Name: Harmon Rabb, Jr. (David James Elliott)
Rank: Commander, USN
Current Station: JAG Headquarters, Falls Church, VA.
Harm is the series lead and a force to be reckoned with in any situation. Harm is a third-generation naval aviator – his grandfather was killed flying off the USS Hornet in 1942 (“Full Engagement”), and his father was shot down over North Vietnam on Christmas Eve, 1969 (Pilot). His mother, Trish, remarried Frank Burnett, a senior VP at Chrysler.
At 16, Harm ran away from home to search for his missing father in Laos (“Déjà Vu”). During that time, he fell in love with a girl in country who was later killed. He returned home without having found any new information about his father. Later, he enrolled in the Naval Academy, intending to follow in his father’s footsteps. A number of his Academy classmates have been referenced on the show: Jack Keeter (“Smoked”, “The Black Jet”), Sturgis Turner (“New Gun in Town”), and Diane Schonke (“Death Watch”).
After graduating from the Academy in 1985, Harm went to flight school, where he and his roommate, Luke Pendry (“Pilot Error”), were trained on the F-14 Tomcat. His first combat experience came during an engagement with Libyan MiGs over the Gulf of Sidra (“Cowboys and Cossacks”). Near the time of the Persian Gulf War, an unnamed illness affected Harm’s night vision, which was discovered only after a landing mishap on board the USS Seahawk (Pilot). The crash killed his RIO, a Lieutenant Mace, and ended his career as an aviator. After recovering on his grandmother Sarah’s farm in Bealsville, Pennsylvania (“Full Engagement”), he went to law school and became a Judge Advocate.
As the series premiered, Harm was a full lieutenant, and his partner was LTJG Kate Pike (Andrea Parker). Still ashamed of the circumstances surrounding the end of his flying career, he did not wear his aviator’s wings until after a heroic action in the pilot episode that redeemed him in the eyes of his former shipmates. While riding in the rear seat of CAG Thomas Boone’s Tomcat, he was forced to land the aircraft himself when the CAG was injured by enemy fire.
Although she returned in three later episodes, Kate was replaced in the second episode by LTJG Meg Austin (Tracey Needham). Harm was promoted to Lieutenant Commander in the first season ep “Defensive Action,” and in “We the People,” the first ep of the second season, he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for his actions in the Pilot episode.
Harm’s relationship with Lieutenant Diane Schonke has never been entirely defined, but when the lieutenant was killed during her first night home from deployment, Harm, Meg, and Commander Allison Krennick were assigned to investigate. Based on the third-season episode “Death Watch,” it can be inferred that Harm did love Diane – and his conflicted feelings were complicated further when he met his new partner, Sarah Mackenzie, a dead ringer for the murdered officer.
In the third season, Harm became involved with Annie Pendry, the widow of his friend Luke (“Someone to Watch Over Annie”). He had had feelings for her before she married Luke, but the two clashed repeatedly over her fears about her son Josh. When Harm took Josh on a Navy children’s cruise that was hijacked by terrorists (“Tiger, Tiger”), Annie broke off their relationship.
Much of the third season revolved around Harm's ongoing search for his father. In the season premiere, “Ghost Ship,” he discovered a mysterious book that listed his father’s name among a group of POWs transferred to Russia after the Vietnam War. Unfortunately, the book was later stolen from him. In “People v Rabb,” Harm was accused of murdering a Russian informant and finally got his first piece of evidence that his father might still be alive - a picture supposedly taken in the early 1980's. Believing that his father was still alive, he and Mac went to Russia in search of Harm Sr. (“To Russia With Love”). At last, he learned that his father did survive after the war and was in Russia, but was killed trying to protect a Russian woman from soldiers (“Gypsy Eyes”).
During the first part of the fourth season, Harm had his share of romance. He shared a kiss with Congresswoman Bobbi Latham (“Mr. Rabb Goes to Washington”) and became involved with Lt. Commander Jordan Parker (“Jaggle Bells”), a naval psychiatrist. Harm and Jordan became serious very quickly, but their relationship was strained when Harm started to consider a return to active flight duty. After undergoing laser surgery to correct his vision, he made the decision to return to flying (“Yeah, Baby”) and turned in his transfer request to the Admiral. He made his final decision to leave JAG and return to flying in the episode “Goodbyes”.
Harm was on flight duty aboard the USS Patrick Henry when the fifth season began (“King of the Greenie Board”). When his wingman's plane was damaged, he pushed the plane by its own tailhook out of enemy territory (“True Callings”). After this exploit, Harm's commander explained to him that he had come as far as he could as a pilot. Due to his age, he would only be able to fly for a few more years and then be assigned a desk job. The CAG advised Harm to return to JAG, which Harm did (“The Return”), but rejoining JAG did not go as smoothly as he had hoped. His relationship with Jordan ended, and he found himself a junior to the recently promoted Lt. Colonel Mackenzie. Soon, however, he was promoted to full commander (“Contemptuous Words”).
Harm’s personal life got a jump-start with the arrival of Renee Peterson, a film director who was hired to shoot a recruiting commercial for the Navy (“Into the Breech”). His often-rocky relationship with Mac came to a head in Sydney (“Boomerang”), but they ended up further apart than ever.
In the beginning of the sixth season, Harm traveled to Russia and discovered a half-brother, Sergei Zhukov (“Legacy”). Sergei is the product of Harm’s father and the Russian woman who kept him safe after he escaped in Russia and died protecting (“Legacy, Part 2”). Sergei was later shot down in Chechnya, and Harm attempted to resign his commission in order to search for him, only to find out that Sergei had been located (“Family Secrets”). Also in the sixth season, Kate Pike visited JAG, and told Mac that she and Harm had a weekend fling when they first worked together (“Touch and Go”).
Near the end of the sixth season, Harm was forced to confront his memories of Jordan Parker when she was found dead in her quarters at Quantico (“Past Tense”). Later, he and Mac shared a brief but important personal moment during her engagement party (“Lifeline”). He left to perform his annual carrier qualifications just before her wedding day, and while flying back through a storm, he was forced to eject over the ocean (“Adrift”). After surviving for hours in the water and battling hypothermia, he recovered and returned to JAG in the seventh-season episode “New Gun in Town.” Renee left him in “Mixed Messages,” and as of season eight, he is still unattached. (Try to contain yourselves, girls.)
Harm flew a couple of missions over Afghanistan in season seven, one of which culminated in a heroic diversion of a ‘dirty’ nuclear warhead away from the Seahawk battle group (“Enemy Below”). For this action, he received the Silver Star. In season eight, he was at odds with Lieutenant Singer over the paternity of her unborn child: he suspected that his brother Sergei was the baby’s father, which she refused to confirm (“When the Bough Breaks”). When Singer was found dead late in the season, Harm was charged with her murder (“Ice Queen”), but the charges were dropped when evidence pointed toward Commander Lindsey as the killer (“Meltdown”).
Harm's birthday is October 25, 1963 (“The Prisoner”), which made him just shy of 32 when the show premiered in September of 1995. He was raised in the vicinity of San Diego, California, and currently lives “North of Union Station” in Washington, D.C. Besides the USS Seahawk and the USS Patrick Henry, we know that he served aboard the USS Midway while on flight duty (“Mixed Messages”). We also know that he is a health-food aficionado (“Heroes”); that he adores his ’68 Corvette; that he plays basketball (“Front and Center”) and boxed at the Academy (“New Gun in Town”); that he most likely votes Republican (“Contemptuous Words”); and that until season eight, he didn’t own a TV (“Someone to Watch Over Annie”).
(Biography used by permission by AeroGirl)