How SEAL TEAM Defied the Odds to Find Massive Success
Movieguide® Contributor
SEAL TEAM wrapped up on Paramount+ this weekend, marking the show’s end with its Season 7 finale, but its road to success wasn’t easy.
In May 2017 at CBS’s annual upfront party, SEAL TEAM’s producers weren’t as chipper as the rest of the guests, even though their new show was selected out of hundreds of vying scripts.
“The reason was an effort by CBS brass to replace the female lead opposite star David Boreanaz in the pilot, Jessica Paré. There was already a red flag for eagle-eyed attendees at the network’s upfront presentation at Carnegie Hall earlier that afternoon when the cast of SEAL TEAM walked onstage sans Paré,” Deadline said. “The absence spoke volumes as it was a broadcast ritual — if your pilot gets picked up, you are going to the upfronts — except if you get a call that you are being recast.”
“There was nothing official at the time, but the SEAL TEAM producers were very worried — word was that then-CBS CEO Les Moonves himself had suggested that Paré be replaced. A former actor himself, Moonves had remained closely involved in casting decisions, and he had the ultimate say on everything, determining the fate of shows and actors. (Moonves stepped down in fall 2018 following a string of sexual misconduct allegations.)”
The SEAL TEAM creative and producing team, including lead actor/executive producer Boreanaz, pleaded for Paré to stay on the show. Their plea was successful for the first three seasons until her character left the unit in the Season 4 premiere. Afterward, she appeared on the show but less consistently.
“A few months after Pare’s exit, SEAL TEAM faced another challenge in May 2021: it was forced to leave CBS to make room for spinoffs of crime franchises, NCIS: HAWAI’I, CSI: HAWAI’I and FBI: INTERNATIONAL, as well as medical drama GOOD SAM. Ironically, SEAL TEAM outlived three of the four series, with NCIS: HAWAI’I and CSI: VEGAS canceled earlier this year to make room for another NCIS spinoff, NCIS: ORIGINS, along with other new shows,” Deadline reported.
“While NCIS: HAWAI’I and CSI: HAWAI’I didn’t have options, SEAL TEAM moved to Paramount+ after four seasons on CBS. It’s not surprising that so few broadcast series have been able to do that successfully as it is not an easy transition, requiring major adjustments of the business framework, including budgets and salaries, as well as production logistics.”
The show continued for three more seasons on Paramount+ and was set to finish with six seasons.
But “SEAL TEAM’s 2021 broadcast goodbye was not permanent: two years later, the series was summoned back, with episodes from the original run on Paramount+ used as fresh broadcast fare in fall 2023 when film and TV production was delayed by the Hollywood strikes.”
“Helped by a loyal fan following and wide support among veterans, SEAL TEAM ran for seven seasons, a very respectable lifespan in this day and age, despite the show’s high cost and limited international sale potential given its focus on American military versus the more easily translatable crime, medical and legal genres.”
Deadline touts the show as a rare success as the highest-rated CBS series to leave the platform in 2021. On Paramount+, it earned the title of the most-watched original drama series on the platform that year.
“Fittingly, SEAL TEAM hit another milestone before its pending end, finally cracking Nielsen’s Top 10 of streaming originals in August with its two-episode Season 7 premiere,” Deadline reported.
It also received two Emmy nominations, one for outstanding stunts and another for outstanding music composition.
“SEAL TEAM also brought into the CBS/CBS Studios fold Max Thieriot,” Deadline added. “An original cast member on the show, he went on to pitch the studio a firefighter drama based on his experience growing up in Occidental, CA. That became CBS’ hit FIRE COUNTRY, co-created, exec produced and starring Thieriot, which has become the network’s newest drama franchise; offshoot SHERIFF COUNTRY, headlined bv Morena Baccarin, is set for a 2025-26 launch, and another spinoff, starring Jared Padalecki, is being eyed.”
After a rocky but successful road, SEAL TEAM has finally come to an end.
Movieguide® previously reported on Season 7:
Season 6 of SEAL TEAM ended with Jason Hayes revealing his struggle with trauma; going into the final season of the show, the creators are focusing on that storyline and how that impacts the character’s future.
“For us, it’s like, alright, the trauma is your first kill. How do you deal with that? So starting the season it was like, okay, this is the perfect way to wrap that cycle up for this character,” David Borneaz, the actor who plays Hayes, told TV Insider.
“His head is almost very familiar to when he was dealing with the inception of what these operators go through,” he added. “That’s always been a consistent throughline for Jason’s mind and its ultimate balance with his heart and what he thinks is balanced could not be balanced or what he thinks is right is him feeling like he’s the problem. The issue, the arduous task of a character like this is understanding those fleeting moments of an emotion and then going completely to a different direction with them and how that affects him.”
The show has shined a light on the mental health of America’s servicemen.
Last week, Borneaz told Variety what he hopes the show’s legacy will be:
Obviously, the mental health sector is something that I am extremely involved in — and getting even more involved into — as far as finding the help that people need, whether they’re suffering from anxiety or depression. How do you deal with certain remedies for that? How do you understand the pharmaceutical companies’ urge to push certain prescriptions on people just for financial gain? What’s going on with the FDA? What’s going on with our food? How does it affect mental health progress?
There’s so many avenues and lights that you can shine a light upon, and I just look forward to getting into more stories about those issues because mental health surrounds all these characters. I see it now even in Annapolis with these young students and these plebes and what they have to deal with for a whole year. You look at the horrific suicide rate on a base like Quantico, and that’s something that they deal with on a daily basis. So I think that shining a light on that will help the next person.
I know our show has done that, because I get responses from people reaching out saying, “Thank you for your show. I was going to kill myself. I watched it in a moment that helped me call out for help, and you saved my life.” That, in itself, is the biggest award I can get for a show like this. I’m so happy and pleased that we hit that mark, and the show will live on like that. It’s a very underrated show, I feel. It’s a show that was displaced on a network, that moved over to Paramount+, [which] gave us the freedom to show even more. But it’s definitely a type of show that has its end.
- Content: +4Share:
- Content: +4