Previewing The Last Ship

Two falls ago ABC premiered an ambitious new show called Last Resort about a submarine ship that refused its ordered to fire its nuclear warhead which undoubtedly would have started World War III. The Pilot was one of the best ion recent memories with an idea that was a great idea… for a movie. A television show? Not so much. By the second episode they were docked at some island in the Pacific and declared themselves their own nation. That and subsequent episodes never came close to that first episode.

This summer TNT is launching a similar sounding show called The Last Ship. Instead of a submarine this is a war ship and instead of nuclear warheads, they are hosting a possible cure for a virus that has wiped out half the world’s population and another half a million each day. But the biggest difference is that where Last Resort docked at a remote island and rarely went back to sea, it seems, at least for the first couple episodes, the titular vessel will stay on the move, from the arctic to France to Gitmo (where, of course, there are a few Al Qaida rebels still alive) to keep away from the infected on land and away from rouge Russian who want the cure for themselves. Still, The Last Ship sounds like it would have been better suited as a movie instead of a weekly series.

One major downgrade from Last Resort is the cast. Instead of the great Andre Braugher, we get Eric Dane who is hard to take serious after being pegged with a silly nickname on some crappy nighttime soap. I spent most of the first couple episodes wishing he would switch roles with his second in command Adam Baldwin (Chuck) someone actually worthy of going into battle for. And since this is a show about a virus, of course there is an absurdly hot doctor set to save the world, this time it is Rhona Mitra (Hollow Man).

There are others in the cast but there is no reason talking about none of them are flushed out because this is a Michael Bay production, the guy who like to blow up things from Bad Boys to all four of the Transformer movies. So in lieu of any character exposition, there is plenty of kiss, kiss, bang, bang. And more than enough of the latter, there are more explosions in the first three episodes than most action television shows have in their entire run. The Last Ship really is a mini-summer action blockbuster every week. But I do not think anyone want to see a ten hour action movie so at some point hopefully they make the characters engaging otherwise The Last Ship will likely be sunk after one season.

The Last Ship airs Sundays at 9:00 on TNT. You can download The Last Ship on iTunes.