“It’s how we handle our shit after we get knocked out that makes us Bravo,” Jason Hayes (David Boreanaz) says at one point in the latest SEAL Team episode, proving how right he is about that—for those still on the team and Clay (Max Thieriot) back home, recovering from having his leg amputated to save his life.
Three months after the ambush, Clay has been fitted for a prosthetic leg, is in physical therapy, and mirror therapy is helping to ease the pain in his phantom leg. The real Sonny (AJ Buckley) has stepped up to help his “fighting hero.” (“He’s my brother, there’s no other choice,” he says.) Clay refuses to be treated with kid gloves and is eager to make progress in his recovery. So when his therapist says he wants him to be able to stand for five minutes next week, Clay insists on trying for one minute. He falls, and his therapist tells him, “Crawl, walk, run. You just have to keep doing what you’re doing.”
Stella (Alona Tal) calls him out for pushing himself too hard after Sonny sends her a video from PT, but Clay insists he’s fine. He also refuses to let her help him when he forces himself to stand without a walker (“This Is Who I Am”), and though he keeps falling at first, by the end of the episode, he’s been standing for two minutes.
Although he hasn’t seen his team since he got back, he sees everyone—including Trent (Tyler Gray), who’s back from his own injury—together at the bar for the first time in three months. It’s a little awkward when Clay joins everyone in the wheelchair and they talk about his future with the Green Team, but they’re soon back to their usual banter.
Although Jason gives Clay space because he feels he’s a reminder of what he’s lost, blaming himself for not reporting his TBI and getting Bravo kicked out of the rotation, Clay refuses to let him think that way. “You want to think you’re the master of everyone’s universe,” he tells Jason, pointing to the bar wall. “If it weren’t for you, my picture would be there. Stella would be a widow, and Brian would never know his father. You ended that fight and got me out of there alive. There’s more to life than surgery.” And Clay doesn’t rule out getting surgery again, pointing out that he wouldn’t be the first person to do so after losing a limb.
The team may be down one (for now), and if you ask Sonny, “without Clay, Bravo wouldn’t be Bravo anymore,” but they’ve done their job successfully. They have to worry, though, because at least one team is going to be demobilized—and as Ray (Neil Brown Jr.) points out, they’d be naive to think it wasn’t them. After all, they were blown up twice during their last few operations.
And as Davis (Toni Trucks) admits to Jason when he ends up at the base one night without sleep, Bravo is “part of the conversation.” When she has to get back to work, he tells her, “I’ll see you… hopefully.” Oh no?
