The Hunt For The Last Ship.
What They Say:
Achilles – Chandler and his crew face off against a nuclear-powered submarine led by rogue British naval officers.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
The Last Ship has done a better job of expanding its world this time around compared to the first season, something that definitely helps it to feel a bit more solid than it was in dealing with coastal South American pirates. Pirates were still the name of the game last time around as the Nathan James boarded the floating hospital ship that had a ton of necessary equipment but it involved something bigger and larger going on with the people from it that are the remnants of a British submarine that are staking their own claim on the world. That made for some very well done action sequences on board there, allowing the new members of the crew to mostly blend well while also having standalone moments. The show still feels like it’s missing something critical to really take it to the next level, but it’s moving along well to remain an enjoyable show if it continues the overall expanding view of the world.
The cold open here fills us in a bit on what was going on with the submarine after the virus started to make its way through it as we get Sean talking to patient zero, Niels, of all people about how it’s all by design at this point. He’s a needed commodity to try and work through the stuff that was picked up on the hospital ship, though Ned’s ready to kill him quickly since he’s convinced that they were double-crossed over everything. This shows the motley crew that he has to some degree and that works nicely to give us a feel for how he’s got it all moving along, since a good chunk of basic operations for subs are fairly automated. But he needs some with skills and some training helps. Still, it’s enough to keep them hidden from Chandler as they hunt him down as best as they can from above using their much higher quality skill set.
While the hunt and evasion is on with the Nathan James, Slattery gets his time to be pretty intense as he goes after the man from the British sub’s crew, juan Carlos. Revealing himself to be a Spanish sailor that was adrift just two weeks prior before being drafted on board to serve, he puts on a compelling performance about how he wasn’t aware of what kind of maniacs are really running that sub. While Sean does come across kind of normal, if it a bit goofy, Ned certainly qualifies and he was the one leading the mission on the hospital ship. The sailor doesn’t get to reveal too much overall as he claims to not know much, but he’s in this position of trying to find a safe harbor of some sort amid rough seas. Slattery keeps it calm when dealing with him, but he knows the guy is telling the truth as it jives with what they’ve gotten from others so far about the sub and hospital ship experience. Bringing political asylum into the mix is certainly an interesting element in this brave new world.
Having grown up reading a lot of Tom Clancy novels, there is the obvious fun of this being a low grade riff on The Hunt for Red October to some level. There aren’t many submarine dramas out there in general so there’s some fun to this in seeing the cat and mouse game, done very simply, as there’s no grander game going on here. Chandler’s looking for his best option to just eliminate the threat and believes that the sub is looking to take them out as well. Sean, however, wants to be able to damage them and rescue Juan Carlos as he talks about how the man is a believe and won’t be left behind. Juan Carlos certainly doesn’t come across that way, but it’s hard to tell what kind of game he’s potentially playing here. There’s decent enough clues though that Juan Carlos is doing his best to escape and reconnect though.
The running silent aspect with the Nathan James provides the show a chance to display how the military works in this regard, as we usually see it from the submarine’s perspective in works like this. The sub side itself has Sean making it clear from Niels that he’s intent on sinking the ship as it’s a real threat, and that he’s definitely a true believer in that those that aren’t immune should not survive through a cure. It ratchets up the tension pretty well and makes Niels uncertain about things as he knows that Chandler’s dangerous enough that it’s not likely to go how Sean thinks it will. And he’s also trying to think of our good doctor as well, who he wants alive amid all the talk of the cure itself. What helps out Sean though with tracking him Chandler is that even though they’ve gone to a deeper level of being quiet, Juan Carlos’ being brought up on deck reveals that he’s got a tracker on him that needed to be in the open air in order to work. That brings its own complications as his true nature is revealed – and as he gets opened up so the device can be fished out of him. Yuck.
When it turns to an active battle, there’s a lot of fun in seeing the way the two sides interact and go at it, since there’s an obvious ragtag aspect to the sub and a more precise and heavily drilled level of skill with the Nathan James. Both sides have to deal with what’s fired through and that makes for some good tension because you can’t be sure just how far they’ll go in making a situation problematic for the Nathan James. With them escaping any hits on the ship, the real tension comes with the sub itself as its dived deep and is now scraping the canyon walls down under the sea as it looks to regroup. It’s not a detailed sequence in how they get through the canyon, but while down there is when Niels discovers where the Nathan James was originally headed, which gives them a path towards ambushing them in the future.
And that shows just how dangerous Sean is as they use the time to also fire off missiles inland to the US in order to take out all the labs that are there. With a goal of trying to control the cure and who lives, taking out the labs makes it almost a given that their control will be cemented for a long time to come. The reaction times from the Nathan James is solid, but I like that there’s the reality that most of the missiles were out of range when they launched and there’s little that they could do to deal with it. It justs adds a bleak element to the already bleak world, though one that started to have some hope after everything that went down so far this season. What Sean is up to is what the crew of the Nathan James can’t understand because of the believer aspect they haven’t truly encountered yet.
In Summary:
The Last Ship does a pretty good job of giving us a solid naval encounter happening here between the destroyer and the submarine. While the larger context of what Sean and his group of believers are up to is lost on the Nathan James, and element I like, the more personal aspect of the ship to ship combat is pretty well done. Both sides show well here with what they’re doing and having an engaging enemy side, something we didn’t really have with the first season, definitely makes it a lot more engaging. While things do come full circle towards the end here with the believers and their mission, the majority of the episode is a lot of fun with it being focused on the military said done in a very engaging way.
Grade: B+
Some big problems:
1. Why wasn’t Prairie/Masker operating the entire time? They knew there was a sub out there.
2. Why no countermeasures when the sub launched the torpedoes at them? No noisemaker? No nixie?
3. Aren’t Spearfish homing torpedoes? If so, they’d turn around and come back to hit the ship.