After Pete Hegseth’s insane speech at Quantico last week, the TV show JAG is looking kind of “woke.” Pete Hegseth doesn’t want our military to be constrained by silly things like rules of engagement, the Geneva Conventions, the U. S. Constitution, wartime ethics or ethics of any kind. The writers of JAG considered rules of engagement so important that the show had an episode titled “Rules of Engagement.”
JAG is a military legal drama that was perceived as “conservative” during its original run (one season on NBC then nine seasons on CBS). This is a TV show that had Oliver North as a guest star in three episodes. And Bill O’Reilly appeared in one episode.
The protagonists of the show are military lawyers stationed at the headquarters of the Judge Advocate General of the Navy. Many episodes have a guest star playing a sailor or Marine who allegedly committed some crime, then it’s up to one of the main characters to prosecute and another one of the main characters to defend.
Pete Hegseth (Colin Jost) harangues the military's highest ranking officers in the episode of Saturday Night Live that first aired on October 4, 2025.
The show was created by Donald P. Bellisario, who had worked as a writer on Black Sheep Squadron and who later created Quantum Leap and Magnum, P.I. In 2002, Bellisario was described by CNN as “a rare Hollywood conservative,” and quoted boasting that he kept politics out of his show better than Aaron Sorkin kept his politics out of The West Wing.
But if you pay attention, you can notice jabs at President Bill Clinton (D, 1993 — 2001) in JAG’s first five seasons (the show premiered in 1995) and admiration for President George W. Bush (R, 2001 — 2009) in the show’s last five seasons (the show ended in 2005).
The Season 5 episode “Contemptuous Words” was a major opportunity for Clinton-bashing. Then-Lt. Commander Rabb, Jr. (David James Elliott) is accused of authoring an anonymous op-ed calling President Clinton “a criminal liar and a spineless buffoon.” Also “bravery-deprived.” There’s no attempt to refute any of those contemptuous words. Rabb did not actually write the op-ed, but he makes no effort to say he disagrees with it.
JAG’s writers thought our servicemembers should be expected to conform to high ethical standards, and held accountable when they don’t.
In the aforementioned “Rules of Engagement” episode, from earlier in Season 5, naval aviator Lt. Buxton (Lochlyn Munro) chafes under the rules of engagement. A man after Hegseth’s own heart. Eager to prove himself a hero, Buxton shoots up a Yugoslavian convoy he thinks is about to kill refugees. But it turns out it was a Russian peacekeeping convoy, and Russia was, at the time, an ally (there are a few things I’d like to unpack there, but that’ll have to be another time).
So a court-martial is convened aboard the USS Seahawk. Marine Lt. Colonel Sarah MacKenzie (Catherine Bell) questions Buxton on the stand. I’ve omitted a couple of interjections from defense counsel in this quotation.
MAC: The rules of engagement got in the way of your job, didn't they?
BUXTON: I thought they were a little pusillanimous, yeah.
[...]
MAC: They were wimpy, geeky… ... not appropriate for a warrior like you?
[...]
MAC: How wimpy were they, lieutenant?
BUXTON: Back during the bombing, we weren't allowed to fly lower than 15,000 feet, so we wouldn't get hurt while people on the ground were being slaughtered. Now, I didn't join a combat organization to avoid getting hurt, colonel. I think it's an ass-backward war where the stated purpose is to have no military casualties.
Ultimately, Buxton is acquitted at the court-martial, but is awarded a punishment he considers far worse: he’s taken off the flight roster pending an investigation by a flight board. Buxton decides to resign his commission and look for a civilian flying job, but that just won’t be the same as flying an aircraft of war.
Maybe Hegseth would approve of the Season 7 episode “The Mission.” The senior officers aboard the USS Seahawk have grown frustrated with Lt. Hilyard (Brian McNamara), the lawyer assigned to make sure the rules of engagement are observed.
Hilyard is the embodiment of “tepid legality,” wimpily asking for several assurances that there are no civilians in the area of operation, and hesitating to sign off. In the instance at the beginning of the episode, Hilyard’s indecisiveness gives suspected terrorists enough time to escape unharmed.
The Judge Advocate General of the Navy sends two higher ranking lawyers to the Seahawk to assess the situation. MacKenzie states that we can never be absolutely certain that there won’t be civilian casualties in any given mission.
“We are a nation at war,” MacKenzie says, as if that justifies any civilian casualties that might occur. Hilyard is reassigned and Mac takes over for him temporarily, signing off on strikes quickly and decisively. But perhaps Pete Hegseth thinks the reviewing lawyer should be dispensed with altogether, so that our warfighters can shoot whatever they want and ask questions later, if ever.
But there’s some backpedaling in an episode towards the end of Season 7, in which Lt. Bud Roberts, Jr. (Patrick Labyorteaux) is now in the same position as Lt. Hilyard in the earlier episode. Roberts does ask for assurances that there are no civilians in the area of operation, but he does so by asking pertinent, specific questions and deciding quickly based on the answers to those questions.
Overall, JAG stands for the idea that our military is made up mostly of decent people who try to do the right thing most of the time. And when they don’t do the right thing, there is due process. Our people are good because they obey the rules. Principles are to be upheld, even when they’re inconvenient.
In the current political climate, upholding principles and having the slightest bit of compassion for others is liberal and woke. Pete Hegseth and his ilk would much prefer a military TV show in which our people destroy the enemy and anyone who looks like the enemy with reckless abandon and without a conscience.
After JAG ended its original run, there were reruns on a couple of cable channels. Eventually, Heroes & Icons (H & I), a digital 480P channel available through an antenna in some markets, carried JAG, airing several episodes on Wednesdays. But after a few years, I don’t quite remember when, H & I dropped JAG.
Well, recently H & I added NCIS to its lineup. Most people have forgotten that NCIS started with a “backdoor pilot” on JAG. But a few remembered, and they were like, “Hey, didn’t H & I used to run JAG?”
So JAG is returning to H & I tomorrow, with the H & I schedule allotting five episodes on Tuesday afternoons. Tomorrow H & I will run the 2-hour pilot at noon Eastern, followed by the next three Season 1 episodes at 2 p.m., 3 p.m. and 4 p.m. Eastern.
It’ll be interesting to see how perceptions of this show have shifted now that the meaning of “conservative” has shifted towards fascism.
