Ok. I only assume that's what happened on Earth H. In reality, I really have loved submarines and submarine stories. 2000 Leagues Under the Sea, The Hunt for Red October, Crimson Tide, Run Silent Run Deep, K19 The Widowmaker, U-571 - whether it was watching Jack Ryan play cat and mouse with Marko Ramius or Lt. Andrew Tyler keep his mean together in the face of all those ominous depth charges, I was hooked. If it's got a submarine, I'm in.
So it was with some trepidation that I waded into the waters of the new drama Last Resort. The cast was intriguing, Andre Braugher, Scott Speedman, even Robert Patrick in his customary bad guy role. There was even Dichen Lachman and Jessy Schram, veterans of Dollhouse and Falling Skies respectively. It was an interesting premise. What would good men do when asked to do the unthinkable? What would their actions cause, prevent etc?
The pilot sets the stage well enough. The in boat drama is there. Will they or won't they fire the missiles? Much like Crimson Tide/U571 there is conflict as to who's really in charge of the boat. The missiles aren't fired but it doesn't matter as another warship nukes two areas of Pakistan and the Navy turns on our intrepid heroes.
Once the action shifts to the small island that the crew basically invades, the story necessarily changes. This really isn't a show about a submarine. It wants to be a show about right and wrong, noble and evil actions and to make the audience think about the consequences of all of the preceding. Yet to me this is where the butter gets spread to thin on the bread.
The captain has a son, who's serving in the middle east currently and will be directly impacted by nuclear attacks. Speedman as the XO not only has a lovely wife at home but also an added back story of torture and Russian roulette in a North Korean prison camp. Daisy Betts as arguably the female lead of the show plays a common Hollywood military cliche, the unprepared officer who is in over her head. As if that wasn't enough, she's also the daughter of an Admiral, so it's clearly just a political post. Or is it.
Two episodes in and the plot is expanding rapidly. We haven't even touched on the people who live on the island, the NATO listening post, the thinly created female Tony Stark (Autumn Reeser) who lives in DC and is brilliant, beautiful and tough as nails. She created a device that is basically the Caterpillar drive from Red October. Last Resort wants to be a grand drama that has many different plot points that all weave together - not unlike Tom Clancy's style of writing. Two recent dramas with large casts actually succeeded, Lost and Battlestar Galactica. However, neither of those series tried to go so deep so fast.
If there is one thing that can be learned from a lifetime of loving submarine stories, it's that the deeper you go, the more pressure there is. Only two episodes in, I'm worried that Last Resort might be out of it's depth.
