1. Character arc in JAG

2. Awards and decorations

3. Casting and creation

4. References

Lieutenant Colonel Sarah "Mac" MacKenzie USMC, is a fictional character played by Catherine Bell and is one of the main characters in the JAG TV series, introduced in the second season of the series.

In her first appearance on JAG, in the first episode of the second season, Mac holds the rank of Major,^[1] and is then promoted to Lieutenant Colonel offscreen between the 4th and 5th seasons.^[2] Mac is a Judge Advocate in the Marine Corps, i.e. a uniformed lawyer serving in the military and assigned to the Office of the Judge Advocate General of the Navy in Falls Church, Virginia.^[1]

In the final episode of the series Mac is selected to head a Joint Legal Service Center Southwest, in San Diego, California. It is not known if she takes this position since her future is left to the audience's imagination. She and Captain Harmon "Harm" Rabb become engaged during the show's final episode, flipping a coin to see who will resign their commission.

Character arc in JAG

Born in 1968, Sarah MacKenzie had a troubled childhood; her mother abandoned her and her alcoholic father on the night of Mac's 15th birthday. Her father, Joseph MacKenzie, was physically abusive towards her mother, and emotionally and verbally abusive to Mac. As a partial result of this, Mac became an alcoholic in her mid-to-late teens and had no contact with her mother until she reappeared at her father's deathbed.^[1] She also learns at this time that her large white mutt, named Ruggles, was abandoned at a boarding house during her mother's travels after fleeing from her abusive father.^[1] She showed more sympathy for her father's efforts to be a good dad, pathetic as they were, and more anger at her mother for leaving them to fend for themselves.

Mackenzie ran away from home when she was 17 (her junior year of high school), and apparently married Christopher Ragle a year later. They were both drunk for much of their married life. He was later arrested and sent to prison for motor vehicle theft. At some point, Mac finished high school. On the night of her graduation, she was traveling in a car with her friend Eddie. They were both drunk, and were involved in a car accident that killed Eddie. Mac hit her low as an alcoholic, and her uncle USMC Colonel Matthew O'Hara took her to Red Rock Mesa, Arizona, to dry out. Mac later repaid the debt owed to him by making sure he did not get killed during an incident where he and a group of rogue Marines hijacked a van transporting the Declaration of Independence.^[2]

After graduating from high school and earning a Bachelor's degree, Sarah Mackenzie joined the Marines Corps and received her commission through Officer Candidate School.^[3]

The first known assignment for Mac in the canon was at the grade of first lieutenant at the Headquarters and Service Battalion in Okinawa, Japan, as an administrative officer under Lieutenant Colonel John Farrow.^[4] It was under his recommendation that Mac was sponsored by the Marine Corps to earn a law degree at Duke University School of Law.^[5]

While stationed in Okinawa, Mac engaged in an affair with her superior officer John Farrow. Unbeknownst to Mac, Chris Ragle followed her to Okinawa and discovered the affair.^[4] She was stationed in Bosnia and Herzegovina a year before the events in We the People,^[2] with 2nd Battalion, 9th Marines ("Two Nine") for unknown duration,^[6] and given the time-line, was likely part of the Implementation Force (IFOR).

As a major, she was subsequently assigned to JAG headquarters when she was pulled off a double homicide to work on a case involving her uncle Matthew O'Hara (her uncle's involvement was unknown to Mac until later in the episode) and the stolen Declaration of Independence.^[2] Lured by the glamour of private legal practice, she resigned her commission to work as an attorney at the White-shoe law firm "Lowell, Hanson and Lowne".^[7] However, soon changing her mind after successfully defending Harm pro bono in a court martial, she asked Admiral Chegwidden to take her back at JAG.^[8] The Admiral gave her back her letter of resignation, claiming he had been "too busy to process it" (despite having had at least four weeks in which to do so).^[8]

When Chris Ragle caught up to Mac at JAG headquarters in 1998, he attempted to use the information regarding her earlier affair with her superior officer John Farrow to blackmail her for money. John paid Chris the money he demanded, but Chris threatened to kill him anyway. Mac tried to wrestle the gun out of Chris's hand, but it accidentally went off and killed him instead.^[4]

Upon her return she was temporarily assigned many menial tasks as Head of Administration, and informed that the Admiral had withdrawn his recommendation that she be given an accelerated promotion. However she was subsequently promoted to lieutenant colonel,^[9] after Admiral A.J. Chegwidden's renewal of her recommendation for accelerated promotion.^[10]

Mac bears an uncanny resemblance to Lt. Diane Schonke, a Navy officer Harm had been dating before she was murdered, which initially made Harm uneasy, though he soon got past it.^[2][11] (This was an in-universe explanation, as Catherine Bell had played Schonke in the last episode of Season 1 before joining the cast as Mac in the first episode of Season 2). However, Mac was unaware of the resemblance until the third season, when Harm had worked out who had really killed Schonke. Harm, Bud, and later, Sturgis Turner, who were aware of the resemblance, had never mentioned it to Mac, who only found out by finding a picture of Schonke in Harm's apartment, in an old shoebox; it was then that Harm told her everything. It was during that same episode that Mac kept Harm from throwing his career away, by inadvertently appearing as the long deceased Lt. Schonke, showing up on the pier wearing one of Harriet's spare uniforms.^[12]

In addition to European ancestry, Mac also possesses both Cherokee^[13] and Iranian ancestry, and is fluent in Persian^[14] as well as speaking Russian^{[15][16][17][18]} and German^[19][20] at near native levels, while capable of recognizing a native Iranian speaker of the language by her accent.^[21] Her grandmother was Muslim and taught her the basics of Muslim law,^[22] although her grandmother was not religious to the degree of ever wearing the abaya^[23] (Bell, whose mother is Iranian, is fluent in Persian in real life). She also always knows what the time is though she never wears a watch,^[2] and exhibited borderline psychic abilities in a few episodes.^[18][24]

She and Harm eventually (after years of denial) proclaimed their love to each other. Mac has very little chance of having a child due to endometriosis^[25] The couple decided to get married in the last episode, further deciding to be fair about who would remain in service, and who would resign, or retire, by way of a coin flip (the outcome was never shown, therefore, no one is aware of Mac's status in the Marines, nor of Harm's status in the Navy.)^[26]

Awards and decorations

Awards and decorations as worn by the character in the 10th Season of JAG:

• Mac was presented her Meritorious Service Medal for organizing the defense and evacuation of a US Consulate in East Timor, after the Marine Guard Detachment suffered casualties and the consulate is overrun.^[27]

Casting and creation

For its second season, JAG moved from NBC to CBS. Bellisario had previously received offers from CBS and ABC to pick up the series,^[28] which was reworked to be one of both "legal [drama] and action".^[28] Following the departure of series co-star Tracey Needham, Catherine Bell was cast in the lead role of Major Sarah MacKenzie. Executive Producer/showrunner Donald P. Bellisario and CBS President Les Moonves "cast Catherine Bell, and [Bellisario] never heard another word from [Moonves] - who took great delight in the fact that it was part of the building block that started the CBS turnaround".^[28]

Catherine Bell made her first appearance in JAG during the season 1 finale playing another character which was killed off in that episode. "It was a really important character for Don Bellisario, who created the show, because Harm was in love with this woman," she said. Bell explained: "I went after the role and wrote Don a letter after I had read the breakdown for Mac and they brought me in. Six callbacks later, I got the role."^[29] Bell co-starred in JAG as Sarah MacKenzie until the cancellation of the show in 2005.

A possible spin-off/reformat of an 11th season of JAG, centering on Mac's assignment in San Diego was pitched to CBS, but the network passed on the spin-off idea.

References

• Governor of Sichuan
• Governor of Siena
• Governor of Sindh
• Governor of Sint Maarten
• Governor of Smolensk Oblast
• Governor of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands
• Governor of Spoleto
• Governor of State Bank of Pakistan
• Governor of Stirling Castle
• Governor of St. Vincent
• Governor of Taiwan (disambiguation)
• Governor of Tanagnyika
• Governor of Tangier
• Governor of Tangiers
• Governor of Tenochtitlan
• Governor of the Alaska Territory
• Governor of the Bank de France
• Governor of the Bank of Finland
• Governor of the Bank of France
• Governor of the Bank of Scotland
• Governor of the British Honduras
• Governor of the Brussels Capital-Region
• Governor of the Brussels-Capital Region
• Governor of the Cesar Department
• Governor of the Committee of Merchants of the Gold Coast