You just knew that Jason wouldn't stay on the sidelines for long.

His brief stint as a planner finally appeared to end on SEAL Team Season 4 Episode 7.

I suspect his time with Natalie is about to be through as well.

After all, she tailored a position for Jason as a condition of taking her new job in San Diego. And he just threw that aside without consulting her. That won't go over well.

The warning signs had been there right along. Jason was distracted from his work when a reduced Bravo was ineptly training on base, deemed not fit to fight.

Then he got a taste of being Bravo One again when the team went to rescue Ray. How could he go back to being a paper pusher after that?

Natalie knew her caged lion wasn't happy. He took a sick day because he was distracted and couldn't handle Bravo being deployed without him.

Also, she has to be sick of being Jason's mistress when he's married to Bravo.

That's why she thought that training the next generation of SEALs would be just the thing for Jason so that he could pass on his pearls of hard-won wisdom.

But being an instructor is just a step away from being a cake eater. So was what he was doing in his new role, for that matter.

No, Jason has to be in the fight. Period.

So the experiment of having Jason Hayes voluntarily on the sidelines failed, as we all knew it would.

And, as their little tete a tete on Ray's porch revealed, Ray was the same way.

For all Ray's talk of becoming a warrant officer to spend more time with his family, he was unable to handle domestic bliss. He was bored out of his skull.

You would think that would beat being a prisoner of Tunisian rebels but apparently not. Maybe that's why too many military relationships end up like Jason's marriage to Alana: because the operators can't turn it off.

A medical professional, Naima has to sense something's off about Ray.

Ray has to realize all those officers and therapists keep expecting him to have been changed by his abduction because it was a traumatic experience.

He can't just wash it away with a mantra of "I'm fine." His shaking hands told a different story.

Ray was feeling additional pressure to get back out there because, one way or another, Jason had moved on from Bravo, so the team needed his leadership.

Only Bravo was evolving (devolving?) without Jason and Ray.

Thirty Mike, who had to be hauled out of a jiggle joint earlier in the episode, was still in charge since Clay, the logical choice among those left, had been penalized and dropped back to being Bravo Six.

Plus, there was a new sheriff in town with Blackburn getting promoted off the show.

Hey, it's a military series, so there's got to be turnover. The options are death or promotion, and at least a promotion would allow the character to return conceivably.

Death has much more of a dramatic impact. That's why I was shocked that Soto didn't get killed off in his initial episode. He had "redshirt" written all over him.

When Jason was giving a tour to Soto, I assumed he was a temporary operator stationed with Bravo until Ray was declared fit for duty. He looked too young to be in charge.

The transition was handled poorly. Lindell gave a quick introduction and left the feel of "Just deal with it." Would a little background from Lindell or Soto before their first mission together have killed them?

Maybe then Bravo would have approached Soto with a more open mind if he held some legitimacy to them. So little effort was put into fleshing him out. Perhaps an early exit is still in the cards.

Big shock that on the new Bravo's first mission, Clay the penitent captured the target while Sonny, the simple door kicker, became Soto's project. That should be interesting.

Especially so now that Sonny and Davis were trying again as a couple. Sonny has never been one for big-picture thinking, and the upwardly mobile Davis considers nothing else.

So, with all the changes going on around them, Davis instantly got squirrelly about being caught, which Sonny, yet again, didn't understand. It's called fraternization, Sonny. Look it up.

In the end, they agreed to find a way to make their relationship work in the open, resulting in one of them leaving Bravo. Couldn't Sonny just become a military contractor since he has less advancement potential? 

But then Sonny is also married to Bravo, so that's unlikely to work out.

Speaking of inevitable, Clay and Stella got back together.

You would have thought Clay having broken up with Rebecca would have come up before now. 

Perhaps hanging out with Naima gave Stella a better idea of what being a military spouse is all about.

She appeared less frightened about Clay's potential risk while Clay seemed to accept that his advancement potential has been squandered. Both realized that they messed things up the first time.

So why not try again?

To revisit the evolving Bravo, watch SEAL Team online.

Are Jason and Natalie done?

What's wrong with Ray?

Does Sonny have leadership potential?

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Dale McGarrigle is a staff writer for TV Fanatic. Follow him on X.