How do we not have a thread for this yet! I really enjoyed the pilot for this. I realize parts of it were totally unrealistic and flawed, but it packed a lot of fun stuff into one hour, from crazy plot twists to great one-liners, with kind of an unhinged insanity that I really dug. I'm curious to see where the show goes from here. You can see it taking some cues from Lost, where you've got all these different characters and factions at odds with each other, but also dealing with a larger, mysterious conspiracy. There's even a jungle! (I believe they're shooting in Hawaii.) Can character flashbacks be far behind? Anyway, I'm on board for the time being. Thoughts?
Lots of thoughts over in the general fall TV thread. Glad it has its own thread though, so we don't have to nuke that one every week. (See what I did there?)
Yeah, that's why I started this one. Clearly a lot of people want to talk about it and will probably do so for at least the next few weeks. So, no need to ....flood ....that other thread with comments on it. YeaaaaaaAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH
I disapprove of this much Jessy Schram, in case it wasn't obvious before. Too much exposure, too fast - now I don't want to see her anymore. It's only partially her fault and entirely understandable (everybody's gotta eat), but it is what it is. Also, I have no idea whether they're shooting in Hawaii, but that sure looked like one of the vistas from Lost. Again, not the show's fault, but still..... I believe I like this show. I like that I don't know how things will resolve (not at all new for me with Shawn Ryan) and I like that the show is surprising me in creative ways (I had expected Chaplin's son to end up in a shooting engagement with them). Overnights for the second episode were down around 18% from the first, which is an expected drop, but the show really needs to level off quickly.
I was lukewarm on the first half of the show. But I thought "those aren't Deltas" was an awesome moment, followed by several more. So thumbs up for this week.
I dunno, I was more into the show in the first episode but I can't put my finger on exactly why. I think maybe a little too formulaic (the scene where the XO poor man's Christian Bale sits down and starts reminiscing about something with no pre-amble really tipped me over the edge), and a few too many ra-ra America speeches. Also I hate the military contractor lady both as an actor and as a character. I'm sorry, but I don't buy a re-branded Lockheed Martin spokeswoman as any kind of hero, especially when she's this annoying every time she opens her mouth. As much as I liked The Shield and Chicago Code, this show is on probation. It gets at least one more episode but depending on how some of the other new dramas do it may get the axe.
You are still not wrong. Chaplin's son is not dead, he's on a covert mission and needs to appear dead. He will end up fighting with his father and then come over to his side in season 2, if the show lasts that long. I actually liked this more than the first episode. They tried to address the nuking of the ocean (still lame, but I appreciate the attempt), we got some Hunt for Red October action, and we find out that submariners actually suck at army stuff about as much as you'd think they would. Five dead vs. Spetsnatz? Actually, they kind of got off light, I think they would suck more. Also, wasn't Super Commando Guy part of a whole squad of Super Commando Guys? Where were the rest of them? Have we conveniently forgotten about all but the drunk commando and the wounded commando?
At least one of them showed up pre-shot and is currently being stored in what sure looked like an unrefrigerated box to me. I'm not sure what happened to the others. I think Daisy Betts killed one in the pilot at the end....was that all of them or are there still some dudes floating around?
She killed the gay football player from Glee. He wasn't a SEAL, though. He was an enlisted man, which is why the T-1000 is still pissy about it since he's the COB. (I'm trying to speak Seiler. Lemme know if it's working.)
I have taken to calling Betts's character FemShep, because it should be obvious. I suggest the rest of you adopt this nomenclature.
So no comment on episode 3? I just got around to watching it last night and I thought it was an incomprehensible mess with too many plot strands and not enough time on any of them. First off, you're going to use your submarine to run drugs for the local poo-bah? Really? I get the whole insurgency thing, but if he puts one of yours in the hospital, you put one of his in the morgue. That's the Chicago way, goddammit. You've got armed, trained soldiers (not to mention Captain Commando) and he's got armed thugs. You can take him. Second, WTF was Capt. Commando doing playing with the natives all episode? Just get laid and get it over with, fer chrissakes. And it occurred to me, if you've got your COB (CAG? Whatever the T3 is.) against you, you don't put him in a cage on display in the center of town. You put him in a deep, dark room where he knows nothing about what's going on and can say whatever he wants to the fiercely loyal guy on the other side of a bulkhead who can't hear him anyway. Does the sub not have a brig? So now our magic invisible sub box doesn't work. Well, that was quick. So is Daddy Defense Contractor a bad guy who is killing all of Hot Defense Contractor's boy toys? Or was that the switcheroo, that we thought he was a contract killer, and he turned out to be a good guy? At least we didn't have any Annoying Blonde Wife scenes this week. This felt like an episode of Lost, and I stopped watching Lost midway through the first season.
Yep, episode 3 was a mess. If they don't turn this sub around with episode 4, I'm jumping ship! I fast forwarded anything with the marine guy and the hot vampire from Being human. I don't require a love story to enjoy tv.
I hope you guys are enjoying this because the ratings continue to drop and the guy on TVbytheNumbers thinks it will last 7-10 episodes at the most.
The guy on TVbytheNumbers is probably wrong. The show is performing poorly in a spot where no show has performed well for the network. At the very least, I expect to see all of the episodes in the initial order, because it's not like ABC has any better alternatives. Frankly, the early critical reception for all of the stuff they already have queued up doesn't inspire the most confidence either (I'm interested to see Zero Hour, but nobody is really dancing in the street over the pilot). More episodes...that I'm less positive on. I think that there's probably an argument that you could make that having this around next year to pair with S.H.I.E.L.D. would be a good idea, but the show is already off brand for the network and this cannot be cheap for any number of reasons.
Well. I guess I've got something I can hold against Jessy Schram now. And we've successfully discovered one of her limitations - she shouldn't have a screaming fit. Ever. So learn your lesson, show, and let's move on without belaboring the point. And while you're at it, it might be a good idea to push those other spec ops guys off a roof or into the path of a stray bullet or something, because that was just..........I mean, they just shouldn't talk. I bought the fighting, but not the talking. I will say that it's a damn shame that by the time the movies start filming, Andre Braugher will be 100% too old for the Obama role. At this point, I'm definitely interested in what the spec ops guys were doing in Pakistan. The conspiracy is extremely interesting. I'm also extremely intrigued with all the stuff actually in Washington (though the lack of constant news coverage about the nuclear devastation of Pakistan seems a touch off). What I'm not interested in at all is anything having to do with people on the island relating to people from home. That can go. The biggest part of the problem is the Schram/Speedman thing, so it could just be those two, but I really would prefer that we didn't spend the entire span of the series that we know we're going to get in an angsty, wheel-spinning mess of "But I want to go HOOOOOOOOOOOOOME."
I will squeeze the jelly from your eyes is now "I'm the one who knocks.". It has to be. It's also nice that the show is finally recognizing some sort of necessary international reaction, even if it's not the focus. I'd like just a little more of the politics, though. I have to wonder about next season, though. Not sure what comes after this, unless maybe the U.S. government gets toppled.
Well, I never bought that the premise was worthy of a TV series anyway, so it doesn't surprise me that there are questions about where it goes. Sometimes I think people should just plan to do these shows with the assumption that they will get six or eight episodes tops to tell their story. That way when its canned they have a complete story to put out on DVD at the very least. Like what David Lynch figured would happen with Twin Peaks. Of course in that case the show ended up doing better then he expected and so it kind of fell apart as they tried to stretch it out on the fly and then come up with some reason to keep it going into its disasterous second season. Which is why I've always wished the major US networks would do what the BBC and HBO do, and just have some shows each year that are meant to be one shot multiple episode stories.
Okay. I'm starting to have a problem with Warlord. Warlord should be dead by now. Even if he wouldn't have been shot dead as soon as they showed up, he should have been killed during the drug event, because it's not like you couldn't have blamed it on the black ops guys if you were really that worried about the general populace. So that part...starting to become a little much. I do hope that there's a conclusion planned at the end of thirteen, though. The show is officially not being extended to the full season (could still be renewed next year, but it's unlikely), so it'd be nice if it hit something like an endpoint.
There are a lot of things wrong with the show, but THAT just makes no sense to me at all. And his men seem like nothing more than dolts with guns-there is no reason at all for him to still either be alive or at the very least in a cell and all his guns taken away. Kill him already. Bah, I was actually starting to like the show too...the shootout on the beach and then the 2 hot chicks going stealth sabotage were definite high points for me. I too hope there is some type of big bang at the end. I could not tell from any of the news if they have actually shot all the episodes yet or not.
Well, telling me that this has not been picked up has freed me from watching the last two episodes that were sitting on my DVR. Sorry submariners.
If you liked it, you should know that Ryan knows that they're only getting thirteen episodes this year and ABC is going to run them, so you're probably going to get a conclusion. Shawn Ryan will try to satisfy you. Given how well Terriers ended up working out, I'm inclined to trust him. All hope is not yet lost for next year either. It's a slim damn chance, but Last Resort was performing about as well as anything has yet for the network on a tough night, so if everything in the pilot slate craps out, I could see this getting another short order. It's pretty long damn odds, though. I only really think it would happen if ABC wanted a known property to pair with S.H.I.E.L.D. that happened to be more male-demo-friendly than the typical ABC item.
Considering everyone is acting as if it's been canceled, including the showrunners, I think that chance is infinitesimal.
Well, the producers are. The network would actually prefer that you not "use the 'c' word" with respect to the show. That is doubtless in no small part to keep people from leaving it in mid-run (though, again, I should stress that they haven't produced their full order and Shawn Ryan has been pretty okay about ending things well), but I honestly believe that the show also has at least as much of a chance at another order as any other show in the pilot slate at this point, which is its real competition. What I suspect is going to happen in the short run is that Nashville will take 666's spot to make room for Red Widow and that will probably be the last we hear of 666, while Zero Hour will replace this show, do worse, also get canceled, and the whole thing will come down to the question of whether ABC really wants to put S.H.I.E.L.D. in this slot that they can't fill to save their lives with no lead-in. The future that I prefer to believe in has Last Resort getting another short series order, followed by S.H.I.E.L.D., followed by Gray's in a new timeslot or Scandal in its current one with Gray's moving to another day. I am, however, a show fan, so I could be pipe dreaming. What I'm not imagining is that the show hasn't produced all of its episodes, so I think that the worst case scenario here is probably Terriers, which I am entirely fine with. If Shawn Ryan puts that much resolution into Last Resort, I'll be perfectly satisfied with the thirteen episodes.
What I Liked: the fight between CIA guy and Lieutenant Second Guy. That felt pretty damned accurate - the professional murderer with his hands tied mostly kicked the generic Navy guy's ass until the Navy guy got lucky enough to roll him over and pin him on the ground, at which point he killed him, like any sane person would in that position (are we listening, Rad?). What I Didn't Hate: The Daisy Betts story, by itself. It's not a novel story to trot out for your female Navy officer, but it didn't seem dishonest or terribly manipulative all by itself, isolated from the rest of the show. What I Didn't Like: Oh dear. Well, the rape story on the island was hamfisted at best. For one thing, I don't think the show had enough time to tell it - an hour wasn't enough for some episodes of the Law and Order pretty much unofficially entirely about rape to get the job done every week when I was watching it, and here it was splitting time with the CIA and whatever confused nonsense poor Dichen Lachman was compelled to engage in and basically everything involving Autumn Reeser, so there wasn't nearly enough work around the story to make it feel even approximately well told, and shortcuts were taken. For instance, having the victim's only evidence of any kind be a single testimonial ultimately amounting to an appeal to emotion (in effect, "Did you ask HIM uncomfortably specific questions about the rape?") is incredibly weak, and having Betts crack the case through the little known phenomenon of rape telepathy was....well, it felt a little distasteful to me. On top of that, the Warlord's plot didn't really fit with the conclusion. If he didn't plan everything from the start (which would have required the rape to have been extremely convenient in its timing, fabricated, or some unsavory middle point between the two) then all it would take is one of the island jury members coming clean for the whole thing to come crashing down on him, which means that he basically risked his public reputation with the native populace (which we're supposed to believe was already good) in order to.....uhhh....make the sub crew look bad? Because it's not like they were going to go anywhere under the best of circumstances. So it ends up reading like the show built the entire Warlord part of the story out and then, at the end, they decided that they preferred for both the Warlord and the Engineer to be just absolutely transparent in their villainy, so you end up with the whole mid-riot confession getting squeezed out. It seems to me like there might have been any number of other ways to deal with any of the individual plot components that would have worked out better without the rest (i.e. either leave the whole Warlord component out, or leave the whole rape component out, but don't try to make some sort of orrible peanut butter in chocolate thing like this). On the plus side, at this point the show has to be all raped out, so hopefully this won't be brought up again, and next week we finally get back to the ramifications of shooting nuclear missiles into Pakistan.
Yeah, looks like next week will erase the mostly bad last episode. They don't have much time and spending it on a poorly contrived and poorly written episode seems like quite a waste. That said, yay, back to nukes!
So....okay. Wait a second. We sent in Seal Team Sucks to Pakistan - a nuclear-armed nation (which I know because the impact to every other frigging disadvantage I ran in high school was nuclear war between India and Pakistan over Jammu and Kashmir) - to plant nuclear material? I get that there's a difference between warheads and suitcase bombs, but...really? I think I need a freaking history lesson on this universe. I would buy Iran much more readily than Pakistan. Of course, at this point Iran doesn't have a nuclear armed nation on its border, pissed as hell, and prepared to invade immediately, so you couldn't do this particular story, but still. uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh</Tina> Which isn't to say that the episode itself was bad - just a touch implausible. I kind of liked the episode itself, though my very first reaction when the Pakistani navy showed up was "point the missiles at their capitol." The bit with Autumn Reeser on the radio was initially a little confusing (I thought she was on the boat until the first party scene, and even then it took me a minute to figure out whether we were still in the flashback that we had just finished or not), and I'm a little surprised that Jay Karnes is really okay with just being a voice on the radio for, like, ninety percent of this series, but I still enjoyed it.
Just wait until I grant that topicality is not a voting issue and then counter-plan with the affirmative case in the 2NC. How's that for some genuine cross-ex gibberish.
I still remember winning that quarterfinals round (I think, anyway - might have been earlier, because we lost the round after) at the UT Invitational against the B team from the school that won nationals the year before (whose name I wish I could remember - all I'm getting back is that it's the one that Sandy Berger's son went to, and possibly that he was half of the winning team), on a kritik of statism, with Bill Shanahan as a judge. That was pretty sweet. I think I might also have qualified DX there. Either that or I won Impromptu, for whatever that's worth. I do miss that a little. None of that, however, explains why Dutch was trying to frame Pakistan for having a different kind of nuclear weapons than the ones they actually had. I do kind of hope that gets explained at some point. I also wish that Pakistan was really landlocked like I had at first thought, so that the image I had in my head of the Pakistani Navy being four guys in a bathtub with a super soaker was funny instead of just being entirely incorrect.
Not TV related: Judging by the awesome video, Shanahan is well after my time. My biggest claim to fame was defeating the Bronx Sci dream team (Noah and Noah) at UK Tournament of Champions after getting the 1NC to grant me 3 minutes of disad he run just in cross-examination (hint: know your contradictory disads before you read them) and we were running the biggest target case possible that year. The topic was "Resolved: That the federal government should implement a comprehensive long-term agricultural policy in the United States." and we ran feed starving Africans, which everyone was afraid to run after summer workshops ended. Surprisingly, 'better' rated teams handled it worse - the hot team from Lake Braddock that year was fucking pissed at us for running it and lost their shit in rebuttals. Then I saw Hanna Rosin and David Coleman from Stuyvesant completely flip the script on the other finalist team, I think it was mostly Coleman's 2AR, in which, after the standard high speed spreading of the previous speeches, he gave the most calm, slow and utterly rational speech that completely melted the other team and the minds of everyone watching. The boring judges gave the other team the win, but anyone with a soul could see that Coleman had destroyed not just the other team, but the entire modern practice (spreading, nuke war disads, etc.) of Cross-Ex Debate in less than 4 minutes. That basically got me out of the 'sport'. I tried two tournaments a few months later, during my first year of college, but Coleman's speech had stayed with me and I was done with debate. For the better. TV Related: I hate the dumbing down on nukes on shows. What used to be a 200lb nuclear backpack, sometimes casually called a "nuclear bullet", became a suitcase nuke, and now this show gives us nuclear pipe bombs (dirty bomb, different deal). I'm not a scientist but I recall reading something about the minimum size of device you'd need to trigger a nuclear chain reaction being in the 50lb range (and the core should be spherical) . And there's the W54-SADM, wikipedia tells me. I don't think they'll explain Dutch's pipe-nukes vs. others, other than maybe they were giving the small ones to terrorists or something. But you gotta love how there's nothing about a nuke missile going off in the Atlantic 200 miles from DC at all. And if that isn't a big deal, why doesn't everyone get in on the action? "India, look West from Mumbai and tell me if you see a bright flash in 3, 2, 1 . . . yeah, now why don't you pull your guy back?"
It's good to see David Rees Snell outside of The Shield. He actually gets to do something in this show too. One week ago: What in the christ was that Chinese carrier hauling? Weaponized rice? Combustible soy sauce? Nuclear misos? Because I found it a little bit odd when the bullets the destroyer was discharging made fiery explosions. It would also be neat if maybe yet another show wasn't fascinated with numbers stations, but whatever. I've got The Americans coming up to potentially irritate me in that regard as well. This week: I love Dichen Lachman, but this show should probably have just given up on her at the break. She's a confused, jumbled character that didn't work out and she's getting in the way of the rest of the story playing out. That's too bad. I really wanted to like her. Also, having Serrat launch a poetry slam is not making me love him any more. I really hope he doesn't make it out. Mostly, though, this episode was some really bad scheduling on ABC's part. There's only one hour left. We all know this. The network really, really should have packed this with the next episode and run them both together. It was particularly interesting, though, that ABC continues to pitch the next episode as the season finale. They really, really don't like saying that their shows are canceled, do they? I shouldn't read too much into it, but I do still hold out some hope that this show could come back for a single season to pair with S.H.I.E.L.D. so that it's going on at 9:00, rather than 8:00. It also feels like the show might actually hit a decent conclusion either way, though, so I guess I'm satisfied.
Brian, I thought you realized that everything on TV explodes. Car gets shot? It explodes. Boat gets shot? It explodes. Small child's bike gets shot? It explodes.
How many episodes are left-I forget. That said, I thought I hand an idea of how the show was going to pan out (naturally I was thinking some happy ending resolution) but that last episode came as a bit of a surprise-in a good way.
One. And it should be fairly conclusive. There's an outside chance that it could get picked up if, like, a tanker truck turns over and explodes five or six actors, but it's kind of an unlikely proposition.
Ah ok. Yeah it should be a decent finale. I still think it would have made a better mini-series but eh, beats most of the stuff on TV.
