Not Bravery, Nor Boldness But #Valor #3weekroundup #recap #review #CW

Not Bravery, Nor Boldness But #Valor #3weekroundup #recap #review #CW

Annnnnndddd we’re back. Welcome ladies and gentlemen to another grand new series three-week roundup review. At this point you know the rules: I wait to give a show three weeks to impress me before I review it because most pilot episodes are clunky and overly hyped anyway, so give a series time to settle in and see how it’s doing. Today, we’re looking at one of the CW’s new offerings Valor, the last of the three major military-themed new series offerings for this year (some might point out that Martha Raddatz’s book The Long Road Home, which I haven’t read, is coming on TV too, but that is just a miniseries and not a full series). We’ve already taken a look at both NBC’s The Brave and CBS’s SEAL Team, so does Valor have the right stuff to measure up or is it not worthy enough to wear its fatigues? Let’s find out together.

CW’s Valor stars Christina Ochoa as Nora Madani, an officer and Black Hawk chopper pilot in the US Army. Score one point for casting a Latina female as the lead for the show (CBS was called out for not having a single female leading a new show, even though they really didn’t have that many new shows this fall). Christina, even though she is a classified missions operator who flies black-ops mission specialists to secret locations to conduct secret missions, seems to be fairly new at her piloting when we first meet her. I say new in that she is simply not as experienced in in-field combat scenarios as her co-pilot is. Her co-pilot Leland Gallo played by Matt Barr, is a free-wheelin’ hotshot who has had tons of in-field experience and loves the ladies. And the ladies love him. He’s about business when he needs to be but doesn’t seem to shy away from fun. And already the show was winning some more points because, unlike on The Brave, we got actual character development for some of our main characters.

Nora and Leland are joined by a slew of other players in this story that quickly gets complicated, but I should first start with the inciting incident of the show and go from there. OK, so we open with Leland and Nora flying a secret mission into somewhere in Somalia. We learn later that the Somalian government knew nothing about this mission and the details are highly classified even within the Army rankings. While the team is technically bifurcated into the flyboys and girls and the ground troops, as a whole, the team is supposed to fly into Somalia and secure an HVT or High-Value Somalian Target who is supposedly some kind of insurgent. Well, they land, the ground crew loads out, they run into some shack where some militants are keeping this supposed Somalian insurgent, take on more enemy fire than they expected to, run back, hop into the copter and try to escape, but something goes terribly wrong when an RPG fires off and hits the tail of the copter. They have to make a daring crash-landing close by in some lake or pond and escape enemy territory. At some point their HVT escapes and everything goes to hell. Nora gets shot through the leg and panics and things go a little blurry for her.

And we zoom to one month later back in the states. Here is where I jump back and possibly confuse you a little by telling you about the people on the helicopter transport. So, rounding out the crew in that transport were Jimmy Kam (who looked like he was a gunner of some sort. I really couldn’t keep up with the ranks and the back and forth chatting about people that weren’t shown was a little confusing to my aging brain) the black guy, Crank Hendrix one of the ground guys, two others, and the actual hooded Somalian. This is important for the overarching season mystery.

OK, back to one month later and we catch up with Nora who is greeted in the morning by her boyfriend and fellow Army officer Lieutenant Ian Porter. He works in Intelligence and is all over Nora in their kitchen. They appear to live on base, though I don’t know if they live together. Anyway, he is concerned that her one month of leg rehab to get over the gunshot was hardly enough time for her to heal mentally from what happened. He thinks she’s still having trouble dealing with the fact that they crash-landed and that only she and Leland returned. Well, she insists she’s fine and can’t wait to start her first day back on the job in months.

We jump over to see Leland in bed with some random white woman who enjoys handcuffs and good times. He charms his way back into his pants as he has to leave quickly to also get back to work after his one-month forced vacation. While he wasn’t injured, his leave was mandated. He, too, seems to live on the base as his girl is also in the Army in some capacity.

We finally jump over to the wife of Jimmy who is getting their son ready for school. There’s some back and forth about him singing and how dad used to sing with him. He then asks about his dad and we get this band-aiding of what’s really going on. She insists that her husband is just not back yet from his mission which happens to be one of the longest that his son can remember (again, they’re special ops, so they don’t do regular tours of deployment like other soldiers). While it’s sorta hinted at here, it isn’t outright said until after Leland and Nora step back into their platoon and are awarded some medals for their valor in the field that Jimmy and Hendrix are not classified as dead, but are MIA and suspected to have been captured as POWs. They’re alive.

We then switch over to Jimmy and Hendrix and pause for a minute when we finally realize what the writers did with the names there, and we aren’t quite sure how to react. Seriously, how should we react to those two being together like that? What’s the point of the music reference? I digress. We find Jimmy and Hendrix sitting in some dirt cell still somewhere in Somalia, supposedly being held captive by a local warlord. And here we finally get a feel for the show’s language. It should be noted that the show not only jumps between what’s happening on the base back in America and the jail cell in Somalia, but it also jumps back and forth in time, constantly going back to reference the night of the crash similar to the show Lost. The boys look a little beaten, but fair considering they’ve been there for a month. This pretty much sums up every jump to their storyline. Oh, and they’re constantly plotting to escape.

Back on the base, after receiving the commendation in front of her other officers, Nora is told by her CO that she is being pulled from actual flights and given a desk position for the next few months because some of the higher-up men are worried about having women in combat positions like hers. She stands up for herself and says she’s fine physically and mentally and should be in a helicopter just like Leland because they both went down in that crash. Leland had more combat experience is the excuse given. But when orders for a possible mission to go back in and rescue Jimmy and Hendrix come from OGA, Nora fights to be one of the pilots to fly it, along with Leland. Now she must prove herself in a local below-the-tree-line field test.

Meanwhile, her boyfriend, who recommended that she not be put back into a chopper too soon, is dealing with his own bit of sexual harassment as the new OGA liaison comes in hot for him. This woman off-bat says that he is cute before she starts directing how things will go concerning the entirety of this case. See, OGA is an acronym/nickname that the Army uses for the CIA. The CIA only gets deeply involved with a military exercise when the case or whatever is happening is quite big and important. That coupled with what happened out in the field puts both Nora and Leland on high-alert to watch their backs because something super-sketch is going on here.

What happened in the field, you ask? Well, upon getting the HVT into the copter and being blasted with the RPG, they ripped the sack off the target’s head only to realize that he wasn’t some African or Middle-Eastern brown man but a white Army guy. They were lied to, but why? And why would this Army guy be out in the middle of nowhere, Somalia? The mystery only thickens when, after forcing Jimmy, Hendrix and the rest of the squad off the helicopter early before having to crash-land with the target still on board, Nora and Leland are confronted by some all-black special ops/CIA guy who orders them to hand over the rescued Army dude. The Army dude says that the guy in black is the enemy and is the reason he was in Somalia and we’re all just as confused as our two leads. Well, the guy in black threatens to kill both Nora and Leland but Nora fires first. In the hubbub, the other Army guy escapes.

Back one month later, Nora confronts her man about recommending her grounding, practices to pass this flight test with Leland, nearly crashes the helicopter with Leland in it, quite quizzically almost jumps Leland’s bones after they have a few hours of trying to figure out the mystery behind the rescue mission, then passes her flight test. I know, that explanation for just one episode was hell-a long, but there was a lot going on. Oh, and we learned at the very end that Nora is apparently snorting her crushed-up pain pills like they’re cut coke.

Episode two starts with the squad being told that they must somehow impress some higher-up politicians who are supposed to find the funds for and determine if they can officially go on this rescue mission to save Jimmy and Hendrix. But as I said earlier, the Somalian government just found out about their little mission the first time and is pissed. They shut down any air traffic to Americans, making the mission all the more difficult. Meanwhile, the CIA woman not only keeps sexually harassing the hell out of Nora’s boyfriend (she is totally jealous of Nora so it seems, and Ian has no idea that his girlfriend nearly cheated on him with Leland), she also keeps lying about the target.

Meanwhile, Leland and Nora continue their investigation into who the HVT was, as well as who the guy in black that tried to shoot them was. They find that the guy in black was listed as KIA because he supposedly died during a HALO jump years ago, but has now assumed an off-books blacklisted identity. But he was supposedly an officer. It’s quite confusing. We discover that back in the field they had decided to keep the secret about the HVT and the man in black.

Across the pond, the POWs stage their getaway but are confronted by the warlord and his minions. He unceremoniously executes one of his own men and recaptures the prisoners.

Back at home, Leland learns that Ian is the son of a politician. Even more, his politician mother then asks to fly with Nora and Leland in the copter to be impressed on a tactical chopper-attack exercise. She’s impressed but their CO, who is also riding along, is pissed because they disobeyed the rules. But even still, they get on the rescue mission officially. Leland opens up about a past love to Nora and they start to believe that the CIA is watching their every move. They talk about this domino that the Army guy dropped while escaping in the woods. Funny enough, the warlord who has Jimmy and Hendrix sends a video in which he demands a ransom and also holds a domino and they are like, that can’t be a coincidence, right? Strange from a guy who was supposed to be a Somalian insurgent but ended up being a reported KIA white American.

Episode three starts with them planning the rescue effort. Nora is getting close with Jimmy’s wife Jess but still can’t tell her that she’s going on the mission to go and get Jimmy. And Nora keeps having flashbacks to the previous mission while continuing to do more detective work about who they picked up. She also finally opens up to her bf about the doubts she’s having about flying. She goes and finds the sister of the HVT and tries to talk to her but first gets nothing. But she does realize that she is actively being followed by someone, she just doesn’t know who.

Back a month prior, Nora and Leland walk through the jungle and circle back around to the tiny hut where they supposedly rescued the Army guy/Somalia insurgent. They learn that not only was the entire firefight/threat staged from that night, but that this was a complete CIA setup from jump. There probably never was anyone in that shack, just Americans shooting other Americans. They then have to move out when they realize that their own rescue is coming soon.

We finally get to a mission in which they must first get medicine to a small village. This is like some sorta precursor mission before the rescue mission and Nora freezes up on this mission before making her second kill in the field when the copter lands and is ambushed. They succeed and escape but Nora confides in Leland again about her struggles to get back whole mentally. The good news is that they’ve decided to go forward with a hostage exchange to get back Jimmy and Hendrix. But that’s nothing because that sister-woman that Nora talked to earlier calls Nora back and tells her that the Army-guy/HVT they let escape in the first mission may have been radicalized at some point. He might’ve been a bad guy after all. Oh, and that sexually harassing CIA woman is, apparently, gay.

Jimmy's wife on the right

What’s my grade? I give it a C. Look, I read some of the reviews of Valor and all of the military-themed shows before ever reviewing them. Out of all of not just the military shows this year, but all new series, Valor topped the list as the worst rated or second worst rated behind only Marvel’s Inhumans. Regardless of what my rating says as compared to the other shows, I don’t understand this critic’s rating. First, even though I rated it a C, I actually liked this show slightly better than The Brave. So why did I rate it lower? I took a full grade off and not just a plus or minus strictly because of the show’s apparent inauthenticity, which is something that I know was burning the uniformed britches of tons of past and active military personnel. Yes, there are uniform goofs, rules and regulations flaunting (they continue to let Leland keep his facial hair), and there are a few age discrepancies here because most of these operators and people would be slightly older in real life, however, those inaccuracies do not and should not scuttle the show completely. I get it, plenty of fans and people out there love to nitpick but I think that there is something to also be said for plot, storytelling, intrigue, et cetera. And as far as that goes, if you can get through the inaccuracies of costume and what have you during the first episode, then you might be able to enjoy the show.

Again, I don’t get the hate for this show. I guess I have to chalk some of it up to the fact that the networks and even the streaming services have all scaled back on new series this year while they continue to figure out the new landscape of TV-viewing in this country, and how to adjust for the future. Fox only had three new high-profile shows, ABC had four (Ten Days in the Valley is more of a miniseries that wasn’t supposed to have a second season, so I’m not counting that), NBC had two big new adds and one shouldn’t even count because it’s another Law and Order and CBS had/will have the most with four current ones and two additions in Young Sheldon and SWAT coming soon (Star Trek isn’t counted because its on their streaming service). With the CW’s two new shows, that barely scratches a baker’s dozen of new shows for all the major networks. Even Netflix has scaled down and canceled some of its recurring shows in order to eliminate that huge debt they have. So I guess some show has to be low-rated but I would say that given a normal season in which we get most new shows all at once and get near two dozen, this show would probably be in the middle of the pack as far as ratings. It’s just not bad enough for me to trash it. But then again I also liked last season’s No Tomorrow for its cheery disposition in the face of impending doom, something which the critics absolutely hated. So what do I know?

With all of that said, Valor, for me, lays somewhere between The Brave and SEAL Team. Again, this show plays into the expected groove of other CW shows. It focuses on character development of young (they are all over thirty just for military people who were complaining about seeing twenty-somethings in high ranks), hot leads, is super diverse, helps to ably empower women, and focuses on the personal lives of the characters and not just what they do. As I said in my review of The Brave, that show focused too much on the mission and not enough on the characters. It took four or five episodes before I truly felt anything for Heche’s character who had lost her son in action. There was no emotional connection with the characters and they played like cardboard. SEAL Team went more personal with it and exposed us to the lives of the SEALs when not on a mission, giving the soldiers depth and multidimensional sides that deal with family and regular life.

Valor doesn’t focus so much on the mission, which might be missed by some die-hard military fans still lingering around after the inaccuracies. In the first three episodes, you only get two missions. It also isn’t a military procedural where you get one goal/mission a week and that mission is solved by the end of the episode. They do stuff, sure. But there aren’t big accomplishments each episode.

However, where Valor shines above both SEAL Team and The Brave is in the overarching story for the full season. The Brave didn’t have a secondary story at all to latch on to when the team was not in an active mission. SEAL Team had the training of Clay, whether the main guy and his wife would get back together, and if the dead team member cheated on his wife or not as overarching stories. While those are all nice, Valor’s intrigue about inter-agency malfeasance and missions gone wrong or governmental bodies/agencies lying is far more intriguing, and speaks to the heart of one of the four archetypes of soldiers.

OK, this might be offensive to some, but from what I’ve seen in soldiers that return from active duty in war-torn places, you have four types: soldiers more committed to loving their country than ever before, the ones who did their job and are glad to be out now because their service was just a job, the ones who are mentally scarred with PTSD or some other form of mental or physical disability, and finally, the ones who are disillusioned with patriotism and this country as a whole. While the last two often overlap, many soldiers don’t have to be mentally or physically disabled to be disillusioned. The Brave deals with almost none of these archetypes, which is why it felt hollow. SEAL Team at least tries to deal with the PTSD thing as well as the just-a-job sentiment. Valor deals with the disillusioned soldier idea, which is probably most prevalent in reality. The idea that the government or mass media lies constantly either to soldiers or the people, or both about what is going on overseas is a sentiment shared on the show and discussed in a meaningful way. It drives the main plot of the show and has you wondering what kind of danger these men and women are really in. There are lies, and spies and people looking behind their back and all sorts of possible twists to be played here. It could get very intriguing

Ultimately, the thing that pulls the show down the most, outside of the military protocol inaccuracies, are the acting and the writing. While the plotting is good, the written dialogue is rather bad. It sometimes tries to overfeed you the plot and thoughts of the characters and rings as clunky as that “training” line at the beginning of Wonder Woman (if you’ve seen the movie, you know what I’m talking about). The acting is also not exceptional but that is partially because of the bad dialogue. But I’d say that ABC’s The Mayor has worse dialogue. And so does Dynasty and Inhumans. But I digress. To me, the show is not bad, it’s just not exceptional.

Should you be watching? Shrug! If you were in the military and/or you have family in the military, chances are that you will be irked by the inaccuracies of things like ponytails in uniform and whatnot, so this might not be for you. If you are older and don’t usually watch CW shows like Riverdale, or any of the superhero shows, then this also isn’t for you. But if you want to see something that will be plot-intriguing similar to last year’s Frequency, or you enjoy spy thrillers where you and the characters must constantly question who you can trust, then you might like this. A big disclaimer, though, because this is not 24-level spy stuff. This is like spy-lite, hold the mayo. I’d choose to watch this over The Brave but not over SEAL Team, if that helps. Valor airs on CW Mondays at 9pm. Catch up with past episodes on theCW.com.

What do you think? Have you heard of Valor? If not, do you think you’ll tune in now? If you have heard of it, have you seen it? Do you like it? Was I too rough or too lenient on it? Does the plot intrigue you? And what do you think is really going on with the CIA? Do you think the Army guy really is a terrorist? And will Nora and Leland hookup at some point in the season? 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, “Be all that you can be in the army of one that always stays faithful. Oohrah!”

P.S. Let’s be fair here and say that all military shows will have some stuff that just isn’t by-the-book exactly the way that military branch does it. And yes having good consultants will quail some of the inaccuracies, but that shouldn’t disqualify the show for you off bat. Surprise, surprise, all shows have something like this, whether they be law shows, cop shows, hospital/doctor shows or anything job-related. They take liberties with rules and regulations to make the series look appealing and playful. If you were pissed by these inaccuracies in all three shows, I’d say calm down and give each show another chance and you might like it. Good plot and great characters go a long way in healing TV transgressions. I’ll come up with a better sign-off next time.

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Land Of The Free And The Home Of #TheBrave #3weekroundup #NBC #review #recap

Land Of The Free And The Home Of #TheBrave #3weekroundup #NBC #review #recap

All pictures courtesy of NBC 

I am trying my darnedest to fly through these reviews of these new shows so that I can get back to my usual writing but they seem to come faster every year, and I also seem to need to say more about them every year. On deck today, we have NBC’s new military-themed show The Brave (#TheBrave). What the heck is this show about with such a pedantic and uncreative title you ask? And is this show made to last or will it crumble beneath the weight of great expectations? Let’s find out together.

NBC’s The Brave stars Anne Heche and Mark Vogel as leaders of a special forces command team. While Anne Heche’s character Patricia Campbell runs the intelligence and office unit of the team at a safe command center somewhere in the US, Mark Vogel’s character Adam Dalton is the leader of the boots-on-ground tactical field team that traverses the globe following orders on a myriad of different crimes that need a militaristic force to properly execute commands. His field team consists of Jaz Khan, a Middle Eastern-looking young woman who is a weapons and language specialist who speaks a few languages and is a sniper. During the first two missions in the first two episodes, she is seen wearing a traditional Muslim head garb for women but doesn’t do the same in the third episode. Next we have Joseph “McG” Mcguire who, to me, melts into the background and hasn’t been of any significance yet from what I can remember. Granted, I was doing another review while watching the first two episodes so I didn’t catch as many thorough details as I normally would, but he has just sorta been in the background. We also have Amir Al-Raisani who is the Muslim male that they have on the show. He has many talents, one of which is being a pickpocket and another of which is being able to slip in and out of any role. Also, with his presence, if you haven’t noticed most of the dirty work that will happen will most likely take place overseas in the many Islamic-run states in the Middle East and throughout all of Asia and Africa. Speaking of Africa, we finally have the black guy Ezekiel “Preach” Carter. It’s assumed by his nickname that he is the devout Christian of the group which could potentially set up a few really good scenes later in the season where he and the other Muslim team members have a philosophical and theological dialogue (don’t hold your breath). He is probably the biggest one on the team and, even though the team is made up of all field op specialists, can be considered the muscle.

Back in the office, we have Heche who is the command that coordinates with other agencies and gets her orders from the top. Next we have the newest team member Hannah Rivera who is one of the two main strategists. She is special because she just recently got off from field work and her own ops team. In episode three her background is explored more and we learn that she was previously stationed deep undercover in Mexico keeping tabs on a drug cartel. And finally we have Noah Morgenthau who is the other strategist and mainly does data analytics from what I’ve seen. We have also learned that he graduated top of his class from Quantico (or maybe it was some other intelligence agency academy. I say Quantico because, funny enough, the actor playing Noah, Tate Ellington, was one of the original cast members on the show Quantico) and keeps a low profile while trying to give the best scenario for each mission. He is a by-the-book type of guy. It should be known that both Hannah and Noah are on equal footing here and one does not outrank another just in case I made that confusing.

The Office Team

The crew’s first mission is to some Middle Eastern country where they must rescue a recently kidnapped American doctor who was working with Doctors Without Borders in a rundown village on the outskirts of some town. The woman was taken captive by her supposed driver while on her way to the airport to finally get back to the states after so long overseas. She is kidnapped and taken by a terrorist group that has yet to make any demands on the US government to get her back. So the team must not only figure out where she has been taken but also why she was taken in the first place.

As Heche’s team gathers intel from afar, utilizing drones and satellites from across the world to try to get a trace on where she might be, the ground team embarks on a mission to work the streets to find her. In conjunction with the “directors” back in HQ, the ground team discovers that some terrorist guy who freely roams the streets in this city but is a known bad guy on one of the many flagged lists that US intelligence outfits have, is actually part of the kidnapping. Or at least they operate off of such a theory. Using whatever covert ops skills they can, they follow him first through the streets of the city, keeping him in drone sights until he ducks into a covered street marketplace and the ground crew takes over. They didn’t want to tip their hand that he was being followed because they know that if he realizes someone is on him, he will call and most likely have the doctor murdered or moved. So while the Muslim woman and man are trying to blend into the marketplace patrons, their fearless team leader Adam Dalton gets in on the action as the white tourist looking at silks in the market.

Dalton is made, forcing the team to take the terrorist and change the plan on the fly. They decide to use Amir as a sort of bait hostage similar to what happened in the movie Inception with the “uncle Pete” character just after Sato got shot. Amir sits in the room trying to plead with the man for details because he supposedly doesn’t know what’s going on and why he’s been kidnapped but says that they keep mentioning this girl, this doctor. He then manages to escape and helps the terrorist escape in a well-played ruse. But when the man follows him out of the building, hops in the getaway car and puts something sharp to Amir’s neck, the team’s hope that the terrorist guy would lead them to the place where they have the kidnapped doctor starts to jiggle like an unstable Jenga tower.

Luckily the man blabs just in time for Jaz to snipe his brains out. After hearing that they took the doctor to a local hospital, the HQ team realizes that they didn’t kidnap the woman because they wanted a ransom for her, but because the bigger terrorist leader, some guy who is on the top ten list is actually sick and in need of a doctor to perform surgery. Holy crap, they could both save this doctor and take out one of the most ruthless terrorists in the world.

Well, the ground team concocts a plan that sees them sneaking into the hospital, isolating half of the guard soldiers for the big bad terrorist, beating them up and taking their uniforms to disguise themselves, and escorting the doctor lady out of the hospital after she successfully performed the surgery. Even better, they planted a remote detonating bomb on the big bad terrorist’s wife. Boom, go the terrorists.

The episode ends in a rather strange fashion with the team back stateside we’re assuming and at some beach. As they play and their boss back at HQ spies on them with a drone, a small truck makes its way onto the beach and detonates a bomb near the group. Why is this weird? Well, it leads into episode two which...

In episode two the conclusion of the first episode is only discussed in passing. It’s like in movies where they talk about some amazing action scene as opposed to showing it to you, generally because they didn’t have the budget for it. They literally say that some people died in the bombing and how crazy that was and that it happened two weeks ago and you’re like what? Hmph! Well that’s... strange. It felt like it was a cliffhanger to something amazing and then just got completely dropped the next episode.

Dalton and Preach (the black guy)

Anyway, episode two sees the crew going to rescue another person. This time, they must rescue an undercover CIA agent who had been compromised in the foreign country of Ukraine. The woman is bleeding and beaten and jogging around the city for most of the episode, trying to avoid the Ukraine government that doesn’t want her there. This is yet another job for Jaz.

At some point, even though the team does get to the CIA agent early on, they are ambushed and their transport out of the city is compromised. The agent is carried off by some Ukraine soldiers and manages to eventually escape into a women’s bathhouse. See, the person she was spying on/working for while undercover is so powerful that he has the military and local law enforcement under his control. But the bath houses are strictly for women and are supposed to be a refuge away from men. So the ground team sends in Jaz to find the woman in the bathhouse. The funny thing is that Amir, being the rather traditional Muslim he is, is very protective of the Muslim woman on the team (you bet they’re gonna have a romance later in the show) and knows that she has almost zero experience with undercover work like he does. He is worried for her and almost loses his grip when she gets stopped on the street by two Ukrainian soldiers. Luckily, the men dismiss her as not a traitor and more likely to shoot the escaped American than they are. They check out her butt and send her on her way.

Jaz gets into the bathhouse and finds the CIA agent. Meanwhile, the HQ team is trying to figure out a way to evac the ground team with the agent. As it turns out, Noah has personal ties to the agent—they were in the academy together and she was number two in their class behind him. Their current problem: the guy that the agent had been spying on has roving street sentries driving in tight patterns in the area where she was last seen around the bath house. They’re checking every vehicle and making sure she can’t escape. While HQ has a bead on all of the moving vehicles and relays that info to the ground team, Jaz and the agent move to the back of the bath house.

Dalton and Preach realize that they can bypass having their vehicle checked by procuring one of the guard vehicles. They beat up the guys inside, pull the vehicle to the back and make a smooth getaway from the bath house with the Agent and Jaz in-tow. Not cleared yet, they have to provide cover for the evac copter to land safely and long enough to get everyone loaded. Preach and McG go and set a big charge at an abandoned building while HQ coordinates the copter’s landing in a nearby empty yard. They play a game of watch-closely with the Ukrainians and detonate the building as cover for the helicopter landing in a different area. While everyone is distracted, the copter lands, loads and takes off into the night. Another day saved, another mission completed and no strange cliffhanger bomb at the end.

Episode three sees the team encounter an agent from Mexican intelligence that has been working in the drug cartel division for some time. He tells them that he has been following a drug kingpin for a very long time. One of the drug guys happens to be the same one that Hannah has a past with. He ordered her killed and beat her mercilessly, leaving scars all over her back. He is one of the biggest reasons she is no longer in the field. Well, as it turns out the drug lord is on the cusp of buying some illegal arms for his cartel. While the cartel guy is important (note: he’s not the top guy), the arms dealer is on the top ten list for illegal arms smuggling in the world. But no one can ever get the guy because he is so careful. As it turns out, the Mexican intelligence dude has been able to turn this arms dealer’s girlfriend. She’s supplied him with a wealth of information about how he operates but it still isn’t enough.

So, the plan is not to kill him or capture him but to use him to gain intel. The team hopes to bug him and track his movements so that they find his base of operations and are able to bring down his entire network of clients. Thinking it easy, their first plan is to bug his cellphone—a thousand-dollar custom job that is dipped in gold and all of this crazy crap. The point is that it is expensive. All they have to do is use Amir’s pickpocket skills to switch the phone out with their own dummy phone and voila, they have him. Unfortunately, as he is walking and right before Amir is about to switch the phones, the guy takes his real phone out and literally breaks his expensive phone in half and tosses it into a fountain like a penny into a wishing pond.

OK, new plan. They now have to contact the girlfriend and get her to help them get a bug into his necklace, the one thing he would never destroy because it has sentimental value to it. To do this, the ground team stages a robbery using intel from the girlfriend. She gives them info on their travel route for the next day and the team lies in wait. They have to switch plans slightly when the paranoid arms dealer confesses that he thought he saw Amir in two different places, following him. So, he orders that they turn around.

Well, the ground team still go through with the roadside heist, saying that they are taking his money from the recent arms deal with the drug lord which is really a guise to touch his necklace and plant the bug. The mission completed, the ground crew starts to go home but the arms dealer is still suspicious. His head of security tells him that his girlfriend was probably the one who betrayed them—intel that HQ gets from the bug that is in working condition. The dealer really loves the woman and reluctantly orders his security guy to kill her but not that very night, giving the team time to concoct a plan.

Back in HQ, Hannah and Noah get into a fight about whether to call the ground crew in the absence of their leader Patricia who has already left after another successful mission. Noah thinks the personal angle of this mission is effecting Hannah’s judgment because she sees the girlfriend as the informant she had while undercover who she couldn’t save. While Noah goes to look for their boss, Hannah breaks the chain of command and calls Dalton about the girlfriend.

The ground crew, after hearing that the girlfriend is in trouble, gets into a brief argument about what to do because if they go and rescue her then they sacrifice the bug and the arms dealer will go back into hiding and his clients will all disperse back into the underworld. But the Mexican intelligence officer is in love with the girlfriend and knows she will be killed, so he begs them to do something. Well, after much thought, Dalton concocts a plan. What they do is that they sneak the stolen money that they still had from their fake heist into the home of the drug dealer who had just bought the guns. Knowing that the arms dealer would soon come to close out the deal and shake hands, they also place Amir in the driveway on a bike, helmet off, to stare menacingly at the arms dealer as he arrives.

Naturally, the dealer and his head of security think that it wasn’t the girlfriend who was the traitor but the cartel guy who wanted the guns and wanted to keep the money for himself. The arms dealers goes in and kills the cartel guy and all of his people, bringing justice and an easing of mind to Hannah back at HQ, and saving the girlfriend’s life while keeping their bug intact. And there is yet again no strange bombing cliffhanger.

What’s my grade? I give this show a solid C+. Here’s the deal, I used to didn’t know why people said that TV wasn’t all that great and why movies and books were these phenomenal things, and that was even while I still loved all three of them. But now I understand: TV is more predictable and relies on this predictability “life is not like a box of chocolates” mentality to draw the viewer. After the past few years in which we saw some truly unique procedural ideas, this year networks fell back on the old tried and true standbys that see a lack of creativity returning to primetime. Don’t get me wrong, I see that this show has potential, especially if it finds its right audience and doesn’t get much competition from the similar CBS show Seal Team, but its very vanilla considering the other dramatic offerings on display for TV. Yes, it follows a small band of military special forces doing “God’s work” in foreign lands, but when boiled down to it, it is really nothing more than a case-a-week show where, each week, there will be clear-cut bad guys and good guys that are supposed to stop them. It’s basically almost every other cop drama ever made but with better tech and military might and ingenuity. Hell, the show is essentially Taken but with fatigues. Will it interest people who love military action? Sure. Everyone else? Eh!

I get it. This is the network’s patriotic reaction to the Midwest values that voters supposedly showed in last November’s election, but I’m not sure this appeals to Trump’s base quite like what they might like for it to. The amount of diversity on this show is astounding and judging by Trump’s “all sides” supporters, that’s not what everyone wants to see. Hell, there’s really only, like, two white people. Granted, they’re the two in charge, but still.

If the race thing and the fact that it is a ton of minorities doing the work to protect this country doesn’t bother you, then good. But unfortunately this show also doesn’t really supply that much in the way of mental stimulation or plot intrigue. It doesn’t even follow the recently most popular setup of a procedural that The Blacklist does so well by having a case a week in conjunction with an overall case that lingers throughout the season. I thought for a minute that the bomb at the end of the first episode might trigger something great and amazing, maybe a revenge plot thrown into the military actions or something different than what the trailers looked like, but nope. Nothing. Again, that final scene was so bizarre because it not only happened in a way that made it feel like a bold cliffhanger that suggested maybe they would kill one of their main players already, but it was not discussed in any great detail the next episode. Who did it? Why? How’d they know Dalton and his team were there? Was this a retaliation for killing the terrorist guy or just random? All good questions that have no answers. The only answer given is the worst one that we don’t want to hear as an audience: (paraphrased) “oh, we’re not gonna pursue revenge because that’s not our job. Our job is to follow orders from HQ. Their job is to figure out what happened.” And you’re all like, “What? Really? Dude, you’re gonna actually play goody two shoes. That’s no fun.” Sure, it may be closer to real life, but it’s also not that entertaining to not even see the characters give a single damn about it.

But I think the worst failing of the show is that it is almost character-less in its writing. OK, shameless plug here, if you read even one episode, the military episode of my episodic serial novel Extraordinary (that episode is titled “Fatigues” and is available on Amazon. Click “Extraordinary” at the end of this article), by the time you’ve finished the one episode, you should have a great understanding of exactly who the characters are or at least one aspect of their lives. I understand that this series is different because it has to do the case-a-week thing so it has to fit in a case, but my Extraordinary episodes are there to mimic the quick 60-minute format of drama shows. You should know something about these characters at the end of an hour.

Take for instance our leader Dalton. If you’ve seen the first three episodes, what do you know about him? How long has he been serving? When did he join the military? Why? Does he have a wife, spouse or girlfriend back stateside? Why did he become special forces? I bet that if you’ve been watching the episodes, you could only maybe answer half of those questions, if any. What’s sad is that the same goes for just about every other character on the show. You could ask the same about Patricia, Preach, Amir, Jaz or that other guy on the ground team. And yes while we know that Noah was top of his class and Hannah was “affected” by her in-field work, we still know little about their personalities and who they are outside of work. The action is great but the characters are all sort of robots, which, frankly gets tiring to watch after a while, especially when you know they are almost always going to win.

Should you be watching? Eh! Listen, if you like military-themed entertainment and are all about soldiers fighting against evil and stomping out the bad guys, then sure, this might be the show for you. But just know that this is definitely no American Sniper, no Quantico, no Homeland, no Tyrant, no any Middle Eastern, military or covert operations show that others have thought was really good. This show is closer to something that you probably can miss a few episodes of in a row because your schedule gets busy, and you won’t really miss much in the way of plot, nor will you feel bad for having missed it. Frankly, I’m not sure that this is even as good as the other military show Seal Team. Unfortunately, because I haven’t watched Seal Team yet, I can’t do a comparison of the two shows in this review so I can’t tell you which is better (they look like a carbon copy of each other). Look for a comparison in my Seal Team review in a few days. The Brave airs at 10pm on NBC Mondays.

What do you think? Have you heard of The Brave? If not, do you think you will check it out now? If you have heard of it, have you seen it? Do you like it? Where do you think the show can improve? And who is your favorite character? And what did you think of the first episode’s bomb scene? Should they have done something cool with that plotwise or was it good the way it was? 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, “Why do you young people always think you’re so special? Huh? Well? You think you’re special?”

‘Well, I am in special ops so...”

P.S. Did I get some stuff incorrect on purpose in this review/recap? Yes, just to show how little this show entertained me. I didn’t care about the details in it because I was bored. I’ll try to come up with a better sign-off next time.

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