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So I have a family member who is a retired SEAL officer. And the only insight I get from him is this. Real SEALS do not talk about or brag about their accomplishments. And they are real people with real life issues. What they do for a living can magnify these real life issues. Six does a great job of capturing what they do on and off the field of engagement.

I suggest you watch the entire season before you decide what you think of this show. It builds and the payoff is worth it. I was frankly shocked by the graphic nature - not of the battle scenes which ought to be graphic, but the raw language, emotion, sexual scenes, etc. Perhaps my shock was that this was the History Channel, but I think it is not gratuitous in this instance. It is appropriate, given who these characters are - highly trained tactical warriors. It's what they do and therefore, it identifies them because you can't be one than the other, no matter how hard you try to assimilate into our cushy society.

I reserved my review until I saw the last episode of Season 1 (which was nothing short of tremendous). The body of work so far is top notch. The characters are totally believable to me and the directing, cinematography and story line are excellent. If you like Platoon, Saving Private Ryan, and the rest of that genre, you will not be disappointed.

It seems like the last episode of Mad Men was years ago, even though it was about 10 months since we last saw Don, Joan, Peggy, Roger, et al. This episode spends considerable time re-establishing the characters and where they find themselves in life. Despite being an avid follower of the series, I admit I was a little lost trying to connect the end of last season to the beginning of this season. And halfway through the episode, I assumed that I had watched a full episode and was surprised I still had 30 minutes to go (translation: moving a bit slow.)

That being said, I am convinced that this episode's sole purpose was to prepare for launch into the final season's good stuff. We see that some time has passed since the season 6 finale and the characters have adjusted to their new lot in life. We don't need to know the specifics of what happened in this gap of time, and I'm certain that the remaining episodes won't bother, as the details are not important.

However, the pace of this episode could have picked up by compressing the "where are they now" scenes to that first half when I thought it was over, and moved into establishing some more interesting plot lines. I'd expect that the next few episodes will be off and running, since there's a lot of ground to cover before the series' end.