BOMBS AWAY: Camille De Pazzis (l-r), Michael Ng, Scott Speedman and Andre Braugher star in “Last Resort.” (ABC)
BOMBS AWAY: Camille De Pazzis (l-r), Michael Ng, Scott Speedman and Andre Braugher star in “Last Resort.” (
)
An American nuclear submarine surfaces in the ocean to rescue a crew of armed Navy SEALs. Immediately thereafter, a telex arrives ordering the captain, Marcus Chaplin (Andre Braugher), to fire nukes on Pakistan.
Always ready to obey orders but leery of this one, Captain Chaplin’s XO (not love interest, but second in command in Navy talk) asks him if he shouldn’t make sure that the order is real before starting WWIII .
The captain phones up the Department of Defense and is given the OK not by the Secretary of Defense but by some second-string schmo. The captain says he will not fire unless he speaks to someone in a position to order a nuke strike.
He gets a call right back. It is someone in a position to order a nuke strike. The person fires him for not firing and appoints the XO (Scott Speedman) to take over the sub. XO can’t take over for long, since the radar/sonar guy discovers that a giant missile is headed their way.
Thus begins ABC’s new thriller series, “Last Resort.” And yes, not only is it a last-resort measure for everyone concerned, but luckily, since the sub managed to dodge the missile and re-surface right near a tropical island (resort—get it?), it’s a good resort. Not only that, but it’s an island with a NATO tracking station on it. Talk about fortunate!
But what they discover is very bad. No, it wasn’t the Pakistanis who fired on the American nuclear sub — it was the Americans! Huh?
Captain and crew, along with the strange killer SEALs who don’t take no orders from no captain, take the island.
Were the nuke dupes of our own country? Impossible.
Meantime, back in DC, Kylie (Autumn Reeser), a very young, red-hot designer of top-secret submarine cloaking systems, is having sex with some government official, when she gets a message on her smart phone. Oh, no! The sub in which she installed the billion-dollar cloaking system is under siege. But wait! She is the only one who knows that it was attacked by one of our own.
Now, when you put it that way, it sounds incredibly stupid — more Carrie Bradshaw than Carrie Mathison, I know.
But once you get past the stupid stuff, such as the sex-goddess submarine tech designer and the equally gorgeous sub’s Chief Navigator, Grace (Daisy Betts) there’s something pretty damned good here.
Captain Chaplin is a career sailor. He’s 110% red-blooded American hero, and yet he’s just committed what amounts to treason. Meantime, the US is saying the sub was attacked by a Pakistani missile.
There seems to be no way out. Captain and crew are trapped on an island, the American government wants to wipe them out (which would make the NATO site history as well), because they know the truth.
Meantime, the captain is still the guy with all the candy—he’s got 17 nukes. And for sure, Cap’n Chaplin takes orders, but now it’s between him and God to figure out whose orders.