RECAP: The Brave: “Close to Home: Part 1”

The Brave aired the first part of its two-part season finale last night on NBC, finding the team searching for a 17-year-old girl who hacked into a U.S. submarine. But it’s what – or more to the point – WHO they found while trying to retrieve this young girl that really changed the course of their mission.

Here is the official tagline for the episode entitled “Close to Home: Part 1“:

When an unlikely suspect is involved in hacking a U.S. submarine, Dalton and his team stumble upon a piece of Patricia’s past. With national security and lives at stake, Patricia heads to Turkey to confront one of her most epic demons.

An Inadvertently Hack

As stated above a 17-year-old girl hacked into a U.S. submarine, taking it offline and altering its course. It was an inadvertent hack – or a fluke as the girl explained later in the episode – but was it really? The girl’s dad – killed by an as-yet-unidentified culprit – was an IT contractor in Turkey. She obviously has some incredible computer talents, but was it really a fluke or something else? Was her father into something more than the episode explained? After all, his reaction when they were trying to make their escape from their apartment in Turkey and his instructions for his daughter to escape out the window. He knew way more than he was telling her.

A Blast from the Past

Alex Hoffman (guest star James Tupper, who ironically was in a 10-year relationship with show lead Anne Heche that just recently ended) is a new name to those of us who have been watching The Brave since the beginning, but it would seem he is more than just a blast from Patricia’s past. As played out in numerous flashbacks between Alex and Patricia – who was his handler at the time – it was clear that she and Alex not only handled some pretty questionable cases [where Alex was concerned very deadly and where Patricia was concerned pretty clueless as to Alex’s actually actions] but also had a sexual relationship – something that was frowned upon within the agency.

Back From the Dead

Again, with Alex Hoffman. He is definitely not a boy scout and he is also supposed to be dead! In fact, in the last flashback of the episode, Patricia was put in charge of his execution – that’s obviously the car bomb video that she kept watching on the plane as she flew from Washington, D.C. to Turkey because she had to face him down and bring him home. But to what end? He claims that Patricia will end up falling on her own sword and in prison if she takes him back. What is the big mystery there?

Mind Games

Hoffman learned a lot from Patricia during those three years in Austria when they were working together on those covert missions. He was playing some pretty serious mind games with the team. In fact, I thought for sure Preach was going to turn into angry Papa Bear when Hoffman started talking about Preach’s family. For that matter, I thought for sure – given the look in his eyes – that Amir was going to rip Hoffman a new one when he grilled him. Good thing Hoffman didn’t get a chance to dissect Jaz or Adam about that borderline chemistry that we have all detected since the series debut or it could have really turned ugly.

What About the Sub?

As we saw, a group of men kidnapped the 17-year-old girl, forcing her to hack into that U.S. submarine for a second time. Why? What are they after? Are they working alongside Hoffman – who HAD to have been the guy who killed the teenage girl’s dad? Don’t you think? What is the end game here for them? Who are they? What do they want with that sub? How is the team going to stop them and get the girl back?

So many questions and only one episode left in this thrilling new military drama that I can only hope will be renewed by NBC. It will truly be a shame if the network let’s this show go because it is the best new military drama – and to me the best new drama of the fall – even if it isn’t watched by as many people as The Good Doctor over on ABC.

C’mon NBC give this show a chance!

The season finale of The Brave will air on NBC next Monday, January 29 at 10/9c.