .

In his brilliant new book "Glued to the Set," an insightful examination of TV's impact on American culture since the tube's inception, NPR commentator Steven D. Stark quotes Larry Gelbart -- co-developer of "M*A*S*H," the last series to attempt vivid depictions of war's revolting realities -- on the nature of actual violence vs. the TV variety.

"If you ever see a real fistfight in a restaurant, it's shattering," Stark quotes Gelbart as saying. "You shake for half an hour -- it's so violent, so ugly." Adds Stark: "Television ... trivializes almost anything serious or tragic that's assigned to it ... Television violence is stylized violence, and the horror it presents is packaged in such a way that viewers almost always shut off their TV sets feeling better about things."

I might want to feel better about America -- we won, after all, and trounced Nazism -- but not about war itself. Working in a film format -- a one-shot experience -- Spielberg could risk leaving us horrified (as well as moved and enlightened). TV series -- continuous by definition and designed to leaves us happy and uplifted so we'll come back week after week -- defeats this subject matter, at least in the spirit of brutal honesty and unblinking reality that Spielberg brought to "Ryan."

From a mass culture perspective, Spielberg raised the bar on our understanding of a transforming period in our history. TV, conversely, risks diminishing that by shrinking it to the level of simple entertainment.

And yet ... in light of the White House hoo-ha, "Saving Private Ryan" looms even larger as a symbol of heroics over hedonism, sacrifice over self-gratification. The World War II generation over the baby boomers. Granted, that's a massive simplification of a complex social equation, but "Ryan" clearly stirred and cystallized America's sense of generational differences.

And it may have left us wanting more -- which is where, ironically enough, TV plays its trump card. The one-shot format that worked to Spielberg's advantage as a filmmaker and allowed "Ryan" to ram home its graphic message is a disadvantage in the long-run, thanks to our short-term collective memory.

As our pop culture appetites crave ever more stimulation on a given topic, Spielberg can't keep delivering on the big screen -- the memory of "Ryan" fades -- but TV can, keeping fresh Spielberg's indelible message through the week-in, week-out repetition that only a TV series can provide.

Which leaves us wrestling with an age-old conundrum: quality or quantity?

In late '90s media terms, that's the real war.

CROON A TUNE: Proving he sports a strong offense, John Paine was the first to tackle "Judd for the Defense," last week's tough theme song quiz -- so tough that only tele-titans Peter Green and Joe Lacy also dove fearlessly over the goal line for ear-shattering, stadium-rockin' Croon-a-Tune glory. High-fives all around! (But no fanny slapping, please.)

"Judd," starring the late Mr. Donna Reed, Carl Betz (he played Reed's husband on her apple-cheeked sitcom) ran on ABC from 1967-69. Betz played passionate attorney Clinton Judd, partly fashioned after F. Lee Bailey. Judd roamed the country with his young assistant, defending both the wealthy and the downtrodden on issues from draft evasion to Mexican-American labor activism to civil rights murders.

If that one left you stumped, Judd you wait for this one: Call 259-4012 for an earful of TV nostalgia, Dial File style.

It's more fun than swimming through lime Jell-O while dressed in a black leather diaper and wearing Viking horns (don't knock it 'till you've tried it, Bucko.)

DIAL FILE ON THE MOVE: The Sun's Accent section is reshuffling its deck of columnists and this joker has been dealt out to Fridays. Starting next week, Dial File will take up the end-of-the-work-week/ start-of-the-weekend slot in these pages, so please join me on Fridays. We'll chat about TV and spin the weekly Croon-a-Tune, as always -- then turn off the office lights and tear up the town together.

Order me a milk on the rocks, will ya?

LIAR, LIAR? PANTS ON FIRE: As reported by Electronic Media magazine, there's a new syndicated series in development using the same lie-detector technology employed by the Israeli defense service. The premise: Guests speak into a voice-activated lie detector system, informing the audience when the guests' stories stray from the truth.

In the pilot episode, the audience votes on a contestant who insists: "I did not have sexual relations with that woman. ..."

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