The Last Ship Season 3 (TNT) (1 Viewer)

[NeilO]

The really annoying thing about the episode is that even though they said they needed to get their story out through the reporter, they never did anything about it. They should have set something up or even said something more at the press conference - ask whether Shaw killed the previous president.

I also agree about sparing Shaw at that moment. On the other hand, if she had only been wounded that would have been worse, so maybe Kara weighed her options there.

 

[David Weicker]

I also agree about sparing Shaw at that moment. On the other hand, if she had only been wounded that would have been worse, so maybe Kara weighed her options there.

To quote Jack Bauer
Again. I want you to shoot him again. Shoot him again now, Kim. Shoot him again. Now.”

 

[Doug Wallen]

I feel like were on a super ending to this year's very enjoyable roller coaster ride. We've got those marvelous ending curves and loops left to enthrall us. Wow what an episode.

Shame on Kara for allowing prior sentiment cloud her judgment. She should have killed her.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

This week's thematic quote comes from a truly classic film and a truly American film, restored beautifully by Columbia for its Blu-Ray debut in 2014:

"Your friend Mr. Lincoln had his Taylors and Paines, so did every other man who tried to lift his thought up off the ground. Odds against them didn't stop those men, they were fools that way. All the good in this world came from fools with faith like that Jeff, you know that. You can't quit now, not you. They aren't all Taylors and Paines in Washington, that kind just throw big shadows, that's all. You didn't just have faith in Paine or any other living man. You had faith in something bigger than that. You had plain, decent, every day, common rightness. And this country could use some of that. Yeah - so could the whole cock-eyed world. A lot of it."​

There was a scene in this episode that made me genuinely emotional. Chandler and his team had just successfully captured Castillo. The corrupt general glumly turned to address Chandler and supposed that he answered to him now. The implication was clear; he felt he had traded one corrupt autocrat for another. But Chandler responds forcefully in the negative, pointing to the Howard Oliver. "No, you answer to him. Just like I do. Commander in Chief. Attention!" And all of the military personnel present -- army, navy and marines -- turn and salute their president. It was a surprisingly poignant affirmation of the principle of civilian leadership, and the idea that the vast might of the United States of America belongs with the person the people have entrusted to command it. Oliver doesn't have a strong constitutional claim to the presidency, but in a nation that has been torn apart by a cabal of six would-be oligarchs he is the last symbol of a vast and important national heritage of "government of the people, by the people and for the people."

The fact that Chandler was able to collapse the government of the eleven Westernmost states of the contiguous United States by flipping the allegiance of one man and taking another into custody shows what a fragile house of cards this whole scheme really is. The decision to assassinate Beatty when he refused to play ball already destabilized what had been a fragile balance of power between the five regions. The interdependence of resources and production capacity that developed over the course of more than two centuries constitutionally protected interstate commerce always meant that the dream of starkly self-sufficient regions was an impossible one. Most laughable of all is Allison Shaw, who set her country ablaze for pathetically small aims. Based on the map in "Scuttle", the new federal district surrounding St. Louis comprises the eastern half of Missouri and the southern half of Illinois. It has none of the leverage that the regions have. And since it was up close and personal to President Michener, and functioned well under his policies, it is unlikely to tolerate a woman who brought that all crashing down, whether it believes her lies about Chandler or not. It is also difficult to give much truck to the barbarism of the starving masses that Castillo and Shaw keep going on about, since it was their machinations that led to the food shortages.

I think everybody who saw the destroyer explode in the promo at the end of last week's episode guessed that it was the CNS Henan, being used as a decoy to draw the regional leaders' fire. I was glad that hit that beat early in the hour, and only kept the audience in the dark for a commercial break.

It was nice to see Kara and Danny reunited. It was also nice to see Chandler and Tex ruminate a bit on Dr. Scott's passing, as the two strongest candidates to be her love interest in the earlier seasons. Once again, we get a glimpse of the melancholy world of self-incrimination inside Tex's pragmatic, wisecracking exterior.

The last few episodes of this season have been tremendous. My concern is that the season seems unbalanced, with the bulk focused on the nearly interminable mission to rescue the hostages and uncover Peng's true motivations. Perhaps that long build-up was necessary, to give the mounting conspiracy and the breakdown of the orderly and relatively prosperous America under Michener in the season premiere the weight it needed to be truly devious and devastating. But wrapping up the East Asia plot in episode eleven meant that there were only two episodes left to take back America. Either they succeed, and the threat seems too lightweight and the victory too easy, or -- as is increasingly likely -- the season ends on a cliffhanger, with a second American Revolution at the center of next summer's fourth season. The latter option would be deeply unsatisfying, dropping out of the story just when it finally got ramped up. On the other hand, ending with Chandler's defeat of Peng with the regional leaders fully ascendant would have been even worse. So the nature of this season's structure put them in a damned-if-they-do,-damned-if-they-don't dilemma.

 

[NeilO]

I was thinking that blowing up the ship would have been a good episode cliffhanger, except you couldn't do any preview for the next episode. So, making it a commercial break was a nice touch with enough time away from the Nathan James to have some people wonder what really happened for a while.

I would like to see the regional leaders and Shaw defeated in the finale, but that does seem a stretch for one hour. I can't really imagine what next season could satisfyingly cover. Will it really be "The Last Ship" if they are just trying to restore the government, order, and some hope of prosperity to the US again?

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

The Last Ship's Renewal Extended Through Season 5 at TNT

As a result of this news, the show will air at least through Summer 2018. Eric Dane has said in the past that the writers have a five season plan for the show, so it's nice that they'll be able to see that through to its conclusion.

 

[NeilO]

The Last Ship's Renewal Extended Through Season 5 at TNT

As a result of this news, the show will air at least through Summer 2018. Eric Dane has said in the past that the writers have a five season plan for the show, so it's nice that they'll be able to see that through to its conclusion.

5 seasons - I have no idea where they can go there, but I am glad they have a plan.

 

[Stan]

The Last Ship's Renewal Extended Through Season 5 at TNT

As a result of this news, the show will air at least through Summer 2018. Eric Dane has said in the past that the writers have a five season plan for the show, so it's nice that they'll be able to see that through to its conclusion.

OMG Adam, I'm amazed, a short post, not your usual novel

I'm kidding of course, love your input. I'm terribly behind on things, six episodes on the DVR, but never been bothered by spoilers, so fun to read your stuff.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

This week's quote comes from Executive Order 11905, issued by President Gerald R. Ford on February 18, 1976:

"No employee of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, political assassination."​

There was a lot of bad behavior on the part of the United States, with terrible and long lasting consequences, that led President Ford to issue that executive order. But I've always been uneasy with the idea that idea that thousands of soldiers should have to die to accomplish what one well-placed assassin's bullet could achieve. One of my recurring complaints with action shows is that the foot soldiers get killed with impunity while the top dogs are given every opportunity to surrender. The crew of the Nathan James and their supporters killed dozens of men and women whose only real crime was trusting the wrong people, because they stood between the Nathan James and its objectives. But then they took Wilson and Croft hostage, and would have done the same with Price if Shaw hadn't killed her. These are people that took a country that was slowly clawing its way back from the brink and purposely hurled it back into chaos. Presumably they will be tried for treason and, if convicted, executed. But it's a shame that they get to benefit from a system of civil government that they did their damnedest to tear down.

It's why I was ready to scream when it appeared that Shaw was going to walk off that plane, after all of the destruction she'd wrought, after the unnecessary misery she caused even when it should have been clear that the gig was up and her shot at being king of the mountain was over. How many more people would be alive if Kara had pulled the trigger when she had the chance? It's like Batman always locking up the Joker after a homicidal killing spree; how many innocent lives is your moral high ground worth? So I was glad Chandler's moral compass failed him, just this once. The world is a better place with Allison Shaw dead.

It was also an interesting way to end the season: The threat of the regional leaders has been neutralized, but what's left in their wake is a depleted and demoralized American people, suspicious of their leaders -- and for good reason. You have a president who was never elected and never properly confirmed by Congress, who initially carried out the regional leaders' agenda under duress before circumstances permitted his escape. You have Chandler who is deeply ashamed of the line he crossed, and pessimistic about the state of the American public. He believes that, now more than ever, the United States needs a leader who can set an unimpeachable moral standard, and no longer feels that he himself meets that standard. And the way he justified playing cowboy and running around the world saving the day was because he knew his children had his father to take care of them. That is no longer the case now. So with the country left in dire shape, he drops out of the picture even though his contributions are needed as much as they've ever been.

Interesting choice to kill off Tex. The show really felt his absence during the first two-thirds of the seasons and really benefited from his presence during the later third of the episode. Tex was originally supposed to die in his first episode, but the character sparked so much that John Pyper-Ferguson signed a two-year deal. That deal was completed at the end of the second season, and he has a lot of competing demands on his time. So I guess, rather than fight to get him when the could, they gave him a good final arc and let the character go out with a literal bang. It was especially interesting to see Tex use his dying words to urge Chandler to live up to his higher ideals, and have those last words ultimately fall on deaf ears.

Another fascinating tidbit: I was fascinated by the plaque in the Commander-in-Chief's quarters aboard the Nathan James, commemorating Michener's stay prior to making landfall in St. Louis. So far the show had always seemed to reside in a nonspecific near future, in which all of these horrors were right around the corner. But the December 2013 dates on the plaque make it pretty clear that this is in fact an alternate timeline, with the first two seasons taking place over the course of about 14 months and the show's "present" being summer or fall of 2014.

5 seasons - I have no idea where they can go there, but I am glad they have a plan.

It's a startling reversal of the usual cable strategy, where you shoot one 13 episode or so season -- for contractual reasons -- and then split it and air it over two years. Instead, "The Last Ship" is essentially shooting a 20-episode broadcast length season, but one that is designed from the get-go to be split into two and with cast and crew properly compensated for two seasons. The news that the two seasons are being shot back-to-back makes it seem even more likely that the fifth season will be the last, since it'd be hard to restart production in 2019 after a year without shooting an episode.

Co-creator Steven Kane, who will be the sole showrunner for the next two seasons as Hank Steinberg focuses on adapting his novel Out of Range into a screenplay for Paramount Pictures, said in an interview with TVLine that the fourth season will pick up "well over a year" after the events of this finale. Based on the press release announcing future seasons, it sounds like only Eric Dane, Adam Baldwin and Bridget Regan are confirmed for future seasons, though we can probably expect most of them to be back.

OMG Adam, I'm amazed, a short post, not your usual novel

I hope this one was back to my usual verbose standards!

 

[Dheiner]

I hope this one was back to my usual verbose standards!

I liked it!

 

[NeilO]

It's why I was ready to scream when it appeared that Shaw was going to walk off that plane, after all of the destruction she'd wrought, after the unnecessary misery she caused even when it should have been clear that the gig was up and her shot at being king of the mountain was over. How many more people would be alive if Kara had pulled the trigger when she had the chance?... The world is a better place with Allison Shaw dead.

It was also an interesting way to end the season
...
Interesting choice to kill off Tex. ... It was especially interesting to see Tex use his dying words to urge Chandler to live up to his higher ideals, and have those last words ultimately fall on deaf ears.

It's a startling reversal of the usual cable strategy, where you shoot one 13 episode or so season -- for contractual reasons -- and then split it and air it over two years. Instead, "The Last Ship" is essentially shooting a 20-episode broadcast length season, but one that is designed from the get-go to be split into two and with cast and crew properly compensated for two seasons. The news that the two seasons are being shot back-to-back makes it seem even more likely that the fifth season will be the last, since it'd be hard to restart production in 2019 after a year without shooting an episode.

Allison Shaw would have been poisonous if she had been allowed to live. She just pushed Chandler too far in that plane. If she had stopped talking he wouldn't have killed her. I was surprised they killed Tex there, but it really would have been too unrealistic if they suffered no casualties in this operation.

I haven't read the article yet about the renewal, but the 20-eps split in two to finish it off sounds good. I still don't know what they could have in mind, but I'll be along for the ride.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

TNT halts production on fifth season of "The Last Ship" as star Eric Dane gets treatment for depression

The fourth season, which debuts this summer, has apparently completed shooting already.

Glad TNT did the right thing and put the health of its cast member first, and really appreciate that Eric Dane is open and upfront about his struggles with depression.

The nice thing about this unorthodox shooting schedule is that it builds in flexibility for unforeseen events like this, without throwing off the airdates.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

The fourth season of "The Last Ship" will premiere Sunday, August 20th at 9/8c

I'm bummed that they're holding it until the end of the summer. This is great summer programming, and I don't need it overlapping with my fall shows.

 

[Stan]

The fourth season of "The Last Ship" will premiere Sunday, August 20th at 9/8c

I'm bummed that they're holding it until the end of the summer. This is great summer programming, and I don't need it overlapping with my fall shows.

I agree with you. Did notice they're starting repeats again Tuesday night into Wednesday morning, four eps.

Possibly replaying all seasons through the summer, giving people who haven't seen it a chance to see it from the beginning and I can fill in a few gaps I have. Not sure about next week, hope it continues, but DISH only shows 8-9 days into the future.

Love this show and looking forward to the new season.

 

[Stan]

The fourth season of "The Last Ship" will premiere Sunday, August 20th at 9/8c

I'm bummed that they're holding it until the end of the summer. This is great summer programming, and I don't need it overlapping with my fall shows.

Final notice, new season starts tomorrow !!!

It's really a good show. Glad it's getting another season. Old info, but thankfully they killed off Shaw, she was so awful. Pang even worse, and he was eliminated. Lots of repeats running today, so still time to catch up a bit.