TV Madness 2019: NCIS: Los Angeles, SEAL Team compete in round 1
TV Madness 2019 is officially upon us! March is one of our favorite times of the year for many reasons — spring is in the air, the days are getting longer, and the idea of a bracket is a part of our pop-culture lexicon. TV Madness is CarterMatt’s version of March Madness, where a number of fantastic shows from across the map face off against each other. There are seedings, head-to-head showdowns, and the performance of each show is based entirely on you, the reader.
What’s exciting about today’s showdown between NCIS: Los Angeles and SEAL Team is that you have two shows that are, in some ways, quite similar. Both air on CBS, both feature the military in some shape or form, and both are about stopping the bad guys. The big difference is that NCIS: Los Angeles is generally confined to the same place (Los Angeles), while SEAL Team revolves a little bit more around characters really going out to different places. Both NCIS: LA and, SEAL Team takes action to another level, but only one can move on.
If you’ve taken part in CarterMatt’s TV Madness before, you likely know how this works — we spotlight the two competitors and then, on the other side of it, give you a poll for you to commence your voting! The poll is located at the bottom of this article.
How voting works – Vote however often you would like! (Technical instructions for multiple voting can be found right above the poll.) We will keep this poll open until Saturday, March 16 at 1:00 p.m. Pacific time, which is when the winner here will face off against either Lucifer or The Gifted. One way or another, there’s going to be a very different sort of audience awaiting whichever show makes it through this fray!
You can see the full bracket (including start dates for each individual round) in the graphic at the top of this article.
The competitors
NCIS: Los Angeles (#3 seed) – Could the timing really be any better for the long-running CBS show to be in the tournament? We’re not sure it could be. This showdown is going to be open until a day before the big Deeks – Kensi wedding, one of the most-anticipated moments in NCIS franchise history. That relationship is one of the many reasons this show stands out, but the other is the nonstop sense of action. Every NCIS show has its own identity, and we think here a lot of is defined by car chases, shootouts, and the sort of showdowns you would expect in a big-budget action movie. Because the series is set in Los Angeles (the same place where it films) it has more flexibility to go out on location than NCIS proper.
Despite its popularity, NCIS: Los Angeles still has not made it particularly far into TV Madness in the past. This is the year for it to fight its way towards the final four — or even make it all the way to the pinnacle!
SEAL Team (#6 seed) – The timing isn’t too terrible with the David Boreanaz military drama, either. We’ve been in the middle of a long hiatus with this show for some time now, but come Wednesday, March 20, we’re going to see it back at its new timeslot of 10:00 p.m. Eastern time. The wait is almost over! With The Brave unfortunately gone this year, SEAL Team is providing something that you’re really not getting anywhere else on network TV — stories about bold men and women who head out into the field and do everything that they can in order to stop terrorists and other bad people. That’s juxtaposed with personal struggles, as Jason Hayes and the rest of the team fight to have stability in their normal lives.
SEAL Team could be a darkhorse contender to go far in this tournament — The Brave last year showed that military dramas do have some might in the CarterMatt TV Madness polls, and this show does have reason to fight with its future currently unclear.