I Watch TV: Seal Team
SEAL Team
The Fifth season of SEAL Team. Things have changed, though not the war on terror, obviously, or Bravo Team wouldn’t have any action sequences to show us. But the US has withdrawn from Afghanistan (show briefly touches on that, while popping over to Afghanistan to kill a terrorist). Two of the four SEALs who have actual lives on screen have had children, to add to the two who were already fathers. Full Metal, one of the SEALs who didn’t have an on screen life, got killed in the last season finale.
The two who aren’t trying to cope with changed circumstances are dealing with consequences. Ray, the team second, was kidnapped and tortured last season, and PTS caused him to freeze up in the season finale. He’s dealing with it, but needs to regain the trust of the team. Meanwhile Jason, the team leader, has had a couple of memory blank spots. Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) or Breacher’s syndrome. He covers it well but it leads to disaster when he forgets about a room full of explosives and directs some French troops to breach into that room. This hospitalises the whole team, everyone blames an enemy RPG until Ash puts the pieces together.
Ash join the team on an “omega” mission, operating out of Colombia to stop a Venezuelan nuclear weapons program, even more illegally than usual, leaving behind his wife and prematurely born son. He’s trying to backstop Jason, but Jason takes it badly, assuming that Ash is ambitiously trying to get promoted to team leader.
On an episode that aired here on 4/20 Jason tries some San Pedro, a psychedelic cactus that a former soldier has had some success in treating TBI, and has a dream episode confronting several people who have died (not any he actually killed though, which I guess says something). Meanwhile Sonny finally spins out over his family situation (he and the mother of his daughter aren’t together), robs a local gang of cocaine and money to have a party. Ash comes to collect him, but the criminals track them down and they have to fight their way out. Just as Ash and Jason finally re-connect he has a beef with Sonny.
There are several good action setpieces, somewhat undercut by possibly the best being split up into a cliffhanger, and also the end of the season being a cliffhanger, and quite a depressing one. It’s one thing to leave something immediate unresolved for a week. Choosing to make us wait months without resolution is bad, I hate it.
Will I be back? Probably. The show has, after five years, tackled the question that I thought it should be asking from the start – why do the SEAL Team fight*? There’s a 20-year 9/11 flashback episode, and the answer to why they fight is 9/11. (Except Jason, he was already a SEAL, though the junior guy, the one with the boltcutters and all they ever did was train, he was considering quitting and letting his wife follow her career). And they talk about it, about how they’ve all been on the teams long enough that they’ve cycled round the same places and the same issues and more bad guys keep popping up, and they fight because of the other guys on the team.
(Again, two of them are considering leaving the team, and one looking to retiring after 20 years in a few months).
Watch This: Gritty military action
Don’t Watch This: Although more thoughtful, in the end the
show is much more interested in doorkicking and drama rather than questions
about war
* Look, I’m realistic, it’s never going to be asking should we fight, or what is the cost of fighting, no not to the teams, to their targets and the bystanders.