I Watch TV: SEAL Team
I’ve previously castigated SEAL Team for ignoring the issues surrounding the fact they are a kidnap and assassination squad for the US government that routinely invade foreign countries. Well good on the show for finally having something to say about that.
There’s a couple of plotlines involving dirty politics, but the most interesting was when an op went wrong and the hostage they were trying to rescue got killed. They consider covering it up, but Ray, the team second in command (who is up for promotion and has already once compromised his ideals to preserve that) won’t stand for it, even though that makes him for the chop. He obliquely references some special forces war crimes that have been in the news and (correctly) notes that that’s how these things start.
Anyway they sort it out.
They spend three episodes in Venezuela, trying to rescue some hostages held by the secret police there. The Venezulans have rounded up a lot of people suspected of being American agents and accidently caught an actual American agent. There’s a lot of grim posturing about how the secret police just snatch people off the street and murder them, though someone in the writer’s room has a spark of self-awareness and points out the difference – they wear scary masks that make one of the team think of bondage.
Bravo team disguise themselves with masks as the masked secret police who just break into people’s houses to interrogate, kidnap and murder people, and proceed to break into a variety of places to kill, interview and rescue people. Look, I’m just saying.
Later they’re deployed to Afghanistan, again, to find that the drawdown is in progress and there are negotiations with the Taliban going on. Jason Hayes, who’s been struggling with having any life other than Bravo One, the team leader (he’s getting old and had an injury that took him out for a few episodes), is in his element but no one else is. They have 30 Mike as a temporary replacement, a SEAL who was with the team ten years ago in Afghanistan when they took out a big terrorist, an Osama bin Laden stand in. And they’re still here, again, doing the same thing and the guy trying to blow up the peace process is that terrorist’s son. What, we might ask, is the point?
Watch This: Some good scenes of door-kicking and violence, also I learned something about the US Navy
Don’t Watch This: For all the questions they raise and the way they give slightly larger roles to some of the team members, all the show wants to do is door-kicking and violence, they wrote exits for the two female leads at the end of last season just to bring them straight back, it’s all cycles man, never ending.
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