"When there's no way out - they go in."
Hello everyone!
This week, I'm shaking it up a little with my blog post, as I've not really watched a good movie in a bit (which I have to remedy, I have a list as long as my arm but have yet to get to it!) and so I'm falling back on a tested-and-tried trope!
When in doubt about movies, talk about TV shows.
Luckily for me, I'm never out of material in that corner. I watch way too many shows as is. I'm pretty sure it's my way of letting out all the tension and anxiety accumulated through day-to-day activities. Losing myself for an hour or so in someone else's problems (whether this means Arrow all over the place or S.W.A.T. kicking down doors, it's all the same) is just what the doctor ordered.
And also luckily for me, this show season (that is the 2017-18) gave me not one, not even two, but THREE military-related shows to go through.
So bring your night vision goggles and kevlar vests - first one up is The Brave.
First off, while Brave and Valor (one on NBC, the other on CW, respectively) have both concluded their show seasons for the time being (with no real sense of renewal yet for either), SEAL Team on CBS is still running, as alone out of the shows it was given a full-season order of over 20 episodes. This means that my review for the latter will have to wait until after its season concludes, probably sometime in May.
Until then though, we have two to chew through!
The premise for the Brave is that it covers the exploits and misadventures of a rapid response team on the ground when and where most no one else dares not to or can't go. Which makes sense, all things considered - while the Special Forces seem to have highly trained teams for just about every military division you can think of, they also have a very clear-cut role and their rules are set in stone.
A team like the one we follow, however, operates by a different set of rules.
Led out of the Defense Intelligence Agency by Deputy Director Patricia Campbell, the team goes where pretty much no one has gone before, and as the tag line says, they go in when there's no other way out.
This might mean rescuing an American doctor who was abducted to go perform a complicated head surgery on an enemy (the definition of which is up to you) or sending one of their own undercover to try and break up a terrorist cell where everyone else has failed. Their other little side-trips include, but aren't limited to, helping a Russian spy defect, tracking down a sixteen-year-old American girl who somehow hacked a nuclear submarine, and trekking across Mongolia like Genghis Khan on horseback to get a crashed drone before China gets it.
You name it, they've probably done it.
The team is led, as said before, by Patricia Campbell in Washington DC; Patricia is a single mother, whose son was recently killed in action and who is still in mourning. We don't really learn much about the guy's father, but we DO learn that Patricia used to be the agency's handler for one of their top-notch agents, until said agent went almost completely out of control and he had to be neutralized (and of course later on it turns out his death was faked and he comes back to kick some more, as you do).
Patricia's top side-kicks are Noah Morgenthau (whose actor jumped from Quantico to Brave), analyst and former CIA operative who was apparently Number One after graduating from the Farm, and Hannah Archer who joins the analytical team at the beginning of the season after having been an operative in the field (and almost getting herself killed, too).
Meanwhile, as the geeks discuss it out in DC, on the actual ground we've got some different players.
The team's de-facto leader (although only listed as communications director) is Captain Adam Dalton, better known as Top, who used to serve in Delta Force before he got recruited into this gig. Not much is known about this particular individual except that he grew up in Pennsylvania and worked on his uncle's farm with sheep every summer. He is, however, extremely devoted and loyal to his team, always putting them before himself (sometimes even too much) and trying to get them all to safety if he can. Equally though, he's well-known for thinking outside the box and coming up with working scenarios that usually save the day. He and Patricia seem to go a long way back.
Another person who's known Adam since forever is Ezekiel Carter, known to everyone around as Preach (mostly because instead of actually preaching something worthwhile he will usually dig up some obscure line or wisdom that no one but he understands, but we love him for it). Preach used to be with the SEALs, but somehow ended up with Adam on this rapid response team, and it's probably safe to assume they've both been here from the beginning. He also supposedly only has one more deployment left before he retires, but at the end of the season he's in a comma after saving Patricia from most of a bomb blast (told you about htat agent gone rogue, didn't I?)
Back to Deltas, another former member of that team, Joseph McGuire, or McG as everyone calls him, is this teams combat medic and resident goofball. You can usually count on him to crack a joke somewhere along the way, whether it's because of some food that's being cooked or having to get his ass kicked as an undercover gig (for which he demands a pay raise, or should at least, in my opinion!). Also, apparently he snores like he needs to saw more logs for the winter, but don't tell him the general public knows that.
The newest member of the team is Amir, who's apparently in charge of intelligence, and who has done more undercover gigs than all the rest of the team combined, it would seem. My guess is that he used to be connected to the CIA somehow before he came to Adam. He also took the place of a team member that unfortunately died before the season's start, and who seemed to be close to Jaz (we're getting to her). Equally, however, Amir can hold his own with everyone on his new team, and slowly gains their trust both in the field and in the kitchen (oh he can cook up a MEAN breakfast).
And then we come to Jaz, or Jasmine Khan, the only female member of the response team and the resident sniper who usually covers their asses and makes sure the guys around her look good when she drops targets around them on the fly. You know that saying, behind every man? Well, behind these FOUR men is one badass woman. Jaz has proven herself time and time again to the team, and upon her unfortunate capture neither Adam nor the others hesitate in breaking all the rules to get her back safe and sound. Also, she and Adam have totally been eyeing each other all season long. Fraternisation, however, is strictly forbidden, so we'll see how that goes.
Hopefully! Considering there's been no word yet of a renewal, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed. The team of actors assembled for this particular show has a strong core with Anne Heche and Mike Vogel, and the ratings weren't bad at all with two other shows to compete with. Of course SEAL Team seems to have the strongest ratings (probably because of David Boreanaz) but in many fans' opinion, The Brave is by far the best of the trio this season.
Plus the show left us on a cliffhanger - what happens to Preach? Is killing that double agent going to have any long-term effects on Adam? And come on, you know you're rooting for Adam and Jaz. Admit it.
Fingers crossed we get a season two! Come on NBC!
xx
*images and video not mine
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