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Wednesday, November 1, 2017

Nobody Ever Talks About The Sea Lion Team #SEALTeam #3weekroundup #review #recap #CBS

Nobody Ever Talks About The Sea Lion Team #SEALTeam #3weekroundup #review #recap #CBS

All pictures courtesy of CBS 


Back again in this third week of primetime fall TV with yet another review of a brand new series. Can I just point out how strange it is that a lot of the streaming services aren’t premiering that many new series at this moment in time. In fact, I think that this 2017-2018 season will see the fewest new series to come to TV or streaming in over a decade. I’d have to fact-check that but... I don’t wanna. Today, we are looking at CBS’s new military-themed drama SEAL Team. So, does this show manage to sneak its way into that obsessed fandom part of your heart and head that will have you raving over how good it is or is it in need of a stealthy take down to get it off the airwaves? Let’s find out together.

CBS’s SEAL Team stars David Boreanaz as a special SEAL team leader who is going through a rough patch in his life. I can almost instantly tell you that this show is better than the other military-themed show on NBC. But let’s wait a little longer before I do a thorough comparison and analysis of the two shows. Back to this show, David plays Jason Hayes, a Navy SEAL who, at the start of the series, has just been ordered to mandated counseling/therapy sessions after a mission gone slightly wrong. In this mission, Hayes, who is the squad leader, made a call to go deeper onto a ship and look at the cargo and whatnot which ultimately led to a chaotic escape from the people who owned the ship and one of his good buddies and a fellow SEAL team member being Killed In Action. Now, he has to live with the subtle PTSD trauma and survivor’s remorse of having been the one to make an in-mission call to look further into this ship.

And if that’s not bad enough, we find out within minutes of him leaving the doctor’s office that he is also having marital problems. No, he is not divorced but he and his wife Alana are separated and he is currently not living in the house. Apparently, as we learn in episode three, the sex was always great between them but he was never quite mentally present even when he was home from missions. For those who don’t know, SEALs and special ops teams are different than regular soldiers in that they don’t go on full tours overseas but they are always on-call similar to a surgeon. They go on specialized missions when they are absolutely needed. This made his schedule hectic. So, we already have a very humanized character.

Next, we have the second-in-command Ray, who is either black, Latino, Hispanic or a mix of all three. The point is that he is a minority character (Thank God!) who is given a very high place on the show. He is more than just a best buddy in my opinion and has his own storyline. He is the expectant father—well, his wife is pregnant with their first child. A son. He is looking forward to the baby and living a long life and all of that. He is both the jovial jokester and the confidante on whom Hayes can lean. Together, they make a pretty good tandem as a lead character.

Then we have Mandy Ellis, played by the lovely Jessica Pare. She is essentially HQ-intelligence of the team. I don’t believe that she is an official part of the military but part of one of the many intelligence agencies that co-opt with the SEALs. The closest that she gets to the live action of the field is in the field’s command center that is usually tucked safely away miles from the more shoot-y aspects. Though she doesn’t hold as high of a rank as Anne Heche’s character on NBC’s The Brave, she is pretty much the same thing.

We also have Davis. She is part of the SEAL team but I haven’t seen her actually go on field missions yet, unless I just wasn’t paying close enough attention. Anyway, she helps a lot in strategizing how the team can get into the places that they are seeking to go, and she also does a lot of what seems like grunt work to me: she packs parachutes, makes sure that all the tech on the soldiers’ suits is working and relays communications back to the HQ and command centers. While they haven’t dwelt on her very much, she does intrigue me. Also, on episode three, this may just be me and my writer’s mind, but I kind of sense that both Davis and Mandy are gay, or at least one of them is and I think that it may be Davis. I find that also to be very intriguing as we will finally get to see an interracial, diverse relationship in the military.

And finally we have the jackass of the show, Clay Spenser. What to say, what to say. Clay is my most hated character in all of the new shows that I’ve seen so far this new TV season. As I mentioned in my Summer of Suck part 1 review when discussing the terrible movies of the summer, it feels like instead of getting actual Millennial writers into the writing room for movies, it feels like we are getting Gen-Xers who are trying to write what they think Millennials are actually like personally. But they seem to write-in a lot of their frustrations with how they perceive Millennials and not how this younger generation perceives itself. So, Clay is the epitome of a stereotyped Millennial, even though he is a soldier. Again, I will try to withhold my critique until later, but just know that I don’t like this.

Anyway, Clay is the son of a famous Navy SEAL who has long retired, and written a book about his military exploits. This puts Clay in a tricky position because he has the whole “he’s the son of so and so” onus on him while he is trying to prove himself on his own merits. But even worse, this guy is a total jerk and a jerk really for no reason. Again, I digress before I start to criticize the show. But I will get back to this point later.

After we see Clay in a training exercise (oh yeah, he’s not even officially on the SEAL team that Hayes is on and is, in fact, a newb) the team is called out on a mission where Clay gets to “strap” or assist in the field without actually being part of the team. They never quite explain why he specifically gets this privilege but the idea is that the team needs an extra man on this mission so they get someone from the trainees.


The mission is to take down a HVT or High-Value Target who is coming for some kind of mafia-dons-like meeting with some other lower-level terrorists. The orders are to capture him and take him back to the US for sustained interrogation as he knows a lot about many different terrorist organizations and potential attacks. Again, they want to keep him ALIVE. Well, as they are doing drone recon, after the desert dust clears (this is somewhere near the Sahara in Africa) they see that the terrorist and his men came to the party stacked. They have a white American female kidnap victim who had been snatched while on vacation in another country. The mission objectives then change from capturing the terrorist to rescuing the girl. At first, they believe that they can’t do both and that they have to choose one or the other because by rescuing the girl they will have tipped off the terrorist of their presence and that’s no good for terrorist-capturing business. As it so happens, Jessica Pare’s character really wants this guy. On a previous mission, she couldn’t save an asset who died from the orders of this big baddie.

Hayes, Ray and Clay
Then, a twist of fate. As they decide to go wholesale for the rescue, while there, their bomb-squad dog leads them to an underground escape tunnel which they believe the terrorist has used to escape. The caravan that left out the back upon their arrival was a decoy. And they start to haul all through the tunnels. With the rest of the team checking the entirety of the rest of the building and getting the girl to safety, that leaves Hayes, Ray and Clay to check the tunnel. All Clay is supposed to do is stay near the tunnels’ fork and make sure they aren’t ambushed from the other side as Hayes and Ray follow the dog. Clay can’t follow orders. He does find another guy down the other side of the tunnel, but follows it all the way around to the room where the terrorist is—the same room the dog led Hayes and Ray to from the other side. Without hesitation, Clay shoots the terrorist upon seeing a bomb vest and they’ve only partially succeeded at the mission.

They get back and Hayes lies about it being a clean kill of the terrorist because he doesn’t want to get the boy in trouble, but is secretly pissed about Clay’s lack of good judgment. Jessica Pare’s character is totally cool with this guy being dead because he deserved it. They go back home and Hayes has to wind up in therapy again as the therapist thinks that he really needs to work something out inside his head.

Episode two sees the team suit up again, but this time without Clay as a mission strap. While Clay is left stateside to train more and flirt with privileged white women at a local military bar, the team goes to a foreign country to do some real work. The intelligence side of the team gathers up some surveillance on a potential chemical weapons lab out in the middle of the desert somewhere. Out in the war-torn country of Syria, passing satellite and drone photos have captured a collection of tire tracks surrounding what is supposed to be an abandoned science lab. They believe that some terrorist group or maybe the government (honestly, it’s hard for me to keep up with all the Middle Eastern names and who is and isn’t on our side on this show) is creating chemical weapons that can potentially wipe out an entire city, nation or the entire world, and that have a very high potency. Instead of shutting this place down or bombing it outright (can’t do that or risk letting all of these deadly chemicals out), the higher-ups want to gather intel on the building to make sure that their hypotheses aren’t full of dairy-farm fertilizer.

Only after they get to the building do they realize a few things: one the intelligence team was right, this place is filled with illegal chemicals, toxins, viruses and bacteria that can be weaponized and used to kill billions. But two, and more importantly, there are people in there that have already been affected. Mostly kids. Here I got a little confused because these bio-chemicals were sold to us as being so vile, so toxic that they automatically kill people within days, sometimes hours or minutes. Yet, they set it up that these kids were infected with these deadly toxins and were very sick, some dying. I guess the idea was that the scientists were infecting the children with tiny micro-doses to try to work out some sort of antivirus or vaccine before releasing the viruses/bacteria/toxins? I’m not sure, but I do know that Hayes sees innocent people in need of saving.

Well, he makes another dangerous call in the field (similar to the one that got his friend killed) to stay in that building and guard these kids until they could get a transport to get them all out or until the scientists and terrorists came back. He is looking to eradicate all the terrorists so that the kids would be safe then. He gives his team the option to leave, including the scientist who was this week’s strap who needed to come on the mission to test all of the various samples left in the lab. Everyone, including the scientist, says that they will stay if he stays. At the last minute, Hayes concocts a genius plan to lie and say that the empty viles left behind that once contained the viruses, bacteria and biochemicals are not sufficient to prove the existence of these bio-agents. They, therefore, need to take the children because they have clearly been infected with something and would have the lasting traces of these diseases in their blood. The day is saved and so are the children.

Back on the homefront, Ray’s wife goes into labor slightly early and gives birth with her husband standing beside Hayes halfway around the world. Hayes doesn’t tell Ray until after the mission and they have a total bro-moment about love and looking out for each other.

Episode three sees pirates, ahoy! Ha! No, but yes, seriously. Some pirates in the Southeast Asian sea territories have hijacked a research ship with a bunch of doctors and scientists. What were they studying? Unclear, but it’s a pimped-out yacht that, I assume the pirates all thought had rich people on it. Being NAVY SEALs, the team has to assemble to try to free the hostages held on the ship. But first they have to find it.

Intelligence has to figure out where the pirates would dock in these current weather conditions, and what ports would allow them to dock with a clearly stolen vessel. After the ship’s GPS is shut off, the intelligence team calculates where they might dock based on tides and illegal ports in the area. Once they have the coordinates, the ground team then decides to do a stealthy water infiltration of the dock and ship because parachuting on would be too dangerous. They are able to get onto the yacht, secure the hostages and get the heck outta there in little to no time at all, after ironing out a few bumps, chief among those being that a lot of the pesky pirates were still lingering on the dock when they thought they would’ve deboarded and gone to set up deals on the black market to sell some hostages to another terrorist group.

Meanwhile, back stateside, Clay, who is still in training, is going through a rough time of losing self-confidence when he is called out by his peers as being part of the bottom five soldiers in the SEAL training course. That white woman he was flirting with in the previous show he completely alienates as he mopes in his beer, only to course correct halfway through the episode and realize that the weight of the world really isn’t on his shoulders and it is not about being the top of the class but about getting on the team. He then goes back to the white girl and is all, “Oh, I’m sorry and here’s some stuff that’s charming that guys do when they apologize. Now like me again.” And of course she does because she wanted to give him those hot drawers since she first met him in the bar and they both had the most cringeworthy SJW conversation ever that, apparently all Gen-Xers believe Millennials have.

As a side story, Hayes and his wife are pseudo-snooping because his wife found some kind of evidence about his dead buddy that makes her believe that the man was cheating before he died. Hayes and Ray venture out to find more info to prove that their best bud wasn’t cheating. A phone is discovered. Hayes’ wife says that the phone was not the dead buddy’s main phone and that he only ever called one number on it, which is a few cities over. Hayes and Ray track down the house with said phone number and go to meet whoever is there. So now we have a potential cross-episodes mystery arc unfolding. Yay!


What’s my grade? I give this a solid B. OK, there is a lot about this series that I like so let’s just get to what I don’t like which you all clearly already know and have seen, and that is the way they wrote Clay’s character. If he is going to be arrogant, then fine, but don’t write said arrogance as a generational-defining motif. It makes the writers sound old and craggy, and gives off that what-is-this-young-generation-good-for vibe yet again. If you want your show to actually last, then you need to be appealing to the Millennial demographic and not trying to alienate them by satirizing them in a serious drama. Remember, we’re dealing with soldiers here, and not just soldiers but ones that have been in the military long enough to be allowed to train to become a Navy SEAL special ops soldier. If he somehow got through basic training and is still this arrogant this early, then something tells me that maybe he does have reason to be that way.

And also what the hell was with that flirting with the bar chick that he did? If you really want to try to make this a real interpretation of what Millennial men are like, then you maybe need to legitimately talk to some and listen to them. Frankly, guys are not putting forth that kind of effort that Clay showed at the bar anymore. From the ones that I’ve talked to for research in books and whatnot, most of them really don’t care about proving themselves to women anymore. The whole “oh, you’re gonna be tough on me, you’re a tough feminist and I see you as a fun challenge” really is not reality for most young men, even the more traditional ones who fill the military ranks. If they want a challenge, most guys have video games. Bullet sponges, jarheads, squids and the like will spend all day honing their shooting and strategizing skills on those first before trying to go toe to toe with some women’s studies grad student.

But even more importantly, a lot of the young women will tell you virtually the same truth: that men don’t want to deal with them nearly as much as TV says they do. You might find it sad, but most of these men are not nearly as horny nor as pressed to get a piece of the almighty V as people might think they are. If this weren’t closer to the truth than the fiction that the show tries to pawn off as realisitc, then we wouldn’t have the deluge of articles, online videos and blogposts about young women not being able to find men, about how men are lazy and not getting married, about how the birth rates are dropping in almost all developed countries, or about how the marriage rate and even cohabitation rate (within the last five years) are steadily creeping down while the divorce rates are steadily creeping back up (they were highest during the baby boomers youth in the 80s when they got up to 60%; look it up on the census website).

Clay’s entire character is flawed not in purpose but in conception. It’s like they’ve literally taken every complaint about Gen-Yers and stuffed it into one person, then had him interact within that same paradigm of thought. Frankly, it was unnecessary for this show, is not excessively identifiable as a younger character, and would be much better if he was removed or his whole storyline toned way down. And worst of all, his character motivations are not fully flushed out. While I can excuse the fact that he is arrogant, there is no reason given for his arrogance. Yes, his dad is mentioned as being some big past hotshot SEAL who wrote a book, but never in the first three episodes do we know if Clay embraces being his dad’s son and living up to that legacy, or if he is a “prove myself, make my own way” kinda guy. He’s just a jerk for no real reason. Again, if you sit and talk to real Millennials, you will find that most of them aren’t arrogant or entitled for no reason. In fact, most of them seem pissed because a great majority of them did what the two previous generations told them they NEEDED to do: go to school, get a good education, really learn something. And while there were some people who went to school for art degrees, nowhere near as many as other generations think. They’re pissed because they got decent degrees and graduated into a system that was and still is very broken, and they have more debt (even if they worked through school) to carry post-graduation than any other generation. And even the military guys are pissed because half of them no longer believe in the American Dream, PTSD rates seem to be skyrocketing and unlike with Vietnam where the US finally decided to give up and go home, the new wars/conflicts the US starts go nowhere, accomplish nothing and continue forever with no end in sight. Whoa! I got waaayyy too political there.

OK, with that out of the way, I pretty much like everything else about the show. And here is where the comparisons and contrasts to NBC’s The Brave start. To me, this is the far superior show. The Brave, while it moves fast and dwells heavily on the mission aspect of the soldiers and the intelligence team trying to do the job, it has little to no emotional weight. I watched three episodes of the series. Three. That’s more than most of the paid critics and more than most regular viewers give a show to prove itself. And in that time, I don’t feel like I truly got to know a single character on that show. It’s all business, which isn’t good for a show like this because after a while it starts to make the players feel like easily-replaced robots. If Preach or that other guy died on that show in the fourth episode, I would hardly notice. Hell, I don’t even think I would be that impacted if Dalton, the team leader, died on that show.

But on SEAL team, with the exception of Clay, I would feel bad if just about any other major character died on episode four or five. You totally can’t kill Hayes and you definitely can’t get rid of Ray—they both have families and people that really care about them, and see how I’m already bargaining for them before anything has happened? The people on The Brave? I don’t know if they have families, haven’t seen them kissing and hugging on anyone or talking about basic things like kid’s choir concerts or doing dishes or anything like that. They are as cardboard as can be.

Then there is the structure of the show. Again, the Brave is all business, showing little to no downtime for the team as a whole. If intelligence back at HQ is not doing something, then that’s because the ground team is out in the field, and vice versa. I haven’t seen but one scene in which the team on The Brave were doing something that looked cheerful, light, human, and that was that weird beach scene at the end of the first episode—still can’t get over that damn bomb. What the hell was that? Whereas on SEAL Team, you can see that these people actually have lives outside of beating the bad guys.

The shows are filmed in similar ways, although the lighting and shading on The Brave are in a dusty yellow-orangeish—you’ll know what I’m talking about if you’ve seen it—and the SEAL team show is filmed in that strange CBS darker softglow of blue and green. For instance, you almost always see lights in the background when in an outside scene. It’s kinda weird if you notice it, but you tend not to notice it if you’re not a film student.

As far as the missions, they are virtually the same. The difference is that more time is spent on the technical detailed aspects of the field missions on The Brave whereas the mission may occupy half an hour of the full hour on SEAL Team and the rest of the show is character development. Oh, and unlike on The Brave, SEAL TEAM has a secondary over-arching storyline that you can follow. It has two, actually: whether or not the dead soldier cheated on his wife, and if Hayes and his wife will actually get back together and work things out from their current separation or will they get a full divorce. Even for the tough men and women of the military (but more men than women on this particular front) who are feelings- and emotions-averse, this is an emotional thruline that they most likely can relate to and feel comfortable watching with their respective spouses or families. The struggle for soldiers and people who face death on a daily basis (as well as seeing the human atrocities that evil commits) to open up to others or be fully present with their families is a real issue. This show addresses it, albeit in a slightly glossy way. But The Brave doesn’t address it at all, so I’d go with SEAL Team any day over The Brave on that aspect.

Should you be watching? Sure. Here’s some real truth, I try to stay as objective as I can when reviewing this stuff. Subjectively, neither of these shows are appointment viewing for me. I have never truly loved military stories and, for that matter, have long abandoned a lot of the cop shows and procedurals that flood our TV every year. Outside of something that is uniquely creative and generally has a sci-fi or fantastical bend to it while being a cop show (ie. Minority Report, Second Chance, Almost Human), I tend not to delve into very many of these shows on a weekly basis unless I am reviewing them. But with that said, I think that for people who love cop shows, military shows, crime-solving shows and the like, this would be a great show for you. Now, if you are a military fanatic and you’ve seen everything from JAG to Taken to Army Wives to whatever, then you most likely will check out both SEAL Team and The Brave and won’t mind spending time in both worlds. If, however, you can only choose one, I would recommend SEAL Team as it is the better overall show. I also hear that it has gotten a full-season order. Congrats! SEAL Team airs at 10pm on CBS Wednesdays. Check for it on demand and on CBS All Access, too.

What do you think? Have you heard of SEAL Team? If not, do you think you will check it out now? If you have heard of it, have you seen it? Did you like it? Do you like how the missions are carried out? Do you think that they are authentic? And what do you think about Hayes and his wife? Do you really think they’ll divorce or are you pulling for them to get back together? Let me know in the comments below.

Check out my 5-star comedy novel, Yep, I'm Totally Stalking My Ex-Boyfriend. #AhStalking If you’re looking for a scare, check the YA novel #AFuriousWind, the NA novel #DARKER#BrandNewHome or the bizarre horror #ThePowerOfTen. For those interested in something a little more dramatic and adult, check out #TheWriter. Seasons 1, 2 and 3 are out NOW, exclusively on Amazon. Stay connected here for updates on season 4 coming summer 2018. If you like fast action/crime check out #ADangerousLow. The sequel A New Low will be out in a few months. Look for the mysterious Sci-fi episodic novella series Extraordinary on Amazon. Season 2 of that coming real soon. And look for the mystery novels The Knowledge of Fear #KnowFear and The Man on the Roof #TMOTR coming this fall/winter. Twisty novels as good as Gone Girl or The Girl on the Train, you won’t want to miss them. Join us on Goodreads to talk about books and TV, and subscribe to and follow my blog with that Google+ button to the right.

Until next time, “Semper Fido-lis!”

P.S. Good Lord this has got to be the worst sign-off I’ve ever done, and yet I’m going through with it. I really should be embarrassed after this long post with hella-many run-on sentences and other grammatical errors littering what could have been a decent review of a decent show to finally end it like this. But with that said, did anybody see the article about the doggy bomb sniffer that didn’t get into the program for I think the CIA or something? That dog was so cute. Yes, it was. Yes, it was. OK, I’m stopping now. I’ll think of a better sign-off next time. 

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