IF YOU WATCH even half as much primetime television as I do, you might think we're a nation of detectives, lawyers and medical professionals.

And more than a few forensics specialists.

But soldiers and their families?

Not so many.

Yesterday was the eighth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, an ongoing conflict that, along with the war in Iraq, is mostly confined by television to news reports.

Sunday, meanwhile, marks the third-season finale of Lifetime's "Army Wives," one of the few scripted shows - especially since CBS' cancellation of "The Unit" - that attempts to deal in any realistic way with the daily lives of the people we pretty much all claim to support.

Part of me understands why that is. It's tricky to tell stories set in a current, still politically charged conflict, and even trickier to get people to watch them, as Steven Bochco and Chris Gerolmo discovered a few years ago with their short-lived FX series about Iraq, "Over There."

But not to see yourself represented on television is to be in some sense marginalized in this country, where the fluctuating percentages of various minorities in primetime is often seen, fairly or not, as a sort of cultural barometer.

I've been thinking about this a lot in connection with "Army Wives," which has evolved over the past few seasons from an estrogen-fueled soap about occasionally desperate wives - Roxborough's Kim Delaney plays the wife of a general - to something that actually seems interested in exploring a part of our culture that doesn't get much attention.

Along the way, it's dealt with the stresses of military life from a variety of angles while maintaining a dogged belief in the military's mission.

This season, in particular, has walked that line particularly closely, thanks to a storyline that made one of the "Wives'" spouses, Trevor LeBlanc (Drew Fuller), a sergeant who'd previously been wounded in action, into a recruiter.

I don't know about you, but I haven't given much thought these past few years to the problems of military recruiters. There's a recruiting office just off the main street of the town I live in, and while I'm not proud to admit it, I'm usually relieved when I see the place empty.

But then, where I live, most young men and women have other, safer options.

That's the lucky slice of America where television spends most of its time, too, and where soldiers rarely appear. And when they do, like Justin (Dave Annable), the heroic rebel of the privileged Walker clan on ABC's "Brothers & Sisters," they're not exactly leading typical lives.

But until we figure out a way to bring everyone home - and, oh, end armed conflict and injustice forever, everywhere - we need people to serve.

And I'm not sensing any groundwell of support for bringing back the draft, are you?

Not that "Army Wives" is pushing that, either.

Instead, it's built a picture of the all-volunteer army that emphasizes the opportunities for people who may not have been born to them.

In winning his first recruit, a young woman from an impoverished and troubled family, Trevor called in his former boss, Lt. Col. Joan Burton (Wendy Davis), to help seal the deal in a just-us-girls meeting that emphasized aspects of their shared backgrounds.

My guess is that that kind of informal contact occurs in real life about as often as the intimate friendships between the wives of high-ranking officers and enlisted personnel that's been a driving force in "Army Wives," but, hey, it was a heck of a speech.

My heart was a little less warmed, though, when the writers upped the ante and gave the recruit a family issue that could force her niece and nephew into foster care if she were deployed.

The show, to its credit, didn't let Trevor deny that very real possibility, even as he told his prospect that the Army had programs that might be able to help.

He didn't tell her that Joan, the woman who'd helped talk her into a military career, was about to deploy, leaving her own baby behind with her husband.

Eventually, he got her on that bus.

I'm still not sure how I felt about that.

According to a recent story in the New York Times about the toll the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are taking on the children of women who serve, more than 100,000 mothers have been deployed so far, a third of them single mothers.

The military needs those women, but so do their kids.

It's just one of the military problems for which no fictional television show can possibly be expected to provide all the answers.

And you won't find them on "Army Wives," either.

But it might be long past time for more networks to join Lifetime in raising the questions. *

Send e-mail to graye@phillynews.com.