Promised Land

I love this show with its warmth, love,caring and morel values that unfortunately, society nowadays lacks. I'm more a sci-fi , action adventure fan but this show (Promised Land) is my absolute favorite. I only just a few weeks ago (April 2000) discovered this show and it has made me do a lot of thinking. This show has values that people should follow as it will make them better people. I recently discovered that Promised Land is no longer in production and that saddens me greatly. The Characters and actors who portray them, have entered my life and my heart and I hope I never forget them and the show. I love it.

Although it has been off the air for 6 years now, Promised Land was one of those shows that comes along once or twice in a generation. Good cast, supporting cast(among them, Richard Thomas and Ossie Davis) and crew. The plot is believable with McRaney packing up his family and just saying "to hell with it all" after being subjected to so many disappointments and incidents since his return from Vietnam years earlier. I think a lot of Vietnam-era veterans, myself included, could really relate to McRaney's thought process in finally deciding on his course of action. Many of us did precisely the same thing in real life, after returning from that war and finding that America was not the same place we left. The show imparts not only values but a glimpse into what took place in one veterans life. In those two respects alone, I think it is one of the more poignant TV series of our time. Why this program only ran for 3 years is beyond me.

We love watching this series! It is one of the few television series for the entire family. It has moral values, it is artistic and it is true to life. Promised Land is not necessary about a place in particular. It is about the entire U.S., where the family travels, or used to travel together in a trailer through out the country. The U.S. is a country of so much wealth that it flows with milk and honey. The Greenes are a family that trusts God, and sees angels, occasionally you can see an angel from another top series "Touched by an Angel" show up. Russell Greene, Gerald McRaney, is a wise and godly man. Claire, Wendy Phillips, is a school teacher. Don't we all need and thank them for our learning. Joshua, Austin O'Brien, is such a good kid! Dinah, Sarah Schaub, is always challenged with good and evil and chooses good. Nathaniel, Eddie Karr, always gets into trouble, but has a good adopted family to support him. Hattie, Celeste Holm, Academy Award winner for Gentleman's Agreement, plays a grandmother we would love to have, if ours isn't like her. I love Margot, Ashleigh Norman, sophisticated and poetic. She is so cool! L.T., Eugene Byrd, was a pain in the beginning but as his character develops he has become very likable, becoming a photographer, and writing a script for a competition on the controversial topic of the black family born to Thomas Jefferson. This is a wonderful show! I recommend it! We are on the road of life together!

I rated it 7 because Seasons 1 and 2 were very good, very inspiring, but not the last Season. It's like as soon as they got to Denver, the writing immediately went South. Characters that we grew to enjoy either disappeared, were marginalized, or just became nasty. (Claire, especially, needed a good dose of crow pie on more than a few occasions. Dinah, too.) The show would devolve into another formulaic urban-kids transformation cliché that the '90s were famous for.

The first two seasons were what the show was all about, every episode different and refreshing. Then in the third season I guess the studio heads who think they know better turned it into an urban show like every other on TV and it completely lost its charm. If they would have continued for a fourth season by some amazing chance, I would not have watched.