First Impressions: Last Resort ‘Pilot’ – Colorado Out

There are a small handful of creators and show runners I get excited to see new projects from – and Shawn Ryan, the mind behind The Shield, Terriers, and The Chicago Code, is definitely among them.So it’s no surprise I ranked Last Resort at the top of my initial 2012 Pilot Power Rankings earlier this week, and after watching the pilot, I’m certainly intrigued to see where it goes moving forward.

It’s definitely not a perfect hour of television – the key word in the phrase being hour: there’s only 44 minutes of show to get from Point A (everybody is peacefully swimming along in the ocean) to Point B (the crew of the USS Colorado is stranded on an island, enemies of the United States, who is at nuclear war with Pakistan. It’s definitely a high-concept pilot with lots of “Big Events” and “Important Hints” dropped throughout, and without the room to breathe of a two-hour pilot, a lot of the big moments and decisions are made by characters we don’t know or understand yet.

It makes it all a little hard to believe, but this isn’t necessarily because of the writing, but the constraints of the pilot, and the need to not only set the foundation for the entire show, but propel its characters from the real world into this alternate Earth’s status quo, so we can accept its reality and move forward with the series. When there are entire governments, nuclear subs, and deep character relationships to establish in less than an hour, it doesn’t leave a whole lot of room for relaxing or explaining.

And because of this, it’s hard to latch onto the decisions many of the characters make early on. As much fun as it is to watch Andre Braugher act the shit out of everything and anything he can get his hands on, it’s hard to believe XO Sam Kendal (Scott Speeman) would just go along blindly on just about anything he did. This applies to other characters as well, like military-daughter-turned-Lieutenant  Grace Shepard, and even the disagreements by the group of NAVY Seals on board – it’s hard to believe what anybody is saying when we don’t even know their names yet, and the hour-long pilot robs us of this.

It’s a problem that begins early on, and as Last Resort‘s pilot continues to fly along at super speed on the surface of its plot and characters, the big emotional moments fall flat. Grace’s call from her father (the man who essentially ordered the attack on the Colorado when they refused to launch the missile on Pakistan) is only meaningful because their connection is force fed to us by Autumn Reeser’s character (who I might add, is too damn high energy in everything she does) in a quick exposition scene just a few moments ago. The neatness of certain things in the plot take away from their effect – particularly when they’re backed by strings orchestrated to tell the audience explicitly “YOU ARE TO FEEL EMOTION HERE”.

As expected, the many action sequences and dramatic moments throughout are the highlights of the episode, with all the cool big-budget special effects shots we won’t be able to get during the season. The talented acting crew (with cameos from bit players on The Shield and other various shows) does a lot to help smooth out the jigsaw-puzzle writing and rapid pace networks force upon new shows, giving us the bits of nuance we seek by not overacting their scenes (although Robert Patrick comes close a few times as the sexist old hard ass military guy). I’ve bashed on the show a bit, but the acting of the principals is really the highlight of the episode, remaining strong while other parts falter.

The end of the pilot sees the crew taking up on an island, where a closing montage makes it clear things are only getting started. There is a man (a black guy with an accent, OF COURSE) who ‘runs’ the island, and doesn’t take too kind to the US getting all cozy. There’s also all sorts of shit going down in Washington – which although central to the plot of the series, is only shown through TV clips in the first hour: the show has to hide the high cards in the deck for awhile with so little time to introduce all the players (and let’s not forget whatever the drunk NAVY Seal was crying about, whose teared up wails of “It’s all my fault” was definitely the low point of the hour). It remains to be seen whether Last Resort is going to be able to corral all these threads into a coherent season – and more importantly, do so without sacrificing the depth of its characters. But for now, it’s safe to say this is the most promising pilot I’ve seen so far this fall, a flawed but entertaining set up for what could be a wildly entertaining – or deeply disappointing – drama.

Either way, “you’ve been warned.”

Grade: B

Other thoughts/observations:

– here’s what I gather from what may have caused the events of the pilot: the NAVY Seals obviously botched a mission, killing a group of people and angering someone from Pakistan into action. Whoever the NAVY Seals were supposed to kill is probably tied into the current impeachment of the President’s panel somehow, and when they reacted, the president sent out the signal to the Colorado to take them out. The wild card here is who ordered the Illinois to shoot, and why they followed the order.

– A few great Shield cameos, including Matt Gerald (who played sunglasses-wearing Tommy) and of course the injured Seal, who is none other than Ronnie Fucking Gardocki.

– someone’s been taking notes on Game of Thrones: Autumn Reeser’s little speech in panties is the network version of sexposition.

– the flashback sequences don’t really work at all. I didn’t need to see anything more than the picture of Sam’s girl to know how much he missed her. The rest is just tired and trope-y “I’ll get home safe”, “I love you so much, and I have faith in you to do that”  kind of shit I thought could’ve been put to better use elsewhere.

– Could you imagine a show with a female character in a position of power that doesn’t get questioned in the first five minutes by someone, or is constructed as some big reveal partway through?

what did you think of Last Resort? Feel free to share your thoughts below, and stop by next month when we pick up with the series’  second episode!