SEAL Team

1st season – 55% – When after twelve years, David Boreanaz immediately jumped from a relatively episodic procedural to a military episodic procedural, I expected him to be lured in by perfect scripts or some secret premise that would dazzle viewers. However, particularly in the first half, SEAL Team is an excruciatingly predictable parade of all clichés from war movies set in the Middle East, where Boreanaz is indeed the strongest link, but the creators do not make it any easier for him. At one point, they portray him as a thoughtful type of commander, carefully considering every move, only to have him behave like a reckless stuntman aggressively attacking the enemy at every opportunity in the next episode. The worst situation, and not just for him, is the classic macho bragging and joking during the briefing before each mission. There, all I can do is roll my eyes and repeatedly ponder the level of intelligence of each character. Fortunately, with the arrival of a longer military storyline (the civilian ones have sufficient continuity, but often disappear for so long that I wonder if the characters have anything left to do with each other), there is room for the previously anonymous supporting players (Ray, Sonny, Davis) to develop, and the team chemistry finally falls into place. The last three episodes even hint with their almost continuous tension that perhaps a good action series is finally beginning to emerge, and not just filler made up of attractive-sounding fragments. (11/20/2018)