Combat Missions a Diamond in the Rough

Combat Missions promised us paramilitary and military operations, with different teams fighting it out for one team and man to ultimately be declared the best of the best. I've enjoyed Mark Burnett's other productions (Eco-Challenge and Survivor), and hoped to see another diamond. Well, it's a diamond, but it's pretty rough and sitting in a lot of mud. With some clean-up and polishing, maybe it could sparkle.

To begin with, we either have a host, or we don't have a host. To be honest, I'm not sure we have a host here. Duties are distributed so much among so many different people of various ranks, I lost track of who was what. This I'm afraid cheapened the value of Rudy as "host," making him seen as only a gimmick to pull in a few viewers rather than a legitimate host of the series. I find it unfair to both Rudy and the show. If he's the host, send him in for all briefings, exercises, debriefings, and dismissals. Like them or not, Julie Chen, Anderson Cooper, Jeff Probst, and Gary Fredo all were the clear hosts of their shows.

Second, I found the military boot-camp style exercises and drills to be absolutely pointless. I believe the idea was to give everybody an idea up-front as to who might be a weak physical link on their team, but as a few of the contestants (mostly on the SWAT detail) noted, the fastest runner of three miles or the most chin-ups isn't exactly the measure of a good combat mission performer. If the teams were awarded bonus points, or the skills were more relevant to actual mission skills, it would be more useful as an evaluation tool. As it stands, it's wasted footage.

Finally, there are many kinds of courage. Courage in combat in one thing. However, the show and the players took the coward's way out when it came to dismissal. Everybody signed up for a game, and the game can get tough. The producers (via Rudy) should have laid down the law: vote, or be dismissed yourself. Once the ballots were cast, voter, votee, and reasons should be made public. Tie-breakers should be settled via a duel or similar test to show their mettle as to why they should earn the right to stay in the game. Call the voting triage, for that is what it is. It's painful, but that's life in war. Falling back on the swords is just too easy an escape. Sheeze, I'd rather have seen them do something that brought things home to them a little harder, such as using their laser tag guns in a form of firing squad or Russian roulette. A red-tipped sword is... uh, pretty uninteresting. If it continues, we won't have a "best of the best," we'll have the "luckiest player."

For all its faults, the basic concept did work, in my opinion. The squads were sent out to perform a combat mission, and that part of the game went off well. The mission balanced objectives verses time and battlefield losses. This is the core part of the game, and it should be the primary focus of each episode. The show would do better to focus and concentrate on its own mission – giving the viewers what they really want to see.

Jeffrey Clinard has a Master's degree in marketing, a job he could not be paid enough to return to.

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