Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
One of the more interesting trends of this fall season are the sudden re-emergence of military dramas on the broadcast networks. You know the theme: units that are a cross-section of America beating up on our enemies overseas. Is this the networks’ reaction to Donald Trump’s election? We’ll let you decide. In the meantime, let’s look at The Brave, about a special ops unit in the Middle East.
A Guide to Our Rating System
Opening Shot: The opening of a pilot can set a mood for the entire show (think Six Feet Under); thus, we examine the first shot of each pilot.
The Gist: The “who, what, where, when, why?” of the pilot.
Our Take: What did we think? Are we desperate for more or desperate to get that hour back?
Sex and Skin: That’s all you care about anyway, right? We let you know how quickly the show gets down and dirty.
Parting Shot: Where does the pilot leave us? Hanging off a cliff, or running for the hills?
Sleeper Star: Basically, someone in the The Brave cast who is not the top-billed star who shows great promise.
Most Pilot-y Line: Pilots have a lot of work to do: world building, character establishing, and stakes raising. Sometimes that results in some pretty clunky dialogue.
Our Call: We’ll let you know if you should, ahem, Stream It or Skip It.
THE BRAVE
Opening Shot: The first shot is of a refugee camp, with a location card saying “North of Damascus, Syria.” From there we see a surgeon (with her nose out of her mask!) repairing the eyes of various refugees. Almost right then and there we know she’s probably going to be kidnapped.
The Gist: This isn’t going to take paragraphs to explain. The show is about an elite special ops unit in the Middle East that goes into areas that is off limits to other military, slips undercover and rescues Americans while killing terrorists. We don’t know much about the unit: Captain Adam Dalton (Mike Vogel) is the typical squinting, teeth-gritting leader; Sgt. Jasmine “Jaz” Khan (Natacha Karam) is an expert sniper who has had to prove herself over and over because she’s a woman; CPO Ezekiel “Preach” Carter (Demetrius Grosse) is an expert at electronics and spouting platitiudes; Sgt. Joseph “McG” McGuire (Noah Mills) can fix wounds anywhere, and Agent Amir Al-Raisani (Hadi Tabbal) is an intelligence officer and devout Muslim. That’s about it.
Back home, we meet three people who are directing the operations using data, advanced surveillance, drone footage and other electronic means: Patricia Campbell (Anne Heche), deputy director of the DIA, who just lost her husband in an overseas combat mission, Noah Morgenthau (Tate Ellington), who’s a nerdy “cultural specialist,” and Hannah Archer (Sofia Pernas), a mission coordinator who just joined the unit after being in the field.
The good doctor from the first scene is in semi-danger, but somehow makes it home alive while the unit somehow manages to kill the big fish, a scruffy terror mastermind named Bagdhadi (we kid you not).
Our Take: Shows that depict “Muslims bad! ‘Murica great!” feel very retrograde now, harking back to the post-9/11 days when shows like 24 pretty much made anyone with brown skin a bloodthirsty terrorist. It was that ethic that made us stop watching a much better show, Homeland, a few years ago, and it sure as heck isn’t going to keep us watching something along the lines of The Brave. (Both shows are produced by Israel’s Keshet International, with the studio’s CEO, Avi Nir, credited as one of the executive producers.)
The only character in the entire show we know any details about is Heche’s, because she keeps touching a picture of her late husband on her desk. Even there, the show stumbles: at the beginning of the operations Director Campbell has a different haircut than what she has at the end. Yes, we know that the new haricut represents reshot scenes, but did the folks behind the show think we wouldn’t notice?
Otherwise this feels like a bad procedural, “rescue of the week” series, just with the setting shifting from the home front to Syria and other trouble spots. If the rescue from the pilot had more “oomph” to it, it might be OK. But it was pretty predictable, and the ending way too clean to be believable.
Sex and Skin: None, yet. It’s all business in the pilot.
Parting Shot: The unit is playing soccer with some kids on a beach near their base in Turkey after their last mission. Acher spies drone footage of a car veering off the road and speeding right for the beach. We see the footage of scrambling people and a big explosion. Then we cut to black. Will the unit get hurt? Probably not. But they will have their next mission!
Sleeper Star: Gotta be honest: no one stands out in the pilot. It’s generic characters and generic performances. Hopefully that’ll change down the line.
Most Pilot-y Line: Sgt. McGuire sees agent Al-Raisani praying on the roof of the house where they’ve taken a well-known terrorist and asks, “Amir, doesn’t it get you a little angry to be sitting in a mosque praying next to a guy who might blow your head off someday?” Amir’s response rolled off his tounge so well we had to rewind three times to understand: “It makes me angrier than you, as a non-Muslim, could ever understand.”
Our Call: SKIP IT. This generic, jingoistic show will either make you angry or make you unironically sing a certain song from Team America: World Police. Which probably means it’ll be a huge hit for NBC.
(Click to see all of Decider’s complete Stream It or Skip It reviews)
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere.
