The Senator “A Continual Roar of Musketry” Part Two (November 29, 1970)

One of the most courageous acts in a time of real timidity on television was the broadcast, only six months after the real incident, of this drama based very blatantly on the Kent State massacre.  The premise is simple: liberal, charismatic young senator Hayes Stowe (Hal Holbrook), the central figure of this short-lived show, chairs a committee investigating the campus shootings of two students by national guardsmen.  Writer David W. Rintels’ decision to employ a Rashomon structure in the first half of the two-parter can be taken as either even-handed or cowardly; in any case, the usually fine character actors (John Marley, John Randolph, Paul Stewart) end up advocating the guilt or innocence of the authority figures they portray a bit too strenuously in the multiple skewed reenactments.  But in this second half, as Rintels gives voice to the young people, the real, jagged emotions come out: the national guard officer (named Lieutenant “Caffey,” probably in a reference to My Lai’s Lieutenant Calley) is haunted by his decision to open fire; one of his underlings, obviously lying under oath, is so callous he doesn’t recognize the names of the dead; a lone girl (Pamela McMyler) breaks the student embargo on cooperating with the commission to testify on behalf of her fallen friends, even though she doesn’t believe it will make any difference.  Some of the politics are too on the nose, but some aren’t: the leader of the student protests challenges Stowe on why these commissions never rule against the authorities, and the senator can only lamely cite some “mixed verdicts.”  Director Robert Day stages the flashbacks to the confrontation in a series of freeze-frames that recall the famous Mary Ann Vecchio photograph.  The inspiring finale has Senator Stowe recommending that a grand jury indict not only the guardsmen but the whole chain of command, a call to accountability that (of course) never happened in real life.