Line #8 Series/TheBlueAndTheGray


1	A 1982 {{miniseries}}, which originally aired in three parts on Creator/{{CBS}}, about an extended family during UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar. Beginning in 1859 and ending a year after the war's end, it examines how the main characters are effected by the conflict. Creator/GregoryPeck portrayed UsefulNotes/AbrahamLincoln.
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3	John Geyser is a Southerner whose family owns a farm in Virginia. He has three brothers, each of them far more serious about agriculture than him. Tired of farm life and hoping to get a job at his uncle's newspaper, he moves to Gettysburg, PA.
4	----
5	!!This miniseries contains the following tropes:
6	* AccidentalHero: Malachi. His gun jams and he runs away from battle. He comes across a Confederate deserter, and they wager their fate on the battle's outcome, ending with the Confederate being taken prisoner. When escorting his prisoner to headquarters, Malachi comes across some Southern stragglers in need of medical attention, who surrender to him. Reaching headquarters with all the prisoners, which (to his CO) he apparently captured with an ''unloaded weapon'', he is issued a commendation and promoted.
7	* AdaptationDistillation: The {{Novelization}} adapts an eight-hour miniseries in about 300 pages, so there is quite a lot of condensing. Notably, Kathy is completely absent, and Lester is DemotedToExtra and is only mentioned a couple of times after his wedding to Emma despite sharing his TV version’s fate.
8	* AltarTheSpeed: When John returns home for Christmas with news of South Carolina's secession, Emma's fiance realizes that he must rush home to Vicksburg to prepare his business for the now inevitable war, and asks to postpone their engagement. Emma's father reasons differently, as they already have guests and the food for a reception, and has someone go get a parson so the two can be married then and there.
9	* AnyoneCanDie: It is the Civil War, afterall. [[spoiler: Of the Geyser and Hale family, five members (including in-laws) are killed. Two of them aren't even soldiers, albeit one is a smuggler. Numerous supporting characters and friends of the main characters are also killed.]]
10	* AssholeVictim: [[spoiler:Mark]] dies a horrible death in the war. After watching him celebrate Southern secession, insult his brother’s artistic dreams, and say a lynching victim deserved to be murdered, it's hard to argue that he deserved to survive the war, even if he might not have deserved to burn to death.
11	* BirthDeathJuxtaposition: [[spoiler: Emma]] has her child hours before her husband is killed. He does get to see his child before the shelling begins and his hospital ward is hit.
12	* BittersweetEnding: The two sides of the family gather in Virginia for a family reunion after the war, but both sides of the family have had two children killed. One while fighting on that very farm.
13	* BlackMarket: Emma, John's sister, is married to a businessman in Vicksburg who turns to smuggling while the city is under siege. Also in the miniseries, the Union company containing the Hale brothers are bathing in a creek when a small raft containing tobacco floats towards them. Unseen Confederates on the other bank want coffee.
14	* BringMyBrownPants: Malachi wets himself at Bull Run. He confesses this to his brother and fears that everyone will notice. His brother notes that they'd just crossed a creek.
15	* ButNotTooEvil: The Geyser family is southern and supports secession, but their stance on slavery is--for the most part--unknown. Emma seems to be the most racist and wants to own slaves, although even then the context is the ownership of slaves as a status symbol. Jonathon is explicitly stated to be a freedman who rents property on the Geyser farm, and Pa Geyser refuses to participate in his lynching by a corrupt sheriff. It's more vague, however, to the status of the black housekeeper/maid.
16	* CantGetAwayWithNuthin: Luke and Grundy sneak John and his Northern cousins accross Confederate lines for "a bit of fun". Their CO catches them, and gives them a choice of thirty days latrine duty, or joining the balloon corps. [[spoiler: Choosing the latter, Luke and Grundy are shot down on the second mission; Grundy is killed, and Luke is taken prisoner (in a time before the Geneva Convention protected prisoners' rights) by the North, not to be released until toward the end of the war.]]
17	* TheCaretaker: John's fiance and later wife, Kathy, becomes a nurse after being placed in a wagon containing wounded troops after the first battle of Bull Run.
18	* TheCassandra: In an interview with John and another reporter, a condemned John Brown states that there will be trouble ahead. The reporter is somewhat skeptical.
19	* ChekhovsGunman: Welles seems like just a bigoted lynch mob member who only exists to show the darker side of Southern society before he reappears during the war as a GeneralRipper some time later.
20	* ColorCodedForYourConvenience: It's in the title.
21	* ConflictingLoyalty: John doesn't want to fight for the south but doesn't want to join the Union out of fear that he'll be forced to shoot one of his own brothers. He [[TakeAThirdOption takes the third option of being a correspondent]].
22	* DeadlyDoctor: The doctor at Elmira prison camp is said to be this by the Confederate [=POWs=]. One soldier said that he heard the doctor boast that he had killed more rebels than any soldier on the front.
23	* DeathSeeker: Jonas, between Mary's death and Kathy's comforting him at the hospital.
24	* DreamingOfThingsToCome: Jonas Steele does this. His dream about Mary is a double-subversion.
25	* DrillSergeantNasty: Averted. The sergeant who trains the conscripts isn't portrayed like any drill instructor seen before. The most he does is a stern shaking of the head when a bumbling private misfires his rifle while loading.
26	* DuelToTheDeath: John is challenged to a duel by a German suitor of Kathy's after letting her and a third suitor know that he fled a fallen Kathy after their carriage crashed into a crater. Neither die, but the German ends up humiliated once again.
27	* ForegoneConclusion: The North won the war; Lincoln was assassinated.
28	* FriendlyEnemy: The trading scene mentioned above, but John's brother Luke invites John and his two cousins to a barn dance behind enemy lines. Even Luke's commander relents in letting them go after Luke says that he gave his word that they'd get back. Both examples were TruthInTelevision.
29	* GeneralRipper: A Confederate artillery commander goes a little nuts after his son is killed before his eyes in a Union attack. He goes around the battlefields he's in, murdering Union sentries and the wounded on both sides before being stopped by Jonas.
30	%%zce* GetAHoldOfYourselfWoman: John gives one of these to Kathy at Bull Run.
31	* HollywoodHistory:
32	** The eponymous uniforms did not show up in RealLife until late in the Civil War. Initially, soldiers on both sides wore the uniforms of their militias.
33	** In the ending, John tells the Senator to smile for a photo. In that era, smiling for a photograph was viewed as indicating loose sexual morals.
34	* HopeSpot:
35	** [[spoiler: Lester]] recovers from his wounds, only to be blown up when his hospital ward is shelled.
36	** [[spoiler: Mary]] survives a literal version of the events in Jonas' dream, only to be killed in Gettysburg.
37	* {{Hypocrite}}: Emma constantly derides her brother John as a traitor as he won't fight in the war at all, but makes excuses about how her husband smuggles goods out of Vicksburg, sells them to the Yankee towns upriver, and then buys supplies to smuggle back in, at a profit. Her other brother, Matthew, calls her out on this when he is stationed in the town and visits her.
38	* IntrepidReporter: John is an illustrator for Harper's Weekly.
39	* {{Irony}}: The neutral but Northern-sympathetic John finally picks up a gun and fights--for the Confederacy-- as two Union scouts assault his sister while attempting to flank a Rebel cavalry unit that's holding the family farm.
40	* LiteralMetaphor: For those who think being branded a coward is just an expression, one scene shows otherwise: a soldier caught fleeing from battle is ''literally'' branded a coward, with an actual red-hot iron brand.
41	* MistakenForBadass: Malachi erroneously comes across as a fearless and cunning OneManArmy during his AccidentalHero moment.
42	* MistakenForSpies: John initially fears this will happen to him when the war begins due to his not wanting to fight for either side. The fact that he has a southern accent in Gettysburg, PA also helps. Later on, he hires a smuggler to get him inside a besieged Vicksburg, carrying milk and food for his sister and her child. The smuggler is sure that he's a spy, and he's likely carried Union spies in before, since he was recommended to John by a Union officer. An older woman in Vicksburg immediately latches on to John's recent arrival in in the city, and makes him swear on his Virginian honor that he isn't a spy before she takes him to see his sister.
43	* PeacefulInDeath: Subverted. [[spoiler: John's brother dies screaming in the Wilderness as a burning tree falls on him. The Union sergeant of the Hale brothers is shown after he's killed, wearing the shocked and pained expression he had when he died. It is also played straight at Mary's funeral after she is killed in Gettysburg.]]
44	* PluckyComicRelief: Luke, before he is taken prisoner.
45	* SelfDeprecation: When asked if he has ever "seen the elephant" (been in a battle), Malachi replies that he has -- over his shoulder.
46	* ShaggyDogStory: [[spoiler:James lies about his age to join the Union Army but then contracts dysentery and dies before ever seeing the battlefield]], which is very much TruthInTelevision for many soldiers on both sides of the war.
47	* ShellShockedVeteran: Jonas tells John "you've seen too many men die," after looking through the [[NightmareFuel very graphic]] last few pages of John's sketchbook.
48	* TheSiege: Vicksburg becomes a major plotpoint as John's sister moves there with her husband before the beginning of the war. John sneaks in once he finds out.
49	* TenPacesAndTurn: The duel between John and the German is this kind, with pistols. The German cheats and fires off his shot before he reaches his tenth pace. John turns and quickly finishes his paces before taking aim. When the German looks like he's going to bolt, his own second (and "referee" of a sorts) says that if he DOES bolt, he'd shoot him himself.
50	* ThemeNaming: The Geyser brothers are named Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, after the four writers of the Gospels.
51	* ToAbsentFriends: After Lee surrenders, Jonas, John, his brothers and other soldiers solemnly march around their campfire with torches for their fallen friends and family.
52	* WarIsHell: The aftermath of the Wilderness campaign is shown and is a major plotpoint. John goes out in the evening after the battle has concluded and vows to save at least one person. The forest where the battle happened is burning and wounded soldiers not recovered (including one of John's brothers) often burn to death. Also shown at one point is John's sketchbook, containing graphic drawings of dead and dying men. One involves a [[NightmareFuel a crow...]]
53	* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: Kathy's third suitor is never mentioned again after John and the German's duel. Of course, he may very well see that there are two men that seem to be perfectly willing to kill each other for her affections and promptly slinks away.
54	* YouAreInCommandNow: While he was only one rank lower than the man he replaced, Malachi is forced to lead his squad in the Wilderness after their sergeant is killed.
55	* YouCantFightFate: Jonas' attempts to prevent [[spoiler: Mary's]] and Lincoln's deaths prove futile.

Context Series / TheBlueAndTheGray