SEAL Team Recap: If You Can’t Take the Heat — Who Made Bravo Leave Mid-Deployment?
Mixed tensions came to a head this week on SEAL Team, in an episode that finally saw Bravo take down a man.
After destroying a fentanyl precursor plant, Bravo was tasked this week with surveillance — intense surveillance — of a Chinese national who could link Beijing to the drug trade, while he and his wife and kids vacationed on Penang Island, Malaysia. The problem was, the abandoned restaurant where Jason & Co. had to set up shop had a completely broken air conditioning unit, meaning the temperature really rose while the friction between the various members of the team was too hot.
Left with nothing to do but watch their target on hidden cameras, Bravo’s surveillance turned into what Friends’ Ross might call a Day of Truth. Everyone knows, from Ray, that Jason offered to give up his trident in exchange for the rest of Bravo getting off the bench. Ray finds out that Sonny has been protecting Ben, the vet who played a role in Clay’s death. Omar criticizes Jason for being too soft and making questionable decisions, and Ray for being a poor “trainer” before he retired. And Sonny joins the Bravo 1 fight after learning about the whole trident thing.
But the vicious, back-and-forth round of finger-pointing and finger-pointing stops when Drew—for once doing Bravo right, if not 100% on purpose?—finally admits his past trauma. That’s right, when Sonny became withdrawn, Drew fled his wealthy family to find a new family, as an executive. And Drew found that family, in the Echo team. That’s right, that Echo team, which we learned midway through Season 1, was ambushed in Jalalabad. Drew wasn’t with his team that fateful night, so in one fell swoop he lost his newfound family. As a result, he’s hesitant to make friends with a potential newbie.
Bravo’s surveillance mission takes a turn when a storm that was supposed to ruin their video feed, just as some of the gang’s bad guys show up at the target’s motel and start torturing him and his wife for information. And then their baby, who was sleeping down the hall, wakes up. Bravo locks horns, wanting to intervene with the water torture but is told to stop by Davis. But when the video feed goes down, Jason decides to break into the house after turning off the lights and take out the thugs.
In between all the surveillance footage, Jason is also fielding satellite phone calls from his son’s hockey coach, saying that Mikey has been injured. After returning from the Malaysian operation to his base in Thailand, Jason receives another message from the coach—and then informs Ray, Sonny, and the others that whatever comes next with this DEA team, they’ll be doing it without him. Because, contrary to what Ray told Drew earlier, Bravo 1 is on his way home, mid-deployment, to be with his son as he undergoes surgery for a torn ACL.
