The Last Ship Season 2 (TNT) (1 Viewer)

[NeilO]

For a bit I was wondering why they didn't use the Valkyrie network to sent the truth message out, but then I realized that if they had done that, then the sub would have just started wiping out "normals" left and right. They needed to get rid of the sub first.


Now I hope that the truth message, including the video of the cure in action, will go out in the next episode. I expect that the remaining immune crazies will step up their actions before they are taken care of.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Very strong finale. Much like the first season finale in Baltimore, it feels like it shifts the show into a new chapter with different dynamics.


It can be easy to underestimate John Pyper-Ferguson's acting skills on this show, since Tex is such a big, bold crowdpleaser of a character, but he's a masterful actor at the small moments too. That being the case, we are so invested in Tex as a character by this point that his reunion with his daughter in Memphis was really moving.


CMC Jeter is the moral center of the show, and Charles Parnell is brilliant in that capacity, but it was nice to see him make a mistake. Like all good writing, it was a perfectly understandable and relatable mistake; put on the spot, in that moment, he wasn't willing to send his in-laws, the only link he had left to his wife and kids, into danger -- even though the communication was a grave strategic mistake. And then, like the decent man that he is, he fessed up to it without excuses. The captain understood what a huge mistake it was, but he also weighed it against his exemplary service up until that point. He had that frame of reference in a way that the president didn't. So he took in the president's anger, and defused it.


If I had any complaint, it's that they should have ended the finale with the federal judge administering the oath of office to Michener in St. Louis, or with the captain and Dr. Scott exchanging good byes in the hallway after the inaugural ball. The cliffhanger with Dr. Scott being shot at close range felt tacked on and unnecessary, like the show wasn't confident that audiences would come back without a thread dangling.

 

[NeilO]

Very strong finale. ....


If I had any complaint, it's that they should have ended the finale with the federal judge administering the oath of office to Michener in St. Louis, or with the captain and Dr. Scott exchanging good byes in the hallway after the inaugural ball. The cliffhanger with Dr. Scott being shot at close range felt tacked on and unnecessary, like the show wasn't confident that audiences would come back without a thread dangling.

Yes, it was very strong. I was thinking that they weren't going to end it with some kind of stinger, but then they added on that cheap shot.


Over at the Hollywood Reporter they say that ending and the fate of Dr. Scott:

It was purposely ambiguous. … We like the idea of showing that the show’s not over, that there’re still threats out there. Otherwise, it felt like, “Well, I guess they got the cure. Why keep watching?” It’s part of the structure.

I think that even without the immunes in the US there would be plenty of things to do in the US and then there is the rest of the world to worry about. There really was no need for that. Still, about as good a finale for this season as one could expect.

 

[todd s]

I wish they would show more of other military members coming and joining up. Their has to be other members of the military who survived and would come to serve.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

I wish they would show more of other military members coming and joining up. Their has to be other members of the military who survived and would come to serve.

We might see more of that next season now that the word is presumably getting out that St. Louis is the new de facto U.S. capital. My guess is that, after they resolve the cliffhanger with Dr. Scott, there will be a time jump over the months that the USS Nathan James is in dry dock in St. Louis making repairs. They'll probably spend the first episode or two exploring how things changed over those months, and then we'll be back out to sea.

 

[NeilO]

I'd be very much surprised if there isn't a time jump long enough for the Nathan James to be ready or almost ready to head out during the first episode.

 

[Dheiner]

I would like to see some trips to places to re-supply. They are OUT of ammo, and St Louis is not known as a place for Navy re-supply....


I mean, Loenard Wood might have some stuff, but they need to get somewhere they can re-arm. Maybe a convoy, or something...

 

[Duane R]

Scott AFB in Belleville IL (~20 mi away) is another possible location for supplies.

 

[todd s]

I would like them to get back to DC. Too much historical signifigance and items there to leave unguarded. Also, their are plenty of other naval vessels undamaged and unmanned around the US that the crew can use.


Was talking to a friend in the Army. He is annoyed they haven't come across any soldiers who survived and want to hook up with the crew.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

For those interested, TNT is airing a Memorial Day marathon of the entire second season tomorrow starting at 7 AM Eastern.

Ahead of the Season 3 premiere two weeks from today, I've been re-watching the first two seasons on Blu-Ray.

My thoughts on the first season episodes are available at the following links:
1x01; 1x02; 1x03; 1x04; 1x05; 1x06, 1x07 and 1x08; 1x09 and 1x10

Season 2, Episode 1 - "Unreal City"
and
Season 2, Episode 2 - "Fight the Ship"

Taken together, the first season finale and the first two episodes of the second season form a tense, tightly plotted action film. It has feature-quality guest actors in Alfre Woodard (as the insidious Amy Granderson) and Titus Welliver (as the rebel leader Thorwald -- likely a tip of the hat to Welliver's close resemblance to Raymond Burr in Rear Window).

They did a great job creating the world of post-apocalyptic Baltimore by carefully piecing together locations in Southern California. Again I have to praise the writers' willingness to burn through story; lesser shows would have spent the entire second season trying to defeat Granderson. Three episodes felt just right; any less would have undermined the seriousness of the threat, while any more would have dragged things out unnecessarily.

The final dialog-free sequence (set to "To The River" by Down Like Silver) as the crew of the U.S.S. Nathan James treats the wounded, mops the blood off the deck, and prepares the bodies for ceremonial burial at sea is one of the most moving I can recall. And then the final beat, as Chandler takes in the scene of the aftermath and turns to Slattery: "So this is home." Wow.
(For my original, more in-depth thoughts on these first two episodes, click here.)

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Season 2, Episode 3 - "It's Not a Rumor"

I remember this episode as the high water mark of the second season, and it many ways that is because it best represents the potential built into the show's DNA. It does a phenomenal job intertwining the personal journeys of the crew of the U.S.S. Nathan James with the plot mechanics of beating back a plague that nearly wiped humanity out. From the opening scenes in a looted and ransacked White House, to the discovery of the video (with a cameo from the real life Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus playing himself) outlining the network of labs set up by the federal government in anticipation of the U.S.S. Nathan James succeeding in its mission, to the planes delivering the necessary supplies to start operations up and running in the handful of domestic labs and two European labs that managed to hold on, all of the pieces are in place for a satisfying finale if this had been a limited series event. All they'd have had to do was excise the subplot with Niels Sørensen and the immunes.

The homefront stuff is exceptional. You can feel Chandler's ache when, upon returning to his house with his father and children, he sniffs the bottle of his wife's perfume. The other three stories we follow capture the spectrum from optimal outcome (Lt. Foster discovering that her mother is alive and thriving) to the worst possible outcome (the chief engineer learning that her entire family had succumbed to the virus, from hospital records cataloging the innumerable dead) to something perhaps even more unbearable (the XO discovering evidence of his family's recent presence, but no conclusive answers about their whereabouts or whether they're alive).

The only thing that put a damper on my enjoyment this second time through is the knowledge of what is coming, that so much of what they have achieved is soon to be senselessly ground into dust.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Forgot to post this yesterday...

Season 2, Episode 4 - "Solace"

With the first three episodes used to wrap up the storylines from the first season, the second season arc really kicks off in this fourth hour. A member of the crew discovers that the naval hospital ship USNS Solace -- a fictionalized version of the USNS Comfort, the Norfolk-based counterpart to the San Diego-based USNS Mercy (aboard which this episode was shot) -- was retrofitted with a vaccine-producing lab three times the size of Dr. Scott's lab on the Nathan James and was sent out to sea to be protected from the virus. With the capability to go where the cure was needed most, it should have been the answer to their prayers and the culmination of their mission to spread the cure.

But alas they arrive just barely too late. The lab is destroyed, most of the crew of the Solace is dead, and a highly-trained international team of skilled fighters is spread out throughout the ship. This is the first confrontation between the immunes and the U.S.S. Nathan James, and neither side has a clear understanding of the other yet. But, thanks to the Scandinavian walking plague rat Niels Sørensen, the immunes will be up to speed long before Chandler and his team. Things will get far worse before they get better.

The one silver lining is that they got roughly a dozen skilled doctors, a functioning hospital ship and a skilled virologist to replace Quincy.

This second time through, I'm convinced that Sean Ramsay intentionally infected the British submarine to seize it for his cause. While his brother panicked as their fellow soldier died around them, Sean wasn't surprised in the slightest, as if everything was going according to plan.

Apparently the ship was repaired and restocked at Norfolk, as all of the problems and supply shortages of the past several months (resulting from the extended mission in the Arctic, the skirmishes with the Russians, and the seige in Baltimore) seem to be behind them. To replenish their ground team they added a member of the Australian special forces and an Israeli intelligence officer.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Season 2, Episode 5 - "Achilles"

This is a frustrating episode. On the one hand, it's a nail-bitingly suspenseful hour of television as Chandler and Ramsay play a lethal game of chess, with Ramsay having the clear advantage via his Astute class submarine, the HMS Achilles. On the other hand, the complete destruction of all the labs producing the vaccine is a disheartening push of the reset button that basically puts the show back to where it was at the end of the penultimate episode of the first season. Only without the hope that a working lab is out there. I would have strongly preferred it if a couple of the labs had survived, only their output wasn't sufficient to produce the cure on the scale needed to really turn the tide. Until this episode's devastating ending, the show had been pretty good about charting a reasonable middle course between the best and worst case scenarios.

In this episode, Dr. Scott estimates that between 1 and 5 percent of the world's population is immune. More than 80 percent of the world's pre-pandemic population is already dead at this point, and it's unclear whether she's talking a percent of the pre-pandemic population or only those that are still alive. If it's the former, there would be between 73 million and 366 million people worldwide with natural immunity. If it's the latter, there would be 14 million and 73 million people worldwide with natural immunity. Regardless of which figures you go with, the upshot of that is that Red Flu can no longer be seen as an extinction level event. It would be a devastating loss, to be sure, if the Ramsay succeeded in wiping out the non-immune survivors, setting the global population back to somewhere between 3000 BC and 1300 AD. But there would still be enough people left for humanity to come back from the brink.

This redefines the ship's mission. It's no longer about saving the human race. It's about shaping the future of the human race. If Ramsay wins, the humanity that will go forward will be the millions who survive this brutal Darwinian crucible. If Chandler wins, the humanity that will go forward will be as many of the 1.5 billion people still alive as possible. We're still rooting for Chandler of course, because all life is precious, and humanity will bounce back much better with a late nineteenth century global population than with a global population potentially lower than we've seen in recorded history.

Niels Sørensen wiped out an entire continent as he blithely spread the disease wherever he went, creating a new independent vector point for the virus with each new person he came into contact with. He is a particularly loathsome enemy, because he lacks all of the qualities that compose a villain you can respect. He is a textbook psychopath: devoid of empathy and remorse, arrogant yet desperate for the validation of others, and brazen in a way that demonstrates significant disinihibition. He cared about the cure because he wanted to be remembered as the one who found it. Now, he helps thwart the cure, because doing so means Ramsay and his immune cult will praise him. He's like a small child with a very dangerous book of matches.

In the first season, it was a battle of the minds between two great intellects in Chandler and the Russian admiral. In this season, it's a much more asymmetrical conflict. Chandler is unquestionably the superior intellect. But Ramsay has religious fanaticism on his side, and a growing army of true believers. He's selling a story that will allow the immune survivors to find meaning in incredible loss. Chandler only has the men and women aboard his ship, and only the allegiance of the couple hundred thousand or so who were vaccinated in Baltimore and Norfolk before the labs were destroyed.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Season 2, Episode 6 - "Long Day's Journey"

This is another episode that covers a surprising amount of territory. The episode begins in the aftermath of the sub's attack on all of the labs in the network. The few missiles that the Nathan James was able to stop were headed for the two labs in Europe, but Ramsay's people on the ground were able to take both of them out. Even the Baltimore lab, which wasn't part of the original network, was destroyed because Chandler had it added to the network once they made contact. There was no attempt at compartmentalization because at the time it was unfathomable that anybody would want to destroy the cure.

Chandler is completely fixated on destroying the sub, both out of vengeange for the atrocities it had committed and because it represents the Nathan James's single greatest vulnerability. While the sub is out there, prowling the seas, Chandler can't feel that the Nathan James is safe.

Dr. Scott convinces him to send a team to the Florida lab, which was raided first and provided the necessary intel for the attacks on the other labs. All of the servers and harddrives with her mentor's research were destroyed, but they find cultures that will allow them to continue their limited production of the cure on board the Nathan James. She also finds a partially complete structural formula of Dr. Hunter's power-based version of the cure on one of the whiteboards.

As Dr. Scott returns to the ship to begin the task of recreating Dr. Hunter's work, the captain leads a team deep into Florida swamplands to infiltrate the immunes. They are led straight into the lion's den, encountering Sean Ramsay in person for the first time as well as the ace up his sleeve: the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Jeffrey Michener, is one of the immunes and the only survivor in the presidential line of succession. Ramsay introduces him as twelfth in the line of succession, though the HUD secretary is normally thirteenth. So either Ramsay got it wrong, or one the secretaries ahead of him at the onset of the pandemic was only acting secretary and therefore excluded. Given that the real Secretary of the Navy played himself in a previous episode, it's also possible that the writers were operating based on the real world reality at the time the episode was shot: Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell is a naturalized rather than natural-born citizen and is thus excluded from the line of succession.

Either way, it's a twist that changes their understanding of the situation significantly. Michener is an asset of enormous symbolic value for whichever side controls him.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Season 2, Episode 7 - "Alone and Unafraid"

This episode marks the midway point of the second season, and I continue to be impressed with how quickly the plot progresses on this show. The previous episode introduced Mark Moses as HUD Secretary Jeffrey Michener, who under the terms of the Presidential Succession Act is the person who "shall act as President" and "discharge the powers and duties of the office of President." By the end of this episode, he is on board the Nathan James, held in a rather murky status somewhere between protective custody and involuntary detention.

The fight scene in the kitchen -- in which Chandler, Lt. Burk and Lt. Bivas use whatever they can get their hands on to beat back and then kill the president's protective detail -- is my favorite of the series so far. It's brutal, inventive and kinetic.

Elsewhere, Lt. Green discovers that Niels Sørensen has invented a Glade PlugIn dispenser for the virus, and is loading them into teddy bears to infect vulnerable communities through their children. It brings to mind uncomfortable parallels to when settlers would wipe out Native American populations by sending them smallpox-infected blankets. But by targeting children specifically, Sørensen's plan is a step even more insidious. Soon Lt. Green finds himself in a position where he has to blow his cover or infect a grade school age girl with the virus. Fortunately, that is not a line he is willing to cross and he takes out the two immune foot soldiers with lethal efficiency.

This in turn leads to a shootout between Tex one one side and Ned Ramsay and his deputies on the other. Ned is grazed in the face by one of Tex's bullets, while Sørensen takes a bullet to gut. Later, when Sørensen complains that he is likely dying from his injuries as they prepare to rendezvous with the helicopter from the Nathan James, Tex tersely replies with my favorite line of the series so far: "Apply pressure, dipshit!"

Back on the destroyer, Dr. Scott tests the first version of the powder-based cure. It works, but in such a limited way as to have almost no practical utility. She still needs to find a way for the powder-based version to preserve its potency as it's dispersed through the air.

By the end of the episode the threat of the plague-spreading teddy bears has been neutralized and Sørensen is in custody about the destroyer. After a number of crushing blows, this episode provides our protagonists with some much needed wins. The resulting setbacks for immune world domination deepen the rift between the Ramsay brothers. Sean remains undeterred from what he sees as his divine mission. Ned's priorities are ensuring the safety of the sub's crew, destroying the Nathan James, and returning to England. But Sean still has some big cards left to play, and the Nathan James still has a long way to go before its original mission is back on track.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Season 2, Episode 8 - "Safe Zone"

I've been really impressed this second time through with what (aside from a few hiccups) has consistently been an engaging action-adventure genre series. But what made this episode stand out the first time through and certainly makes it stand out in the revisiting is how it sets aside the audience's usual expectations for the show to tell a nuanced, heartbreaking and at times nearly unbearably grim human drama.

By making an episode that took place entirely aboard the ship and predominantly within the show's handful of standing sets, it had to save them money that they could employ in the much more expensive episodes to come. But it also highlights the greater opportunities afforded by 13 episodes instead of 10. The plot requirements of this episode were simple: swing Michener from the cause of the immunes to the Nathan James's cause. In terms of larger developments, there were only two: the discovery of the propaganda broadcast spreading falsehoods about the Nathan James to get the populace to turn against it, and the ship moving out of mouth of the St. Johns River to begin its trip around Florida toward New Orleans.

But every scene was perfectly scripted (except for maybe the Master Chief referring to Chandler as a soldier) and perfectly acted. Series best work from Eric Dane, who had the tough task of mostly emoting through listening, and a stellar guest turn from Mark Moses as the president.

I love that Chandler didn't try to absolve Michener of his guilt or his culpability. Instead, he opened up about his own guilt and sense of culpability, and presented their mission as penance. Ramsay had handed Michener absolution, but on some level Michener knew he didn't deserve absolution. Chandler's narrative provides a better reason for him to pull himself out of bed in the morning and keep moving forward.

Season 2, Episode 9 - "Uneasy Lies the Head"

This episode was the "El Toro" episode of the second season. The A plot, with the Nathan James encountering a group of armed teenagers who'd been abandoned at their summer camp, felt contrived and the drama it produced felt very "TV" in a nineties syndicated sort of a way.

But the episode was still better than "El Toro" because of the other things going on. For one, the episode provided a showcase for Lt. Bivas's resignation at the intractability of war. She came from a military in a part of the world where dueling ideologies and religions and tribal associations all get muddled up into centuries-long conflicts that turn children into killers. Then she joins up with the Nathan James and sees spreading the cure as something that can finally put all of that behind us, a great unifying moment for humanity. And then the immunes come along, and she feels like she's back where she started. And again, children are being turned into soldiers.

For another, Michener finding his footing. Charles Parnell did good work as the Master Chief, providing the president with the reinforcement he needed to move forward. And Michener's tenure as HUD secretary actually provided the ideal training for the challenges facing the civilian government moving forward, since he'd have been immersed in issues of housing and community development that will be central to reestablishing civilization in an America with less than a fifth of its former population. At least in the short term, that means identifying areas where the utilities and infrastructure can be quickly brought back to life and overseeing the mass migration of the survivors spread out across the country to those areas.

But the main highlight of this episode was Dr. Scott's brutally efficient means of harvesting Niels Sørensen's lungs to development a contagious cure. She flagrantly broke her Hippocratic Oath by playing God. She murdered him, as surely if she'd shot him in the head, and far more painfully. It was an immoral act, which may ultimately save millions of lives. One of the benchmarks of a moral outlook is adhering to the principle that the ends don't justify the means. If Sørensen were a less deplorable human being, it might be a more difficult moral calculation: the life one one balanced against the lives of the many. But Dr. Scott wanted to murder him. She wanted to snuff out his life, so that he couldn't spread any more horrors into the world. The mechanism she employed to murder him simply allowed his death to have utility.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Season 2, Episode 10 - "Friendly Fire"

I'm not a fan of special treatment for anybody, but if anyone deserved it, it's the woman who saved the human race. In the aftermath of her execution of Niels Sørensen in the prior episode, an investigation is launched into his death. It doesn't take long before she is identified as the culprit. The argument she makes in her defense is a good one: this man is responsible for the deaths of five billion people, and she's going to use the specific mutation of the virus in his lungs to undo what he did and spread the cure the same way. What she comes up against is the captain, who adheres rigidly to old world thinking. There's a logic to his point of view, too: He's asked the impossible of his crew, and they've done it, because they adhere to something greater than themselves. If he allows that to be violated, even for the most important person on the planet, even for the murder of the most reviled person on the planet, the basis for his authority will crumble.

In other news, the Achilles bombs the entire New Orleans flotilla to score a propaganda victory against the Nathan James, murdering tens of thousands of people in the process. Chandler puts the blame for this predicament on Dr. Scott's shoulders as well, because he would have used Niels to combat the propaganda. That is not fair. The most effective propaganda asset is the president, and he's fine. Ramsay outmaneuvered Chandler, by committing an atrocity that Chandler couldn't predict. The blame for that is on Ramsay's shoulders, and Ramsay's alone.

The flashes in the lab, as Dr. Scott reckoned with what she had done, were well-executed. The episode did a good job reminding the audience that she's taken another human being's life, one she didn't have to, and that that action carries some weight.

I enjoyed Tex's conversation with her, where he made it clear that he thought she was guilty and made it equally clear that he wouldn't judge her for it. "Oh, you're ruthless, baby," he tells her. "That's why we're alive today." The character bordered on caricature at times during the first season. They've softened him up just a bit this season, and it's really allowed the humanity that John Pyper-Ferguson projects in spades to shine through.

The shipboard romances are still my least favorite part of the show, but the flirty scene between Lt. Bivas and Lt. Burk in the shower was fun.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Season 2, Episode 11 - "Valkyrie"

This is probably the lowest emotional point in the whole season, with the Navy seen as the enemy by large swathes of the American people, the aftermath of Ramsay's destruction of the New Orleans flotilla still weighing on everybody's minds, and the tension still very thick between the captain and Dr. Scott. The central battle on the oil rig (actually filmed on an oil rig) is yet another example of this show pulling off big screen quality action sequences that would makes the 1980s proud.

The mission goes badly quickly, as what should have been an easy seizure mission becomes a battle for their lives when American civilians taken in by the Ramsay propaganda start firing RPGs at the oil rig.

By the end, four sailors are dead including two with a lot of audience investment: Andy Chung, the Main Propulsion Assistant, had been with the show since the pilot and has saved everybody's ass on more than one occasion. Ravi Bivas, the IDF Lieutenant picked up in Norfolk, became an important part of the ground team and was really starting to build something with Lt. Burk. Her deathbed scene was well-rendered, with particularly great work from Jocko Sims as Lt. Burk tries to protect her from the horrible reality of her situation as she slips away. It's not the kind of acting this show usually requires from its men of action, but he nails it.

All of that loss comes with only one silver lining: They were able to retrieve Valkyrie, a twentysomething woman who was in New Orleans when the virus hit, having just completed her doctorate at Tulane, who runs the seemingly impossible network that Ramsay uses to spread his message. Tania Raymonde, hired by producing director Jack Bender on the basis of their collaboration on "Lost", does a good job in a role that has certain Niels-like qualities that are curbed by an earnest sense of civic responsibility. The writers could have had the Captain, the president or the Master Chief win her over with a speech, but I wouldn't have bought it as a viewer. Instead, they threw her into the thick of the terrible aftermath of Ramsay's machinations, and let her see the human cost of the propaganda her network had spread. She sat there and watched while people suffered and died around her, and the very fact that she is a moral human being allowed the reality of what she was witnessing to change her mind on its own.

My favorite moment came near the end, as Dr. Scott nursed him after the initial surgery to remove the shrapnel. The deep freeze started to melt a bit, and Chandler actually thanked her for saving his life (and, unstated, for saving the world.)

Season 2, Episode 12 - "Cry Havoc"

The effects that take a ship anchored in San Diego and put it sailing through the Mississippi River Delta are phenomenal. Other than a few questionable shots of the CG Nathan James, it was seamless.

I wasn't originally intending to watch this episode tonight, but after the events of "Valkyrie", I was badly in need of some catharsis.

The entire episode was a pleasure, as the tide finally turned our heroes' way. The scene on land where Dr. Scott cures a dying girl by breaking on her gave me chills when the episode aired, and it gives me chills now. And that act of generosity points the ground team to Ramsay's insurance policy, which in turn saves the Nathan James by destroying the sub. Seldom has such a terrible fate been better deserved.

Now, with the head cut off the snake, the really hard work begins.

 

[Stan]

Looking forward to its return, very well done. Came across a site that said it's only going have six episodes this summer. Is that true?

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Season 2, Episode 13 - "A More Perfect Union"

I don't know that I noticed how heavy the Civil War allusions were the first time through. From the title (taken from Lincoln's Inaugural Address, which was quoting the preamble of the U.S. Constitution); to the trip up the Mississippi River with stops in Vicksburg (where Grant's successful siege finally turned the war in the Union's favor) and then Memphis (which the Union army occupied for most of the war) and finally St. Louis (a border state battleground with sympathizers for both sides of the war); to the immune would-be assassin quoting John Wilkes Booth's "sic semper tyrannis" exclamation as he shoots the unarmed savior of America (and mankind).

It's also amazing yet again how much ground this episode covers, starting just outside New Orleans at the mouth of the Mississippi River, making three stops to vaccinate survivors, reuniting Tex with his daughter, putting down the last stand of the immunes, traveling the roughly 1,270 river miles from New Orleans to St. Louis (as opposed to the roughly 700 Interstate miles in a car), reuniting the Master Chief with his dead wife's parents, and finding a federal judge to administer the Oath of Office to the president. Almost all of which happens in the first three quarters of the episode, leaving the final quarter for true resolution. It was nice that the first sailor toasted at the inaugural ball was Frankie Benz, the show's first casualty in the pilot when he was inadvertently exposed to the virus on the cruise ship and opted to take his own life rather than succumb to the virus's slow, agonizing death.

The episode really benefited from having the Ramsays in the rear view mirror so the show could refocus on its original mission statement of finding and spreading the cure.

I still think the gunshot to Dr. Scott at the end was cheap and unnecessary. I guess we'll find out the outcome on Sunday! It would be a big loss to the show to have to go without Rhona Mitra's talents.

Looking forward to its return, very well done. Came across a site that said it's only going have six episodes this summer. Is that true?

Nope. The renewal press release from Turner back in August confirmed that the network ordered 13 episodes, just like the second season. The big change is that Michael Katleman has replaced Jack Bender as the producing director this season. Bender left to shoot two episodes of "Game of Thrones" for that show's current season. Katleman shot the seventh and eighth episodes of the first season as a guest director, in which the Nathan James found the first immune in Bertrise and had its final showdown with the Russian warship.