Review: The Brave Episode 12 “Close to Home: Part 1”
Editor’s note: This is the first recap/review for The Brave done by a new writer and super fan of the show. While we’ve made some small edits, we left many of her thoughts and feelings “as is” so you’ll get the most from her review. Hope you enjoy Cristina’s review of The Brave.
Deep breathing getting shallow, intermittent breath holding, pulse quickening, muscles tightening (and I mean everywhere), arms flying in the air, hands clenched, feet tapping uncontrollably… What does all this mean exactly?
The Brave is on!
Well, if you’ve been anything like me, these are the things I’ve felt – and more than likely some of the things that you too experience each Monday night when NBC airs The Brave. Like it has done since its premiere on September 25, 2017, tonight’s episode was no exception. If you are one of the addicted… one of my fellow #BandofBravers (as we were dubbed by Creator/Writer/Executive Producer Dean Georgaris,) or you are just tuning into the show as a new viewer we hope you enjoyed it.
It started from Day 1…
So to begin with the title of this episode, “Close To Home” elicited strong feelings in me before it even started. I’ve watched and have been addicted to this show since day one however it wasn’t until early November when I decided to pay attention and join the live tweeting of the show as it flashed on the screen. Needless to say, I was hooked after years of being away from regularly tweeting and was connected with a like-minded group of people over this incredible show that night.
After that night’s episode, I called into (and continue to call) @So_Many_Shows and spoke with the actors and crew of The Brave. I’ve been chatting and connecting with other people about the show, voting in polls, spreading the word and donating in important causes – not to mention learning new things from the many people I’ve been blessed to meet, and joining the fight for NBC to #RENEWTHEBRAVE.
The Brave has shown what it is to be a team and I have watched them transition over the season to a family. These are the things that come to mind as I set the title Sunday night on my TV autotune reminder. The thoughts that we all have felt come through the season so far – the fans, cast and crew, all of us who have become this global family as well, ones that I have often tweeted as my Braver Brothers & Sisters. This show does hit Close to Home when you invest in it the way so many of us have. When the cast and crew are outgoing, willing to answer countless questions, and go out of their way to support our men and women in the military.
It’s not all action
We see something a bit different in the 12th episode than what I felt we have seen in past episodes, but certainly just as pivotal. Some of you may be saying, “well we didn’t see the intense fighting, explosions or higher body-count” we might be used to in all the other episodes… I can see that side of it, but I pose this question back as I felt the same intensity as I have in all the other episodes as this one. So if we only see the continual fighting, explosions, etc., how do we ever learn to grow with the characters and the story? To fully capture your audience you need to have them invested in the characters as we have been drawn in over this season about each person. Tonight we get to see more backstory and just how “Close to Home” we get to Patricia Campbell (Anne Heche).
As it started off we hear Patricia in the DIA briefing her team, which includes Hannah (Sofia Pernas) and Noah (Tate Ellington), about an Ohio Class Nuclear Submarine that was taken offline. When it comes back online after 123 seconds its course had been altered. The hack had been traced back to a 16 year old American girl found in Adana, Turkey. Her father just happens to also be an IT contractor on the Air Base at Incirlik, Turkey where Dalton (Mike Vogel) and his team are located. We see the girl’s father grabbing passports, money and putting them in bags then going to his daughter Verina so they can leave. She tells him how sorry she is and she didn’t mean to let things get so out of hand. Her dad says that it will be okay as they just need to leave for the base to get “things sorted out.”
WIll they escape?
We see Patricia inform everyone that there appeared to be no malicious intent behind it all, but that seeing as this was a “world-class hack” and her capabilities in the wrong hands could be a very grave threat. As our father/daughter duo attempt to flee their apartment building the lights go out in the main corridor, but dad believes it to be old wiring. Until he hears the sound of a door opening ahead, prompting them to backtrack to their apartment for safety. Once inside, the dad tells Verina to go out the window and slide down the drain like she does when she sneaks out to see Esmah. This shocks Verina that her dad has known all along about her doing this, but as he admits it, he says he doesn’t care and kisses her forehead as he sends his daughter off.
It was this very scene when you knew the certain doom the father was most likely going to meet as he sent his little girl off in hopes of giving her a head start. Interestingly, she’s done this serious hack, but seemed more frightened in that small instance that her father had known all along. As Verina runs up the stairs we all watched with intensity as the dad listens at the door only to see it kicked in and go flying back.
Upon entry of the apartment building, Dalton takes McGuire (Noah Mills) and Jaz (Natacha Karam) inside the apartment where they find that the dad’s death was done by a professional and confirm the daughter’s escape. Dalton heads downstairs where he left Preach (Demetrius Grosse) and Amir (Hadi Tabbal) to round up anyone trying to leave as they are all possible suspects now. As they question one possible standout suspect, our attention is drawn to the background where a man covered in a hat and coat is complaining he is sick and was on his way to the doctor as Amir is saying he’s having some kind of episode to Dalton. While this interchange is happening we see Patricia in the DIA looking at the scene through their body cams as well and you see the most intense look cross her face. She marches toward the large screen trying to get a better look at this man – she recognizes his voice. Just as Dalton says he doesn’t want to wait for McGuire to come down to check him out and he tells Amir to turn him loose Patricia yells to him to not do that and she needs to see his face. Needless to say, I was holding a breath I didn’t realize I had been holding in. Patricia informs the team that the man is Alex Hoffman (James Tupper) a decorated field officer gone rogue, dangerous and thought to have died 9 years ago. She tells Dalton to take him and hold him, not letting anyone know they have him as she will be on her way to them immediately.
We learn more…
Much of the episode is interlaced with flashbacks into Patricia’s past and how Hoffman factors into her life while helping to answer that question I asked earlier about learning more about our characters. The flashbacks take us back to when Alex and Patricia meet in Vienna, Austria 12 years earlier as she becomes his handler in the field, reporting on his assignments back to our government and okaying his missions. We see them grow over intermittent flashbacks throughout the episode from 12 to 9 years earlier in which they end up crossing the professional line and sleeping together.
Hoffman’s nickname for Patricia is P and is what he calls her throughout the episode so this also brings to mind that with the professional line crossed is this part of a love that he truly felt for her as he also wants to get to know her son or are we seeing something on a larger scale here? He also goes on to talk about some of the people he has to kill in his line of work and how they’ve talked about being together in the future. Seeing this side of Patricia in earlier years was interesting, we get to see a bit of a softer, less jaded Patricia. She still shows a calculated tough as nails side but you can see how her experiences throughout life haven’t fully led her to be as cold inside and the Patricia we see today. I couldn’t help but laugh when she told Alex that he was just being sentimental after they just had sex and he needed to basically get himself together. There’s that Patricia we know and love!!! Again we get to visit the thought of being close to home as talk of her son is mentioned and how he wants to join the ROTC, in which she’s willing to sacrifice her life and the lives of others but wants to keep her son away from anything she does. Unfortunately, one day as Patricia shows up at the apartment they always meet at, she enters to find the President’s Chief of Staff and Security Advisors and her director where she is informed that Hoffman has killed many innocent people, made the wrong deals with drug cartels and dictators and has set the intelligence community back years so they have all tasked Patricia with being the one to execute him.
Back to the mission
In between the flashbacks we still see the team trying to find Verina who has found her way to a café where she has accessed the apartment’s security CCTV footage and has seen her father being killed. Now that she has no one to turn to, she tries to contact her friend Esmah to help her. The team also has to deal with keeping an eye on Hoffman until Patricia lands in Incirlik while she has given word to not engage him as they don’t need him playing head games with them. Hoffman starts to spout that the team needs to be looking for the code that Verina used to hack the submarine, that was what he was looking for, which is usually backed up in a flash drive.
So as the team goes off to make a sweep of the apartment, Preach is left to search through some background information on Hoffman while keeping an eye on him only to have Alex pick at his buttons. Alex prods at Preach’s -short time left in the military, his suspicions and goading him – just working for that rise out of Preach. Well this was definitely a moment where I have to give it to James Tupper because he was doing his job and got the elicited rise out of me. However, in true Preach fashion, he handled it well when he said “there’s a superstition for just about everything under the sun.”
As the rest of the team sends Amir in to the apartment searching for some type of flash drive with a hand held x-ray device, he can now search for it as a member of the Army CID team since the dad was an IT Contractor from the air base. This is another moment of the episode that was fun to see as Dalton remarks how good Amir is after he gets by the local detectives downstairs and Jaz agrees with him. It wasn’t too long ago in many earlier episodes that she did not like Amir and wasn’t afraid to say or show it. It’s especially poignant now as things have become more, since they saved her so I enjoyed this scene immensely. While Amir just begins his search he’s alerted that the real Army CID will be onsite in about 3 minutes and although he’s being ordered out he takes an extra moment as he feels he has found what they were there to get.
Amir is able to smash a small box, grab the drive, and head out downstairs but one of the neighbors from the first night is telling the detective a team was there and points Amir out. He stops and acts like he doesn’t know what she’s talking about and goes on his way as the woman tells the detective you let him get away. Noah and Hannah have bad news to share with the team: the only thing on the drive was a diary but all is not lost as they are able to find her girlfriend Esmah and then trace her whereabouts. Dalton, Jaz and McGuire head off to intercept Verina and Esmah while Amir is left with Hoffman. Yet again we see Hoffman go after playing with a member of our team, so by now is this just all part of the storyline? This is what Hoffman does, he plays mind games but when this scene plays out and Amir tells him you don’t know me or what I’ve done – Hoffman says it’s in the details. It’s basically not what he says but what he doesn’t and while the others still try to zero in on the girls, Amir let’s Dalton know that he doesn’t feel good about this situation with Hoffman at all.
This is also the point in the show where when he says this that it really makes me wary as to just how close to home we getting with all this, what are Hoffman’s ulterior motives? Is Hoffman really there by coincidence or as I say there are no coincidences? We know that collectively the team’s cover was blown in Tehran in episode 9 and 10 so you know in some way that is going to come back and haunt them… plus we, as fans, have that as confirmation from show creator Dean Georgaris, just no how or timelines as to how this will all play out in the series. So is the start of the how? The now?
One step behind
As the team is directed to the girls location a group of men enters the café where they come up to Verina stating to be a friend of her father’s and while placing a hand on her neck that injects her with something to knock her out. Another man does the same thing to Esmah and they grab Verina’s laptop and leave with her before Dalton, Jaz and McG arrive. Upon their arrival Esmah stumbles out of the café and into McG’s arms while Jaz and Dalton go inside to check for Verina. McG lets them know that Esmah has a small puncture on the side of her neck where she was obviously drugged and seeing as they now have no leads other than the customers saying that some men came and took the girl they are out of options.
Esmah comes to but is unable to give them any usable information. Meanwhile the men that took Verina take her because they want her to hack into another submarine where she states that she’s sure the backdoor has been closed up, but they are insistent and if she wants Esmah to continue to be safe she will do it. So she does and she succeeds in taking another submarine offline in the South China Sea.
This is going on all while Dalton is back at the Quonset hut demanding answers from Hoffman as to where they were taking her once he grabbed her and he said he didn’t know anyone else’ part in case he was caught. Hoffman tries to continue to ruffle feathers especially with Dalton and remarking to Jaz if her boyfriend’s temper is always this short. Alex just prods on about knowing a thing about crossing lines which are just more mind games as Dalton puts it. Sadly for all of you out there that wanted more romance between Dalton and Jaz, (NO!!! I won’t combine their names, LOL!!!) this is as close as you get to it in this episode. Dalton is getting tired of Hoffman though and his mouth and is ready to go when Hoffman would love to get inside Dalton’s mind. Unfortunately as we are already drawing to the end of this episode we are only left instead with the fact that Patricia has now arrived at the air base at Incirlik as Preach awaits outside the Quonset hut to escort her in. How do we end this episode?
Patricia: Hello Alex
Hoffman: Hello P
The End
So those little questions I had earlier about actions coming back to haunt, well did you all catch it, as I’ve said Hoffman prodding our team was getting to me especially by the time he got to Amir it just cemented things a bit more. When he was talking to Preach how did he know all that background information on him about him being a family man and being a short timer, heck I’ve watched all the episodes several times and yes I’ve been sick for quite some time but unless I’m mistaken I don’t remember getting some of that information, when did I miss the mission briefing?
Then let’s just talk about Hoffman himself, you know about that little thing he said about Patricia getting basically more than just a slap on the wrist for what she did in Tehran, so there is that juicy morsel as well as the fact that she was put in charge of his execution. So either you learn everything you need to know about someone and those around them because Hoffman is there to take out Patricia or he’s there to wipe out them all. So as we all head into next Monday night’s Close To Home Part 2 and the Season 1 Finale what questions do you have on your mind? I’ve shared some of mine above with you as well as a few of my thoughts, please share yours with us, good or bad, all are welcomed and appreciated. Like I always tell the group of people I work with – if we all thought the same the world would be a boring place and we would never learn anything.
Don’t forget to tune into @So_Many_Shows at 11/10c to talk about the Season 1 Finale after The Brave airs Monday night on NBC at 10/9c
Article written by Cristina Marie Jones, a guest writer for So Many Shows