After a season full of big, oftentimes too big drama, the season finale of Army Wives rebounds with a nice tight episode that refocuses on the premise of the show. There are no stalkers or rapists, no motorcycle accidents or shady drug pushers, but instead the story focuses where it needs to be, on the lives of the core characters and how the constant uncertainty of life with the Army makes for a life that can be incredibly rewarding and incredibly unnerving, all at the same time.

Networks tend to hide demographic data so that they can use it for their own purposes, so we have no real statistics on just how much of the Army Wives viewing audience is women compared to men. Two-thirds? Seventy-five percent? 80%? 90%? Even more than 90%? It has to be way up there.

Pamela literally spends this episode of Army Wives standing around and biding her time, trying to keep herself busy by helping out at the bar because she's got nothing better to do. It's like a day at school with a substitute teacher, and Pamela has been given busy work. That's what a lot of this episode felt like, busy work.

This week's episode of Army Wives is entitled "Transitions," and that's exactly what we've gotta be ready for. Trevor said it last year, and he reiterated it this week: two or three years is about as long as a soldier can realistically expect to be stationed at a certain post. So as we steamroll ahead toward the end of season two, it's only fair that we begin to consider the possibility that one or more cast members may be transitioned out of the show at the end of this year.

This was a very nice change of pace from the chaos of the last few weeks on Army Wives. It's probably unlikely that this heralds some kind of sea change in the overall tone of the show - some further giant trauma is probably inevitable leading up to the end of the season - but this was a welcome refresher, a reminder that there was a reason people were able to relate to these characters in the first place.

Here's the scoreboard entering this week's episode of Army Wives: Joan is on the verge of dying, Claudia Joy is possibly getting raped, Pamela is being harassed by a stalker, Denise and Frank are probably getting divorced, and Trevor's on drugs and just wrecked his car. In other words: good times for all! No wonder Trevor and Jeremy and Frank and Chase all have seemed so eager to go overseas. Iraq sounds like an Edenic paradise right about now.

Army Wives would undoubtedly have been stronger this season if the show only had to do 13 episodes instead of 18. Every week in the comments below we get complaints about Trevor's drug storyline seeming to take forever without a resolution, or Denise's problems seeming to have no end in sight. If the show had 13 episodes this year, as it did last year, the show wouldn't be able to dilly-dally with those storylines, and could have done them in a more compact, more potent way.

It's been so long since last we met. But that's OK. Vacations are good. Vacations are healthy. They allow us to try some new things out, maybe explore some possibilities we wouldn't otherwise have the time to do. It just so happens that in the case of Army Wives, while the show itself has been on a little break, a couple of the show's actors have popped up on TV anyway, in trailers for movies they presumably filmed during last year's hiatus between seasons.

Sharpen your No. 2 pencils, kids, because it's time to go to school. On this week's episode of Army Wives, Roxy is cramming for her GED test, with a healthy dose of geometry as her main course. Continue reading »

Hey, look, it’s a new episode of Army Wives. So much for the promo that aired at the end of last week's episode that suggested the show was taking a mini-vacation. Take it as a sign: you should never watch the promos for the upcoming episodes. Continue reading »