The Last Ship - Pilot

If I ever doubted the effective killing power of an American Destroyer then those doubts have been put to rest. Watching the Nathan James fight off Russian gunships was exciting to watch. I like the way the Captain and crew are just dropped into the middle of the shit pile and have to improvise as they try to save an Earth that is dying.

Wow, that is a crazy concept and you best go full retard to make it work. For me it did. The end of the world scenario with the last ship without infection is a great setting to begin a tale or hide and seek or better yet, hide or die. The scientist on board may now be able to make a cure but she needs to stay alive long enough to do that.

The Captain is someone I have never seen before but with Adam Baldwin (Firefly, Chuck) as the XO I feel good. It's like having Jayne on the bridge again. Somehow Adam Baldwin does great work in these kind of action potboilers. He is steady and reliable and a tale like this needs an anchor of his calibre.

Then the EMP shuts everything down and that isn't even the worst part yet. Wow. It was probably the most fun forty minutes of television I have seen all year, I immediately wanted to see more. The only way this show would be better would be to put it in SPACE. Or make the destroyer into a nuclear submarine with it's own experimental flying sub. Sorry. No flying sub.

I hate having to wait a week to see part 2. I want to see each part released every night at the same time until the season is done. No more than 13 episodes. I would say 12 but I think every show deserves that one extra episode to show what they can do - to dazzle me. But no more than that. No more fluff. No more filler. Give me this as a Netflix exclusive. I want to be proud to be an American again (even though I am not one) because they do fake heroics the best.

My god this virus is scary. The dead and the dying are everywhere. It's worse than the bubonic plague or the Ebola virus. Stupid germs. Just there to make you bleed out of your bum. How do you clean that up?

I hate that I liked this so much considering that it's produced by Michael Bay who generously decided to tone down all the worst of his excesses. It was a good choice. Less is more here and in forty minutes he doesn't have to show us all his bells and whistles. There are many more challenges to come for the crew and I like the confidence of the creators to just tell their story and hope that they connect and make something interesting.