Adam Lenhardt
Senior HTF Member
This is a show about a U.S. guided missile destroyer that returned from a four-month top secret mission in the Arctic circle carried out under radio silence to learn that 80 percent of the world's population has been wiped out by a global pandemic.Unlike some very expensive shows where you wonder where the money went, this is a show where you can tell every penny made it onscreen. This was movie quality for pretty much the entire hour. The script was a little shaky, but the show was at its best when it absorbed itself with the mechanics of how a destroyer operate; I don't know how accurate it was, but the attention to the "how" lent the show a visceral quality that other shows built around a Navy vessel, like Last Resort, lacked. Taking the time to address how they get food and get fueled also allowed me to invest in the world in a way that lazier shows wouldn't have.I also have to give the show points for going full out from the get-go. Rather than spending a season on the verge of the outbreak, the show starts pretty much from the get-go with the worst case scenario. Worse than having a swarm of enemies after them, they are an oasis of order and calm in a world that has descended into chaos. Nuclear weapons are flying and they don't know the whos or the whys, just what they have to do to stay out of the fallout. There is just enough of a sliver of hope for the proceedings to have weight and meaning, since the fate of the world ultimately turns out to reside in the bowels of this ship.It reminded me the most of On the Beach, with Gregory Peck. Hopefully this show has a happier ending.