The Last Ship: S02E04

Rating: 7
GOOD STUFF!

In A Nutshell

This week we're back to doing what The Last Ship does best; kicking some ass!

The crew of the Nathan James discover a big ship left some port nearby in the last few weeks and was all kitted out with doctors and labs for fast track processing of the cure. Well, that's the gist of what I picked up on! They track it down but find no one at home at first, until they start to find dead bodies and a group of doctors holding up in a makeshift operating theatre. Some gung ho action follows as two swat teams, each with new characters who joined the show this week (An Aussie SEAL called Wolf Taylor and Lt. Ravit Bivas).

Wolf really shows he's an all-action hero, single handedly taking down some of the bad guys who had boarded the ship recently in search of the cure. Seems there are some mercenaries about, and they aren't afraid to spill blood. Bivas is landed with Rex and another guy who has the hots for her. They come across a bomb, which is defused but then they find it's connected to another bomb. As the captain chases down the leader of the gang of mercenaries (A British guy!), they have to try to defuse the bigger bomb, which the mercenary leader threatens to blow up when he's cornered by the captain. Luckily, Rex goes all superhero on us too, by risking his neck to detach the explosives and throw them overboard ... which he of course does just in the nick of time as the bad guy presses that big red button.

Anyhow, the bad guy escapes, the Nathan James end up with a new doctor who wants to stay behind from the other ship, and the weird strange guy from last week hanging out with the crazy "we're special" group, is on a boat with the group leader, who informs him the boss wants to talk to him, whereupon we see a sub pop up from the water, presumably the same sub the mercenaries escaped to, as they didn't have a boat.

What I liked

Wolf is like Wolverine without the superpowers as he kicks ass physically and with a gun!

Nothing beats creeping through a ship and having shoot outs with bad guys.

Despite only meeting him this episode, the death of one of the doctors actually created an impression on me, as well as being a bloody end.

Tension and mystery of what was going on was clevering slowly fed to us.

What I Didn't Like

Some cheesy "crush" sub-plot and highly contrived plot dynamics but that's about par for this show :)

Huh?

Always time for some bird watching at sea.

Plenty of extras sleeping on the job this week. Ok, they've all been shot ... in the head!

Wolf takes centre stage as a bad-ass kick-ass guy.

I'm the british bad guy, and I'm going to press the button unless you ... oh, never mind. You defused the bomb of course.

Nightswimming? Nope, our bearded weird guy is meeting "The Boss"

And Finally

Enjoyed this, as the mystery returns, tension is kept ticking along, the all-american stuff is put on a back seat, and we have some gun-ho action!

The Last Ship S02E03

Rating: 5
OK

In A Nutshell

From the action bustling, pulsating opening two episodes of the season, this week it all goes very pedestrian, with threat levels dropping like a lead brick as the crew of the Nathan James start spreading the love in Norfolk. They meet up with some local SEALS and flying out the cure to various locations, whilst also looking to do some family hunting. It's all very "Little House on the Prairie" or "The Waltons" like, as there's plenty of long faces, sad faces and worried faces, interspread with a little joy as one crew member finds her mum. Awww. Bless. I guess we needed a little community building, which this show does very well, but this was heavily OTT on family stuff this week. There's so much loving, that evil mum's daughter gets a promotion to lieutenant after feeling heavily sorry for herself for most of the episode. Now, that's what I call therapy!

Elsewhere, evil doctor, who we haven't seen for ages, is going along the area (I assume it's same area) and nicking items from people he ends up secretly infecting. He joins up with a group of radicals who are immune to the plague and thinking they are super human. The way these guys have a personality complex, you think that this group of locals could cause a stink with their rolling pins and baseball bats. Ok, they might be more mean than that. Time will tell.

What I liked

Nothing amazing this week, but the family searching and soul searching was a needed element to the show to make us remember what the action is all for.

What I Didn't Like

Just a little too many long faces, American values, and lack of action sadly.

Huh?

The crazy doctor spends his time looking like Dr Evil, blending in with locals, who then soon die after coming into contact with him.

As if they'd never seen planes before, the crew are totally stoked to see their boys head out on missions to find survivors and spread the cure.

Lots of long faces in this episode.

How do you cheer up a lady whose mother was killed after leading a society hellbent on looking after the brightest?
Give her a promotion of course! 

The innume are crossing over into the realm of "The Chosen Ones", and also insanity.

And Finally

Compared to the opening two episodes, this was like tumbleweed blowing down the road, but it sets up some humanity for the season ahead.

The Last Ship: S02E02

Rating: 6
GOOD

In A Nutshell

This episode is essentially a continuation of last week's episode. Hardly worth splitting them up really as it only served to lesson all the tension built up last week, and the reasons behind it all. One can sum up this episode very quickly; the crew take back the ship and kick some serious ass! It all feels very much like good guys versus bad guys, no matter how they dressed up the realities that the government lady faced to build her superior nation, surrounded by civilisation being wiped out all around her. Despite this, there were at least a few moments of members of her guards showing some sympathy with the ship crew, instead of being hard arsed trigger happy tough guys. It was hard to work out what the point of that was, when her guards were essentially gun hungry bullies most of the time. Can understand the civilians being able to change their minds, but the guards? Thankfully there was only a little of that and it didn't detract from the action, of which this episode didn't disappoint.

The Captain's family get back to the ship, not before the crew have retaken it, stopped the scary baby operation from occurring and taken down the government lady, in a series of high octane, yet conveniently choreographed scenes. It was a genuine surprise, and disappointment, when the lead rebel guy was gunned down when confronting the government lady, which of course led to the captain getting to engage with her. Despite everything being against her, and refusing to apologize or truly give up, she still picked up the walkie and told her people to "stand down", of which there couldn't have been too many left given the slaughter of her guys throughout the show. Her daughter had already been shot in the stomach in a hard to grasp wrestling scene with a female guard who was all mean until the gun went off, and then ran away frightened over what had happened. One minute tough. Next minute a wreck? That was odd.

Onboard the ship, it was great yet comic book stuff as the crew took out all the "bad guys" of which the Lieutenant Slattery spent most of his time in the backup bridge, helping his guys take down the ship in true american military style. Why he stayed in there so long I don't know, but he did get a fight scene with the guy who led the bad guys attack on the ship, ending their brutal battle with an axe to the chest. Yikes!

So, it ends with a true patriotic musical few minutes, as everyone comes to terms with what's happened, licking their wombs and mourning the fallen. It's cheesy, but it's a well matured cheese that although goes OTT on military ways and the American spirit, it still has enough character and decent action to work. Can't quite work out what happened to all the civilians in the government building. I'll assume they are now on the ship, as are the captain's children. Be interesting to see where this series goes next.

What I liked

Lieutenant Slattery in the backup bridge was a little laughable but you gotta love this guy, and the actor. He really makes his scenes mean something.

Action, and lots of it. Sure, it's way too unbelievable at times with all that shooting going on, but it's darn good eye candy.

What I Didn't Like

Wasn't happy that Rebel leader (aka Lost's Man in Black) was taken out so meekly. I'd have loved to see him have a recurring role, but alas, it had to be the American Navy guys who had to win the day.

Was a little too perfect a recapture and easy takeover of building, but, hey, sometimes you just got to overlook these things :/

Huh?

The ONE guy left to defend the power plant, holds off what were tens of "bad guys", disposing of them like candy sweets. He also gets out of the station unchallenged. That's ... either lucky ... or well scripted.

Axe to chest always works

No No No, not the "lethal dead in 2 seconds suicide injection". Yup, she goes with a whimper.

Poignant scenes like this might be patriotic and military OTT, but they do remind us all of the seriousness and genuine emotions that this show intends to deliver to us.

And Finally

Not quite up to the level of the opener, due to a lack of intrigue and mystery, as this was just like a western style shoot them up. It was, however, enjoyable.

The Last Ship: S02E01

Rating: 7

In A Nutshell

I was so looking forward to this show returning and it did not disappoint! Wham Bang; straight into the action! For me, even liking this show last season was a big surprise as I don't tend to watch military stuff or shows about viruses getting loose, but it was certainly more engaging than I thought thanks to lots of likeable characters, a premise that really works and is captured in great realistic detail, and, of course, great action!

There was no "Previously" on the on-demand episode, as one was thrown straight into where things left off last season. After 5 minutes I was so baffled I had to quickly watch a recap video on YouTube to remind me, as I'd totally forgotten that the ship was taken over by the authority of the local governor lady in the city's port they'd pulled into. After discovering that she was basically creating a super-elite environment of only the best and brightest people, whilst dumping all the dead to create their electricity, relationships between the USS Nathan James ship crew and her went south quickly than this virus spread around the world!

So, we kick off with the russian doctor in a bad way on the bridge where a few of our crew are being held captive as they try to save his life, whilst trying hard to not let on that the medical bag contains a sample of the cure. The rest of the crew are gathered into a holding room, after one guy makes a run for it, jumps off the side of the ship, and escapes into the water. Yup, it's that kind of show, but you forgive it all that, cause for the most part, this is enjoyable stuff, so the silly stuff is easily forgotten. As the russian doctor bleeds out and gets progressively worse, the oppressors fail to find the cure and grow more annoyed and desperate. After it's discovered that the doctor's wife and daughter are on board the ship, the oppressors try to use the threat of shooting her to get the cure location from the doctor, whom they seem to think must know where it is. In one of the most disturbing scenes from the show's existence, and a little B-Movie like, the doctor refuses to reveal anything and removes what was stemming his wound and essentially bleeds out to death, with blood squirting everywhere like a burst water mains!

Meanwhile, on land, the captain puts his children into the care of one of his senior officials, as he and a couple crew members go to strike back at the lady governor by taking out her electricity generating facility. They sneak in rather effectively before going all gung-ho in a great sequence of action, to capture the facility. Here, they meet up with the local rebels (the head of which is Lost's Man in Black, woohoo!) and together they agree a plan to take down the governor's headquarters and get control of the ship once more.

Back at the governor's facility where everyone is enjoying a sterile and comfy living, we find Tex (the bearded highly enjoyable guy) sneaking into the Government Facilities, named AVOCET, and within the space of two minutes, he's wearing a security guard uniform and walking about the facility with a gun. This takes some believing that someone would turn up at the gate, volunteer to help them, and seconds later be in trusted locations of the building, but hey, we'll try to ignore that, as Tex is a lovable guy. Anyhow, he makes contact with our main doctor, Dr Scott, who is being imprisoned by the governor to make more of the cure. As they hatch a plan to escape, they discover that one of the ship's' crew has been retrieved as it's been discovered that she's pregnant and thus the "bad guys" want to operate on her to remove her baby's stem cells!

What I liked

The Russian Doctor I'd always had sympathy for, as he really did start to do some good work when he was working as a spy for the russians who had his family captive. His heroic death was graphic and really helped add to the high stakes at play.

Tex; steals every scene he's in. The Captain is also a very tough James Kirk like individual. You just know he's got the brains and the brawn to win the day.

Great action scenes that make you punch the air with joy!

What I Didn't Like

Doctor Scott, as cute as she is, she does go around with an emotionless face and forever sounds like she's in a mood.

Tex's quick transition into a security guard after just volunteering less than 5 minutes previously in the show was just a ridiculous turn of events to really take without a little lack of credibility.

Huh?

Could have been a scene from The Walking Dead, as bodies are tossed about with disregard and burnt for electric.

It's Lost's Man in Black! Woohoo! Well, ok, not the same character, as he's the rebel leader in this show. Highly likeable guy though.

You just wouldn't want to mess with this crew member. Make a great American Football player maybe? Just needs a big hug.

Our Russian doctor bows out of the show in the most bloody fashion ever.

Tex as a security guard is believable. The fact that he got the job in less than an hour or so is not so believable.

Could be from the X-Files, as the pregnant crew member is hastily prepared for surgery.

And Finally

They even gave the show a new opening credits sequence! Yes, last season it was all of a few seconds. This season, at least 10 seconds! Much better. We didn't want a long one for this kind of show, but a couple seconds was too quick by far.

This was a great opener, doing what the show does best; action, drama and likable characters.