A man on 'Army Wives'

I'm on Cape Cod this week, catching up on a) the beach and b) fall pilots, and looking forward to Sarah Rodman's dispatches from the Television Critics Association press tour in Pasadena. In the meantime, I wanted to post a lovely rant that arrived in my inbox today from my pal Robert Brown, a professor of communications at Salem State College, pop culture aficionado, and Globe contributor. Take it away, Rob...

Am I just getting jaded, or has "Army Wives" become merely formulaic? Maybe that's been your take all along.

But as the only man I know who watches it (my wife actually was an army wife at Ft. Bragg), I tuned in because I found its brand of muted country-music patriotism and domestic drama had the ability to transcend the soap opera corniness and really get down and genuine. I was moved, at times. My wife says the scripts are all wrong -- not nearly enough f-bombs.

But the multiple story lines are wearing perilously thin, and I can feel how hard the show is trying to get me to FEEL. Claudia Joy and her father-knows-best post commander saying a touching goodbye to the l2-year-old Iraqi girl who's been their guest, her own family having having been casualties of the war. Frank and his wife trying to get past her quasi infidelity -- I mean, all did did was kiss a guy who subsequently was conveniently written out of the show when he crashed on his Harley and fatally mashed his coconut. It's not like "Mad Men," where they rut here, there and everywhere.

I'll admit it. I like to brag about my dubious taste for Lifetime TV. I'm not a sensitive new age guy. Wrong generation: I was born when FDR was on his deathbed. I love Werner Herzog's cher-mann aggzent narrating "Grizzly Man." I want the Patriots front like to kick the Colts' ass. But I'm bored by Jack Bauer and James Bond. I happen to have a thing for domestic drama -- even, at times, melodrama. (As for true art, there's the exquisitely written "Brooklyn," the novel by Colm Toibin shortlisted for the Man Booker.)

OK. I don't mind seeing an occasional Girl-in-trouble formula on Lifetime. I know -- not up to Lee Remick in big trouble on the big screen in "Experiment in Terror." But not "Saw 5," either. (Too much gory squirt drowns the genre's campy ambition.)

But as for "Army Wives," I see it sinking into self-satisfied psychobabblement. Jeez. Bring in Papelbon. Bring on the script doctors.