Combat takes toll on SEAL Team ‘Six’ — especially on home front
Watch the new “History Channel” series “Six” and you may wish someone had tweaked the scripts here and there. Then again, you could say the same thing about real combat.
The eight-episode series, premiering on Wednesday, Jan. 18, is based on the lives and experiences of Navy SEAL Team Six, one of the most effective special operations units in the world.
The series was created by William Broyles (“Jarhead”) and his son, David Broyles, a special operations veteran. Like many films and television shows focusing on people with demanding, stressful jobs, “Six” shows us the toll it takes on the wives, girlfriends and family members of the SEAL Team Six unit led by “Rip” Taggart (Walton Goggins, “Justified”), who is wired, always battle-ready, even when there’s no battle in sight. In one of the series’ most effective sequences, we watch the dissolution of his marriage in stages as he emotionally withdraws from his wife. Not a word is spoken. Not a word is needed.
His best friend is fellow team member Joe Graves (Barry Sloane, “Revenge”). He and his wife lost their year-old daughter and are determined to have another child, but it’s not taking, which only adds to his stress.
Alex Caulder (Kyle Schmid, “Copper”), has no real home life, just a series of one-night stands, an ex-wife and a teenage daughter. The absence of any grounding on the home front doesn’t make him immune to the stress of battle.
Ricky “Buddha” Ortiz ( Juan
Pablo Raba, “Narcos”) also has a teenage daughter, who has just marked her quinceanera, and even without his wife’s prodding, he feels the pull to quit the SEALs and become a “normal” dad and husband.
He’s just ready to sign the papers requesting discharge when Rip is captured by Boko Haram. At that moment, “Buddha” may not know he’s going to stick with the team to save Rip, but we do, because we’ve seen enough films about soldiers having to decide between home and “work” to know that when duty calls, you answer.
The stories of the individual team members are important in ways that are perhaps obvious. In order to understand why they do what they do in secret operations around the world, it’s important for us to understand the complexity of their personal and inner lives. Yet, the stories still seem predictable, and perhaps even a bit moth-eaten. That may have to do with the fact that war is hell in general and especially hard on the people who have to fight it.
The series is at its convincing best when it depicts the constant and oppressive danger of covert operations, and the Broyleses have created credible characters to hold our interest.
There’s something very off about the visuals of the series, though. It just doesn’t really look like a war zone. It’s too clean, for one thing, but the lighting and use of video instead of film battle the convincing elements of the series. At least it’s a battle that ends in an acceptable draw.