Review of Last Resort

Once I heard the concept and saw the trailer, I was fired up to see this show. Unfortunately, it's disappointing so far (after 3 episodes). Every scene is an overly melodramatic crisis with ultimatums, shouting, or pontificating clichés. The show's greatest strength is its casting. Andre Braugher and Scott Speedman are up to the task, if only they had better writing to work with. I keep finding myself wishing that if only such-and-such or such-and-such character didn't exist, I would be a lot less annoyed with the tedium they bring to the plot. I'm up to four of those characters now: the Chief, the desperate wife, the lobbyist (or is she a prostitute?), and the generic dumb sub crewman #1 (or #4, or #15, take your pick, they're all pretty dumb). At its most irritating, the show's writers have a very superficial and outdated understanding of modern submarine warfare and, more embarrassingly, military culture. Depth charges? Really??? What about what they really use to fight subs since the 1950s, like ASROC and anti-sub torpedoes? Battlestar Galactica, space opera scifi that it is, did a much better job of describing authentic soldiers and sailors and putting them in plausible combat situations. It's as though the writers were children playing with toys in the backyard and putting it on film for us. So why did I give it a six? Because I still have hope they'll get better material to work with, and because The Shield was operating on a much higher level.

Update: after 8 episodes, it's bad. Too many plot holes. Too many clichés and stereotypes. Too many stupid characters. I hope to see some of the cast in better things in the future, but I also hope never to watch anything else these writers make in the future. They should pursue other careers.