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Frontline on IMDB
First Aired: January 17th, 1983
Status: Continuing
Network: PBS
Summary: Since it began in 1983, Frontline has been airing public-affairs documentaries that explore a wide scope of the complex human experience. Frontline's goal is to extend the impact of the documentary beyond its initial broadcast by serving as a catalyst for change.
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# of Episodes: 1756
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Season 1988
Episode 1: Praise the Lord
Air Date: January 26th, 1988
Summary: Frontline traces the rise and fall of television evangelists Jim and Tammy Bakker and investigates why government agencies failed to vigorously investigate charges of corruption in the Bakker empire.
Episode 2: Operation Urgent Fury
Air Date: February 2nd, 1988
Summary: Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Seymour Hersh investigates one of Ronald Reagan's greatest triumphs-the rescue of American students during the 1983 invasion of Grenada. Hersh's reporting reveals an inept US military operation and questions whether the students needed rescuing at all.
Episode 3: The Man who Shot John Lennon
Air Date: February 9th, 1988
Summary: Frontline goes inside the mind of Mark David Chapman, the man who shot and killed John Lennon in 1980. Newly acquired records paint the chilling portrait of a celebrity stalker who meticulously planned the murder, believing it would make him famous.
Episode 4: Your Flight Is Cancelled
Air Date: February 16th, 1988
Summary: Since deregulation, American's airline industry has become a nightmare of delays, cancellations, and near misses. Frontline probes the air traffic dilemma inside America's busiest airport-in the control tower and behind the ticket counter.
Episode 5: Shakedown in Santa Fe
Air Date: February 23rd, 1988
Summary: Eight years after one of the most violent prison uprisings in US history, Frontline returns to the penitentiary in New Mexico to probe the continuing struggle between the inmates and the guards, the wardens and the reformers, for control of one of our most dangerous prisons.
Episode 6: Let My Daughter Die
Air Date: March 1st, 1988
Summary: Joe and Joyce Cruzan want doctors to remove their severely brain damaged daughter from the life-support system that keeps her alive. Nearly two years before it became the US Supreme Court's first right-to-die case, Frontline explored the complex legal and moral issues of this Missouri couple's battle to allow their daughter to die.
Episode 7: Back in the USSR
Air Date: March 29th, 1988
Summary: In 1968, American journalist Jerry Schecter, accompanied by his wife and five young children, moved to Moscow on assignment for Time magazine. In 1987, Frontline returned with the Schecter family to the Soviet Union as they renewed old friendships and explored Russia under glasnost.
Episode 8: Poison and the Pentagon
Air Date: April 5th, 1988
Summary: The military is America's largest producer of toxic waste. Frontline reporter Joe Rosenbloom investigates the Pentagon's poor record of cleaning up its pollution that contaminates the ground water in communities across the country.
Episode 9: To a Safer Place
Air Date: April 12nd, 1988
Summary: When Shirley Turcotte was a child, she was sexually abused by her father. After years of therapy she takes a remarkable journey back into her past-confronting her mother and other adults who failed to protect her, reuniting with her brothers and sister who were also brutally abused, and trying to make peace with the horror story that was her childhood.
Episode 10: Murder on the Rio San Juan
Air Date: April 19th, 1988
Summary: Frontline investigates the unsolved 1984 terrorist bombing at a press conference held by contra leader Eden Pastora. Eight people, including an American reporter, died that night on the border between Nicaragua and Costa Rica. This report dissects the motives of possible conspirators and follows the trail of the man suspected of planting the bomb.
Episode 11: American Game, Japanese Rules
Air Date: April 26th, 1988
Summary: Can America succeed in Japan? Frontline paints an intimate portrait of Americans living and working in Japan-baseball players, businessmen, and an American bride-all confronting a society that looks Western, but operates by a very different set of rules.
Episode 12: Racism 101
Air Date: May 10th, 1988
Summary: Frontline explores the disturbing increase in racial incidents and violence on America's college campuses. The attitudes of black and white students reveal increasing tensions at some of the country's best universities where years after the civil rights struggle, full integration is still only a dream.
Episode 13: Guns, Drugs, and the CIA
Air Date: May 17th, 1988
Summary: A Frontline investigation examines the CIA's long history of involvement with drug smugglers in trouble spots around the world and how the agency has defended its alliances with drug dealers under the cloak of 'national security.'
Episode 14: The Defense of Europe
Air Date: May 24th, 1988
Summary: Frontline and Time magazine join forces to examine the new realities for the NATO alliance following the American-Soviet nuclear arms treaty. How good are the Warsaw Pact forces? Can Europe defend itself without nuclear missiles? Will America begin to pull out its troops?
Episode 15: Trouble in Paradise
Air Date: May 31st, 1988
Summary: Frontline examines the US government's attempts to forge a military pact with the Pacific Island nation of Palau (population 15,000)-a campaign that has led to economic dependence, political strife, corruption, and violence in that tiny country.
Episode 16: Who Pays for AIDS?
Air Date: June 7th, 1988
Summary: By 1991, health care for AIDS patients in the United States could cost an estimated $16 to $22 billion. Caring for AIDS victims is overwhelming some communities. Frontline examines the impact on patients caught in the middle of a battle between local governments and Washington over who will pay for AIDS.
Episode 17: Our Forgotten War
Air Date: June 14th, 1988
Summary: In Central America, while US attention has been dominated by the contra war in Nicaragua, the battle for El Salvador continues. The US government has dumped nearly $3 billion in aid into El Salvador (more than ten times the amount spent on the contras), but there are new signs that the American policy is in trouble. With exclusive footage shot behind guerilla lines, Frontline takes a fresh look at the war in El Salvador.
Episode 18: Indian Country
Air Date: June 21st, 1988
Summary: The Quinault Indians of Washington State seem to have everything-strong leadership, a landmark court victory guaranteeing fishing rights, business deals with the Japanese, and a lush, beautiful reservation. But the Quinaults still face crushing problems-unemployment, poverty, alcoholism, and suicide. Frontline reporter Mark Trahant searches for answers to the Quinault's dilemma in the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Congress, the White House and in the heart of the Quinault people.
Episode 19: My Husband is Going to Kill Me
Air Date: June 28th, 1988
Summary: In February 1987, 30 year-old Pamela Guenther turned to the police and the courts in a Denver suburb for protection from her violent husband. Three weeks later, as her children watched, she was murdered. Frontline asks why the system could not protect Pamela Guenther.
Episode 20: The Politics of Prosperity
Air Date: October 10th, 1988
Summary: In the last weeks of the 1988 presidential campaign, correspondent William Greider explores the private but increasingly intense debate about what the next president should do to avoid economic disaster, how and when should he do it, and who will be asked to bear the burden. Frontline focuses on four communities that have not shared in the prosperity of the Reagan years.
Episode 21: The Choice
Air Date: October 24th, 1988
Summary: Frontline and Time magazine step back from the heat of the 1988 presidential campaign to examine, in-depth, the background, character, qualifications, and beliefs of the Republican and Democratic candidates, George Bush and Michael Dukakis. Correspondent Garry Wills assesses their lives and career through the people who know them best.
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