Promised Land

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!

Gerald McRaney is a really amazing actor. He is almost like Gary Cooper in projecting the image of the "common man" in the character that he plays. He was so wonderful in "Major Dad" he was so good in portraying a strong and loving father figure that it really warmed my heart. I remember in particular when Operation Desert Shield and Storm happened in the Christmas of 1990 and how they wrote that into the show. At the conclusion of the war, Mac read a message of congradulations to the troops who served and thanked them. As one of those troops, I have always remembered what he did and I thank him to this day. Promised Land was a spin off of Touched By An Angel and it had a lot of sarcasm attached to it when it premiered, even from TV Guide who predicted in its fall issue that it would not last long. They were wrong and the viewers were right because it was a great show that all of us needed to see. It was like Little House On The Prarie and Mike Landon would have been so proud of it because it taught us old fashioned issues that we all need to open our heart to. Promised Land was a tv series that all of us needed to heed, especially in these troubled times. It was a simple and wonderful show that Frank Capra and Jimmy Stewart would have been proud of because of its simple and loving message that brought the family unit to the forefront and made the common man a hero. I am so glad that Celeste Holm was a part of this wonderful show! She is a living legend and one of our true greatest actesses. I write to famous people as a hobby and wrote to her a number of years ago and she was kind enough to send me a reply and talked about how wonderful it was to work for "Mac" and everyone else. This is a show that we need more of in this negative time especially after 9/11, Why did they cancel it.

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.

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.