The drum beats for the war in Iraq had begun by the time the NBC period drama “American Dreams” premiered in fall 2002.
But “Dreams” creator/executive producer Jonathan Prince could not have imagined how the Vietnam story lines in his series revolving around the growing pains of the Pryor clan, a middle-class Catholic family living in Philadelphia in the 1960s, would mirror the headlines of 2004 as much as they have this season.
“Nobody else is telling stories (on TV) about how there’s a war going on,” Prince says. “We’re telling the story of how this particular war affected this particular family. But even though it says ‘1966’ on our screen, our stories are relevant today. We just sit in the writers room and marvel at the opportunity we have.”
Because of its setting, “Dreams,” now in its third season, routinely deals with weighty issues like racial discrimination, civil rights and social protest movements, all reinforced in you-are-there fashion by snippets of NBC News footage from the day.
After weeks of real-life headlines about insurgency and carnage in faraway places like Fallujah, there’s a heightened drama to scenes like the one in the Nov. 6 “Dreams” episode in which patriarch Jack has to break the news to his prospective daughter-in-law that his eldest son, J.J., who enlisted in the Marines last season, has gone missing in the jungle.
In Sunday’s episode, set to air commercial-free, Prince gets to exercise his writer’s prerogative by bringing his small-screen Marine home, safe and sound. What has been most surprising to Prince about the feedback he’s received from viewers regarding the war-related stories is how many people have urged him not to turn J.J. into the stereotypical Vietnam veteran basket case.
“We got a letter from a veteran who said: ‘Please don’t do the story about the guy who comes home and cracks up. A lot of us just came home and went back to work and mowed the lawn,”’ Prince says. “In some ways, those are the most complex (Vietnam vet) stories of all.”
The large ensemble cast of “Dreams,” produced by NBC Universal TV Studio, is clearly anchored by Tom Verica. The actor brings an understated intensity to his role as Jack, a family man who’s progressive enough to have a black business partner but traditional enough to resent the growing opposition at home to the war that his son is fighting overseas.
“It’s really a small miracle that this show has stayed on the air,” Prince admits. “It’s not all that sexy. We’re telling stories about a hard-working family guy whose world seems to be exploding. The 1960s did light a fuse in this country for civil rights, gay rights, women’s rights, the anti-war movement and the counterculture, and we as a country are still dealing with the consequences of having blown things up without ever figuring out how to put the puzzle back together again.”