"Hooah!"
Hello everyone!
It's Tuesday so I'm back with another blog post, although to be fair my head is beginning to pound for some reason or other and I think I may have to hide out for the rest of the day and not get half of the stuff done that I want to.
Oh well.
In any event, this blog post is going up as per usual, and like I started off and promised last week, it's about another of the military shows which graced our TV screens this autumn.
I was honestly surprised when the CW announced that they'd be tossing their hat into the military drama ring, but it looks as if their gamble didn't quite pay off.
So let's talk Valor, people.
Why did I say I was surprised about the CW's decision?
Well, because the CW mostly caters to younger audiences and not necessarily to anything adult in any sense of the word. While you can enjoy sitting down for a mindless hour about vampires or teenagers with their petty dramas, I never would have thought they'd be brave enough to try and lure in older audiences with military stuff.
On a side note, they haven't been completely successful, given that Valor has the lowest ratings out of the three military dramas, but moving on.
Unlike with the Brave, where the plot was episodic, meaning that you had one bad guy per episode that the team needed to chase down, Valor tried out a different approach in setting up a season-long plot that would last for the duration of 13 episodes. I can't say it worked out the way the execs probably wanted it to, but it was a bold move just the same.
Also different from Brave is the fact that Valor wasn't necessarily as character-based as the other show. While we do get to meet and learn some things about our heroes, I never got the sense we were getting the complete picture for everyone, or that we understood all their motivations.
Or maybe it was just because things were all over the place sometimes and the head didn't seem that much different from the tail. Could be.
Anyway, this is the plot:
on a mission to Somalia, Shadow Raiders pilots Nora Madani and Leeland Gallo crashed their helicopter after coming under enemy fire, during which time they realised the "package" - which was supposed to have been an insurgent - was actually an American citizen. In the ensuing stand-off, the pilots killed the CIA agent assigned to their detail and the American ran off into the night, but both of them lied on their debriefs to save their own skins. Now, though, in present day, two other soldiers are in enemy hands and Madani and Gallo both desperately want to be on the rescue mission that takes more than a couple of tries to succeed.
In the meantime, the CIA comes poking their noses about, too, with a junior officer, Thea, and her boss Magnus who is the go-to guy for when things head south and he needs to fix them.
Oh and also, Madani is in a relationship with another officer (different command), Porter, who happens to be the son of a very powerful political figure in Washington DC (and who keeps pushing him into politics, too, but all he wants to do is be a spook).
That being said, however, during rescue mission prep times details pop up that could bring to light what actually happened in Somalia back on the original mission, so Gallo and Madani take it on themselves to try and solve the mystery of the American prisoner if they can.
Hint: they can't, but they also don't actually admit to lying on their paperwork until much, much later.
Still, once the CIA's involved and once the first rescue mission try goes south, the colonel puts his foot down and demands that he and his team be brought into the loop of things the CIA keeps saying are above their pay grade. Because, if you want something to succeed, you need to go in with both eyes open, right? Right.
They learn that Goundry, the American who Gallo and Madani let loose, is apparently a turncoat and went over to the dark side to sell uranium, and the bad guy who bought said uranium also has the two soldiers captive.
Big shocker that the pilots are unhappy about this development, but while they're chasing Goundry down in the US thinking he might have built a dirty bomb, other information comes to light:
Goundry was never evil. Unfortunately he kind of gets shot under very curious circumstances so he can't defend himself anymore.
But he was being set up to take the fall for someone else, and the whole case is connected to dominos, with domino pairs (as in the domino which has both sides filled with the same number) given according to rank in this hierarchy.
Things are looking grim as they've already lost one of the hostages and the clock is ticking by the time Madani and Gallo actually fly the chopper in to save their friend.
They do in fact succeed, the bad guy dies, and everyone goes home happy.
Not quite.
Knowing that the dead CIA agent from Somalia can't have risen from the grave to set Goundry for the fall, both Gallo and Madani know someone else is behind eveything and come clean about their lies, facing the military court. On the other hand, Thea figures out that it's none other than Magnus who was mostly behind the entire operation, trying to start World War III so that America could eradicate the threat that is radical Islam (in his mind).
The big kicker, however, is that the actual top dog in this operation wasn't Magnus - but Porter's mother who destroys evidence just as the season ends.
As for our pilots, they're discharged from the army quietly and sent to work for the CIA, specifically for Thea who will head a special operations group and needs people loyal to her who happen to be smart.
The end.
Like I said, there was nothing actually WRONG with the plot above. Actually, the premise sounds really great, all things considered, but somehow fell flat in execution where a lot more emphasis was placed on personal drama than on the professional one. For example, I really wasn't interested in whether or not Madani was going to end up with Gallo or Porter when they were supposed to be focusing on th rescue mission. While it's true that soldiers do have personal lives, I'd watch Army Wives if I wanted to learn more about that kind of thing. For Valor, I wanted a little less talk and a lot more action, pun intended.
We also get some minor details shuffled into the already overflowing mix as the CW tries juggling some antagonism between Gallo and Delta Force Team Leader Coogan, not to mention the position of female soldiers/pilots in the army when one of them is assaulted and brings the situation before the colonel.
These were both actually really good situations, as was the Gallo/Madani one in terms of tension, but with an already busy schedule between the CIA and rescue mission plots, they somehow got shoved into the middle and ended up flat like pancakes, left behind while the driving kitchen trundled on.
(I am pointedly ignoring one plot line they had where the wife of the captured soldier goes and leaks classified information to the press because she somehow thinks that this will help, not to mention is completely ga-ga because "she's never told anything", despite the fact she knew, when she got involved with the guy almost a decade earlier, that his missions would always be classified.)
As of right now there's no news of a renewal and we're already in February, while the CW usually starts announcing this kind of thing come January already. With the bad ratings, and CW's history of cancelling shows with MUCH better reviews, I think a season two is highly unlikely.
Still, I've been surprised before. It may happen here, too.
xx
*images and video not mine
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