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

Season 2.. here we go.

Strong premiere. TNT is promoting this show as summer television's blockbuster, and these two hours certainly lived up to that promise.


I half wondered if they'd filmed this two-parter back to back with the season finale, because it certainly picked up right where things had left off. The continuity was well done. And since at least three of the guest actors -- Alfre Woodard, Titus Welliver and Jade Pettyjohn -- had been cast as series regulars in other shows after the finale aired, I was worried their characters would be written off offscreen or be not-so-subtly recast. Fortunately, that wasn't the case. Woodard and Welliver's characters were a front and center presence in these two hours, and both received deaths worthy of their casting. It looks like the show is eager to move on from Baltimore, so perhaps that was always the plan. Pettyjohn's character is the young daughter of the redeemed-in-death Dr. Quincy Tophet, so my guess is that grieving mother and daughter will be either quietly allowed to fade into the background or will decide to stay ashore when the Nathan James finally arrives at some place safe.


Woodard was terrific in her role. The writing on this show is not always the most nuanced or subtle, but she really brought this horrible person to life in a three-dimensional way. Someone who is arrogant enough to think she can rebuild the world, and single-minded enough to block out the moral qualms that would get in the way of her plans. Some of her reactions as her grand project crumbled around her were particularly telling.


The stuff on the ship reminded me of a Die Hard or an Olympus Has Fallen, in a good way. I'm not sure I bought the XO's exultant whooping and hollering in the security cabin, given that he had always presented himself as a tightly controlled and taciturn man in the first season. That said, it was supremely satisfying to watch.


The stuff with the incinerator plant using the corpses of the "cured" as fuel source to generate electricity was a truly horrifying sequence. I applaud the show from not shying away from the darker implications of the scenario being presented.


The stuff with the captain's family in the abandoned house with the Master Chief was an interesting sort of mixed bag. In some beats, Chandler's daughter was the typical two-dimensional child character. But then other beats she didn't react like a child of our world would, like the complete non-reaction as they stepped over the body of the Avocet henchmen, or when she argued with her grandfather about who would go out when they'd both started to suspect that the master chief was dead. It's a fascinating thing to explore what the end of the world and collapse of civilization does to children. Certainly there's plenty to study from the children who today are growing up in parts of the world that seem perpetually seized by conflict. I'm not sure that this episode got the balance right, but it's something I hope they explore more, even if the kids are (and should be) a very small part of the overall show.


I'm sure these episodes were filmed before the rioting and upheaval in Baltimore, but I really liked the scene between Tex and the local kid, which the audience might expect to go one way but takes a very different path. I like anything that makes people more complex and unpredictable than the stereotypes we surround ourselves with. Sometimes two people who have no reason to trust each other do so anyway, and sometimes the fate of very important things depends on it.


Overall, it definitely did what a premiere is supposed to do, which is to keep me watching. I'm definitely on board for another go-round.

Nice start to season 2. It looks like it will be a wild ride for our characters. The incinerators reminded me of Torchwood - Miracle Day. There are a lot of familiar elements in the series, but lots of excitement.

Both episodes were A+. Better than most Hollywood thrillers these days

Meant to post in here yesterday, but yeah -- this show is like Breaking Bad, in the sense that it's easily the quickest goddamn hour on television. Each episode seems to just freaking fly past, and I can't pay a show a higher compliment than that.

While tonight's show wasn't the action thriller of the two-hour season opener, I thought it was an even better episode. It grappled the most directly of any episode so far with the human toll this struggle takes, and did a great job balancing hope and despair. The show spent the whole first season desperately clinging to a faint hope that they could beat this thing. I'm really excited to see the show seriously explore the mechanics of how that would be accomplished. The dilemmas and choices made by the various characters rang true to me, and the three outcomes we saw -- Kara being reunited with her mother, the Chief Engineer learning her family had perished in the outbreak, and the XO being left with the maddening uncertainty of not knowing if his family was alive or dead -- were a nice representative cross-section of the plausible outcomes.


Having the grandfather stay with the captain's two kids in their old home while Dr. Tophet's widow and daughter are settled in the house next door was a nice way of organically getting the children off the show so that it can refocus on the crew of the Nathan James, while still having the characters available to revisit when the Nathan James returns home. I thought the scene where the daughter was furious with the captain for wanting to stay with her and her brother because she felt it was a betrayal of her mother's memory was very well done.


The opening sequence with the Nathan James making the excursion to the White House to try and reestablish contact with the command structure and retrieve any worthwhile intelligence on what they're up against was very effective. Seeing the most heavily guarded building in the world, the seat of the government of the most powerful nation on earth ransacked and vandalized like any other abandoned building was very eery, as was the implication that the top brass had locked themselves away in the bunker and died there. But then they get the data files back to the ship, and it wasn't a complete waste, with the civilian leadership having already planned for the Nathan James's return with a cure and laid the logistical groundwork to distribute it as widely and efficiently as possible before they met their fates. After Amy Granderson's dystopian horror show in Baltimore, it was nice to see parts of the U.S. Government had done what we'd expect of them.


Likewise, having roughly half the labs up and running and in communication felt like a reasonable outcome that was neither the best case nor worst case scenario. Many shows would have been afraid to give the crew this much success for fear of running out of story. I'm gratified that the writers understand that rebuilding the world and facing the challenges that come with that provide at least as many storytelling opportunities as never-ending despair.


This cult of the Chosen are clearly going to make things difficult for the Nathan James going forward, and given their apparent desire to eradicate the non-immune to purify the species, having a carrier that spreads the disease wherever he goes has to be a heck of an ace in the hole. It does raise questions about how widespread their network is, and how aggressively they can move against the cure given that even their followers likely have non-immune family members that they would like to be spared.


Even if the Nathan James was magically able to put the cure into everybody still alive right at this point in time, 70-80 percent of the world's population is already dead. It represents a massive genetic bottle-necking for the human race. In terms of the global population, it's the equivalent of turning back the clock to around 1880.

Adam Lenhardt said:

This cult of the Chosen are clearly going to make things difficult for the Nathan James going forward, and given their apparent desire to eradicate the non-immune to purify the species, having a carrier that spreads the disease wherever he goes has to be a heck of an ace in the hole. It does raise questions about how widespread their network is, and how aggressively they can move against the cure given that even their followers likely have non-immune family members that they would like to be spared.

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I don't think the cult members know yet that he is a carrier (and definitely not that he started it all). It will be interesting to see how it evolves. There are a lot of different directions it can go.

Adam Lenhardt said:

Likewise, having roughly half the labs up and running and in communication felt like a reasonable outcome that was neither the best case nor worst case scenario. Many shows would have been afraid to give the crew this much success for fear of running out of story. I'm gratified that the writers understand that rebuilding the world and facing the challenges that come with that provide at least as many storytelling opportunities as never-ending despair.

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I agree. While I know the standard story plot be that every week their is some big danger to the ship and her crew. I believe a good story plot could be made from doing what they did the other night. Saving and rebuilding the world. A few things...


-I hope this cult doesn't become too big of a part of the story this season.

-Would like them to show them going around the US and seeing how their efforts are going.

-I see how they lost 3 or 4 crewmembers who wanted to stay with their families. I would have suggested they set up housing on base for surviving crews families to keep them safe. Also, would have been nice to see them able to replenish their ranks with sailors who survived the plague...but, who have no ship.

The plot thickens. It looks like the British sub was deliberately infected, since they didn't have a high risk of outside contact and one of the sailors didn't express any surprise whatsoever with the outcome. So it's likely that this cult of the Chosen worked deliberately to undermine the surviving command structures of the world's militaries, which helps explain why the USS Nathan James and the Russian ship were the only ones left when the Nathan James returned to civilization at the beginning of the first season.


Losing the hospital ship but picking up a dozen skilled doctors is a perfect example about how this show generally avoids best case and worst scenarios, finding a believable middle ground.


With them adding the Australian and the Israeli to their ground team, it's interesting to watch the Nathan James -- which more or less is the U.S. Navy at this point -- adapt to a scenario that it would have been impossible to fully plan for. I'm guessing we'll see more and more adaptation as the show goes on, and pragmatism carries the day. I figured one of the newbies would be a plant from the Chosen, but I was happy that that doesn't seem to be the case.


It was nice to see that the immune Jamaican woman Bertrise, who was key to them finding the cure, has found a place on the ship assisting Dr. Scott.

Adam Lenhardt said:

Losing the hospital ship but picking up a dozen skilled doctors is a perfect example about how this show generally avoids best case and worst scenarios, finding a believable middle ground.


With them adding the Australian and the Israeli to their ground team, it's interesting to watch the Nathan James -- which more or less is the U.S. Navy at this point -- adapt to a scenario that it would have been impossible to fully plan for. I'm guessing we'll see more and more adaptation as the show goes on, and pragmatism carries the day. I figured one of the newbies would be a plant from the Chosen, but I was happy that that doesn't seem to be the case.

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I agree. I am glad they didn't leave the hospital ship. Even without the labs. You basically have a fully operational and stocked hospital that can be helpful in Norfolk.


Also, while I like the 2 new crew they did pick up. It would have been nice to see them pick up some extra crew from Navy survivors at Norfolk.

A potentially devastating setback in last night's episode, with only two of the Tomahawks stopped by the Nathan James, and those potentially targeting labs that had already fallen prior to the Nathan James establishing contact. Even if the staff managed to evacuate in time, all of the highly specialized equipment at the labs will have been destroyed.


While the Astute-class submarine is by far the most advanced and dangerous in the British fleet, the only saving grace is that they're not armed with Trident warheads the way the Vanguard-class submarines are. If they'd had nukes to fire, the staff at the labs wouldn't have been able to run far enough to escape the blasts.


Interesting that Europe was devastated so completely that the only people left are the naturally immune. That changes the calculation significantly.

The question in my mind is after these fanatics have taken control, what do they think they will do next? How will just the naturally immune survive and continue on? It is bad enough with just those who haven't been killed yet. It just doesn't add up, but then fanaticism rarely does.

What's the deal with the guy who is a "carrier", yet immune?


Didn't he die last season when the Russian ship was blown up? Yet he's miraculously the one survivor?


Really enjoy this show, very high quality, but having him survive is a bit of a stretch.

Stan said:

What's the deal with the guy who is a "carrier", yet immune?


Didn't he die last season when the Russian ship was blown up? Yet he's miraculously the one survivor?


Really enjoy this show, very high quality, but having him survive is a bit of a stretch.

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I thought there was a scene in that episode of him getting to some safe boat that was escaping from the Russian ship. Any survivors in that boat would have succumbed to being exposed to him. Note, it still seems that the other immune survivors do not know that he is a carrier.

NeilO said:

The question in my mind is after these fanatics have taken control, what do they think they will do next? How will just the naturally immune survive and continue on? It is bad enough with just those who haven't been killed yet. It just doesn't add up, but then fanaticism rarely does.

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Assuming that 5 percent of the world's population is immune -- or roughly 1 in 20 people -- that would still leave more than 360 million people left on planet earth, even without factoring in the ten thousand or so being immunized by the Baltimore lab every day. It would be a pretty cataclysmic setback, but not unrecoverable.


But more importantly, they've adopted a philosophy that the virus is another Great Flood sent by God to wipe the wicked and unworthy from the world. The immune survived because God selected them as the chosen people for his new, purified world. So from that perspective, the Chandler and the cure represent an affront to God, and a defiance of God's will.

Stan said:

What's the deal with the guy who is a "carrier", yet immune?


Didn't he die last season when the Russian ship was blown up? Yet he's miraculously the one survivor?


Really enjoy this show, very high quality, but having him survive is a bit of a stretch.

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The ship wasn't completely blown up, but it badly damaged. Still the Russian sailors who survived the initial blast likely would have survived too -- if the Norwegian hadn't infected them. Once he was walking around outside the protective seal, they were all doomed.


The Norwegian was the one who first weaponized the virus. When he realized he was immune, he began testing it on himself, and in the process turned himself into a carrier. His travels through Europe in the days and weeks after this occurred explain why Europe was even more badly decimated than the rest of the world; it was the sourse of thousands of independent vector points, from everyone who shared a room with him before they realized that there was even anything to fear.

Not happy with the missiles destroying most of the labs. Kinda makes all of the story plots from the first few episodes this season moot...

todd s said:

Not happy with the missiles destroying most of the labs. Kinda makes all of the story plots from the first few episodes this season moot...

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My hope is that at least some of the lab sites had their own means of defense,

Dheiner said:

My hope is that at least some of the lab sites had their own means of defense,

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And even if only a few of the labs survive the missile attacks, the mission to cure humanity is still significantly better off than it was before the season started. Since the Baltimore lab wasn't one of the government-designated sites, it wouldn't have been on the sub's list and therefore was unlikely to have been a target.


So at minimum, 10,000 doses a day are still flowing out to the American people.

Enjoyed the last episode quite a bit but had to groan when they showed the torpedoes acting like their stupid predecessors from WWII. Spearfish torpedoes have active sonar and will re-engage should they miss their target. I don't know enough about the weapons systems to know if an inexperienced crew could have short-changed their abilities, but given the current state of the art with intelligence built into weapons it seems doubtful. A minor critique of an otherwise solid episode.


Hope the sub (and the Chosen Ones) stick around as adversaries for season two.


- Walter.

That target should have been toasted. Even with 1980's weaponry, a unrestricted sub would destroy ANY SURFACE SHIP one on one. A sub against a destroyer? =Many sailors treading water.