Review: Last Resort ‘Blue on Blue’ – Please Believe In Me

For a show like Last Resort to be compelling, it has to be able to manage the needs of characters with the demands of narratives, something ‘Blue on Blue’ struggles mightily throughout a whirlwind hour of choppy scenes and easy cop-outs. In simpler terms, it needs to take the time to define its characters and what they’re going through emotionally, before we can invest (or even just understand) the decisions they make at any given time. By packing the episode with quickly-resolved conflicts and lots of ominous forecasting about the complicated plot mechanisms in play, the show doesn’t have any time to fill out its characters – save for Marcus – and therefore, the rest of the episode becomes meaningless.

On a pure plot level, ‘Blue on Blue’ provides a lot of flashfor future promotional materials: there are standoffs, lots of people yelling, running and sweating, and of course, some good ol’ Cold War references for the old folks in the audience. But it all feels mushed together, almost like the show has no confidence in its life beyond the 13-episode order. What it leads to are a lot of messy attempts at re-iterating character moments from the plot, worst among them Sam’s “Who are you?” flashbacks while in the middle of a gunfight with some Russian commandos.

In fact, the whole “Russian invasion” story feels like a complete cop-out from beginning to end – something which we were all warned with from the get-go with the “disabled” nuke shot at the Illinois for crossing the no man’s line. The Russian situation was really an over-structured bit of filler to clear out some extras (with 200 people on the submarine, the show has a huge “casualty allowance” for meaningless characters), and show us that as strong as Grace thinks she is, she’s the same passive female characters we’re used to seeing on network television. It also absolves Sam of having to make any sort of moral decision – had they been American soldiers  the standoff would’ve been a lot more interesting, although I still don’t believe he’d try to walk out in front of them with his arms raised, unarmed. Did you not forget what happened yesterday, when they tried to fucking blow you up?

But this fits in with the contrived feeling of much of the episode, where the most violent asshole on the show (King) is somehow dubbed a “peacemaker” by the local bartender for sniping some Russian guys. I mean, does anyone not think they’re going to have sex at this point? As for the other two female characters, we have Kylie, who doesn’t care about turning someone into a vegetable (a man she blackmailed into that situation, by the way) as long as she gets a little bit of information that will clearly turn out to be just a minor piece of whatever fuckery comes next.

There were still a few strong moments, but they all came from Marcus, the only character it feels like the writers care about (Sam is the main character, but so far, it’s just “I love my wife” nonsense we’ve seen a thousand times over on TV). His final scenes gave some depth to the man making all the decisions on this side of the world (something the other characters lack). Marcus’s deep pain over the loss of his son (in ‘friendly fire’… does anyone not see this coming back later?) is affecting him, and clearly factors into his disgust for the situation in Washington right now. It’s too bad the rest of the episode didn’t get anything as meaningful… but if anything, ‘Blue for Blue’ finished on a strong note in an otherwise tepid, predictable hour of television.

Grade: C

Other thoughts/observations:

– Kylie’s character is just awful. Awful, awful female character.

– who would think King is a protector? He’s a snarky, trashy drunk. Seriously.

– Joseph (the imprisioned COB) is one of many antagonists on the show, both in Washington and on the island. There’s almost too many bad guys, from the prosecutors, to the government, to the in-fighting on the squad, to the Mayor who was nowhere to be seen in the episode, with the Russians… the list goes on and on.

– Marcus tells Sam “Sometimes the bad guy is in the way of what’s getting home”… easily the worst quote of the episode: that’s ALWAYS what is in the way of getting home. This is Film Writing 101 material, and makes for a terribly cliche moment.

What did you think of ‘Blue on Blue’, and how it followed up on the pilot? Feel free to leave your thoughts/comments below!