‘JAG’ Was Inspired by This Infamous Real-Life U.S. Military Scandal

If you grew up in the 90s, chances are that you watched Quantum Leap and JAG. Not only were they rather popular during their time, but David P. Bellisario created both of them (and Magnum, P.I. and Airwolf to boot). However, when Quantum Leap was canceled by NBC after five seasons in 1993, Bellisario needed to come up with something new or go a year without one of his shows on TV. He found inspiration in real life. Bellisario decided to write a script based on the tragedy of women being assaulted by Navy and Marine officers in 1991, which was similar to the real-life Tailhook scandal. JAG was born out of wondering who would be the ones to investigate such a crime. Although JAG made it to air, the Navy stood in Bellisario’s path at every turn until they learned why he had created the series in the first place.

David Bellisario Created Some of Network TV’s Biggest Shows

At the age of 89, Donald P. Bellisario is still with us, and although he retired many years ago, his legacy in television is iconic. He is the creator behind many classic shows from the 1980s to the 2000s, several of which center around the military in some form. Mangum, P.I. made Tom Selleck a household name as the cool private investigator Thomas Magnum. He may have worn Hawaiian shirts and driven a badass car (and let’s not forget that ‘stache!), but Magnum was a Navy SEAL during Vietnam who got help from his Marine buddies. Airwolf might be best remembered for the helicopter, but its lead, Jan Michael Vincent, played a Vietnam vet who was a U.S. Army Captain named Stringfellow Hawke.

Quantum Leap was different, with Scott Bakula playing a time-traveling physicist named Dr. Sam Beckett. But in 1993, despite being a cult hit, Quantum Leap was canceled. While that stung for Bellisario, it was also a challenge for a man who’d already created three hit shows. Could he make another?

In an interview with the Archive of American Television, Donald P. Bellisario recalled the realization that he wouldn’t have a show on during the next TV season for the first time in years, so he started writing down ideas. This also happened to be the first year that women were allowed to be on active duty on combat ships, so he wrote about two Navy pilots, one of whom is a woman. He added, “The girl is murdered on the carrier at night. She’s thrown into the sea. And then I went, well, who comes out to investigate this? And that’s what’s when I got into, well, there’s NCIS, then there’s a JAG investigation.” JAG was created as a show about Judge Advocate Generals who defend and prosecute crimes in the military. There was just one problem. The show was formed right after Tailhook and with a plot that starts similar to the real-life scandal, “the Navy wanted nothing to do with it. They became obstructionists.”

What is the Tailhook Scandal?

The Tailhook scandal of 1991 was one of the worst in the history of the Navy and Marines. The name comes from the Tailhook Association, which was made up of pilots in the Marines and Navy. Every year since the 1950s, they’d met up for the annual Naval Aviation Symposium as a way to connect, but in 1991, the Las Vegas event went all wrong. Many male Marine and Navy officers got drunk and made some horrible decisions, with serious accusations revealed that they had sexually assaulted 83 women and seven men.

A report said that some of the officers blamed their behavior on Top Gun, which was very popular among aviators and came out in 1986. That film shows young officers being rowdy, so these real-life officers thought they could do the same by getting drunk and having fun, but they took their actions way over the line. What started out as men having strippers in their rooms, watching porn, and streaking, turned into something much more serious. The officers had the women “run the Gauntlet,” which resulted in dozens of women coming forward, claiming that they had been groped or assaulted.

Although superiors first dismissed the allegations, going so far as to blame the women for hanging out with drunken men, the Navy soon cut ties with the Tailhook Association, and the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Department of Defense conducted individual investigations. The results showed that most of the women who were assaulted were civilians or military wives. Although 300 men were named in the report, just half were disciplined through fines, reprimands, or demotions. Not a single offender went to trial.

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‘JAG’ Celebrates the Military Rather Than Bashing It

Judge Advocate Generals (JAG) would also be the ones to investigate such a crime. They are the justice system for every branch of the military, so with that in mind, David P. Bellisario created a series around them, with David James Elliott cast as the lead, Harmon Rabb, a man who is both a Naval aviator and the acting Judge Advocate General. That’s an interesting idea for a television show that takes a different approach to the usual lawyer shows of the day, but the Navy wasn’t a fan.

David P. Bellisario told the Archive of American Television that “The Navy were really obstructionists on the pilot.” While shooting on a museum ship in Corpus Christi, Texas, “the Navy threatened to withhold supplies from them if they cooperated with me.” The Navy wouldn’t help Bellisario with JAG for a year, but after Oliver North decided to help out by talking to the Armed Services Committee, they started helping because “the Navy realized, you know what, they’re really doing a good job for us.” He understood why the Navy didn’t want to help, as things were very tense after Tailhook. They thought that JAG was going to be a show that portrayed the Navy in a negative light, showing all that goes wrong. But then they saw that JAG presents the Navy as the heroes, with David James Elliott as the good-looking guy “ferreting out the undesirables.”

JAG had a rough first year on NBC, but after moving to CBS, changing its tone to that of a serious drama, and casting Catherine Bell as a Marine Judge Advocate General named Sarah “Mac” MacKenzie, the series found its way. Bellisario said that every Wednesday after JAG aired the night before, enlistment numbers spiked. This is because viewers watched JAG, and instead of being disgusted by the crimes they saw, they felt pride in the military members who were the heroic defenders and prosecutors. The series lasted a decade and led to the spinoff NCIS. JAG was born out of one of the military’s worst moments, but it succeeded by being about those who fought for the victims.

JAG

Release Date

1995 – 2005

Network

NBC, CBS

Showrunner

Donald P. Bellisario

Directors

Bradford May, Tony Wharmby, Alan J. Levi, Jeannot Szwarc, Terrence O’Hara, Greg Beeman, Kenneth Johnson, Scott Brazil, Ray Austin, Dennis Smith, Jim Johnston, Joe Napolitano, Mark Horowitz, David James Elliott, Michael Schultz, Rod Hardy, Duwayne Dunham, James Whitmore Jr., Jerry London, Oz Scott, Richard Compton, Les Landau, Alan Myerson, Arthur W. Forney

Writers

Stephen Zito, R. Scott Gemmill, Paul J. Levine, Don McGill, Darcy Meyers, Ed Zuckerman, Jack Orman, John Schulian, Philip DeGuere Jr., Evan Katz, Matt Witten, Robert Cochran, Tom Towler, David Ehrman, David Zabel, Greg Strangis, Richard Levine, Thomas L. Moran, Jonathan Robert Kaplan, Mark Saraceni, Lynnie Greene, Robert McCullough, Eric Morris, Patrick Labyorteaux

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  David James Elliott

  Harmon Rabb

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  Patrick Labyorteaux

  Bud Roberts

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  Catherine Bell

  Sarah MacKenzie

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  John M. Jackson

  AJ Chegwidden