Last Resort
Episode 8: Big Chicken
Dinner
By: Carlos Uribe
Last
Resort is a show about a nuclear submarine that defies the United
States governments after elements of the military decided to destroy
Pakistan.
Spoilers
Ahoy!
Big
Chicken Dinner is an episode that largely concentrates on that
nuclear engineer character that wanted to go back home but is forced
to stay in the island since he's the only one who knows how to work
the nuclear weapons. His value to the submarine was too large to
allow him to leave. The episode helps to fill in on his backstory: he
had a pregnant wife who decided to leave him when she fell for
another man. He had hoped to go back home to convince her to stay
with him but then their submarine went rogue. He has lost his family.
This explains his attude and his urgency to go back home. Denied that
opportunity, the engineer rapes an island girl. His excuse for this
action is that it's the captain's fault because he wasn't allowed to
go back home. The character's attempt to justify his crime falls on
death ears. There is a huge difference between understanding why
someone did a crime and approving the actual act. It might be
understandable why the engineer decided to rape the girl but it
didn't justify it. He still did a reprehensible thing to that girl.
Forcing himself on her made the engineer into someone who is
impossible to cheer for. The episode tries to complicate the entire
situation and only partly succeeds. This creates the impression that
the series wanted to go to a darker place but was held back by
network standards.
It's
how the episode is structured that led me to that belief. The episode
largely follows that of an investigation. Grace goes to question the
people involved because she's chosen to represent the rapist.
Whenever the account of the true story is told, there are flashbacks
to that night where hints of what happened are shown. There is very
little doubt that the engineer actually raped the island girl but she
has no actual evidence. She didn't get a rape kit, she doesn't have
any injuries, and there are no witnesses. There is simply nothing to
corroborate the truth. When it comes time to deliver the arguments in
front of the jury, Serrat brings up that the problems with the island
can all be traced back to the navy. His motivation isn't to bring the
rapist to justice but to turn the people of the island against the
navy. Grace makes an argument that there is simply no evidence and
it's a matter of “he-says-she-says”. The jury decides on a
non-guilty verdict which causes the town to have an old-fashioned
riot. Buildings are burned and the navy is forced to hide. There was
no doubt in my mind that he had raped her and it looked like he was
going to get away with it simply because he had too much value to the
submarine. It's then that Sophie revealed that the reason he hadn't
been convicted was because all of the islanders had voted “Not
Guilty”. Serrat had rigged the jury to ensure that it looked like
the navy was protecting it's rapist and further turn the islanders
against them. He was willing to let the engineer get away with it in
order to manipulate the people against Marcus. That's a pretty dark
place for any show to go to. The engineer ends up not getting away
with it when he makes the mistake of confessing after the trial.
Marcus decides that the only way that the engineer will set foot on
the submarine will be as a prisoner and then he'll be handed over to
the American authorities. The engineer has two choices: stay on the
island where the population are rioting for revenge or submit himself
to be a safe prisoner on the submarine. He choses to stay on the
island and wait until the boat with fresh supplies and their families
arrive on the next day. There is nothing wrong with having justice
come to him in the end but it felt a bit like a cop-out ending based
on previous events.
It
also makes one wonder just why exactly the show spent an entire
episode on this. It's true that writers thought that they would be
getting a full season but they still have many main characters that
could use more development. It could have concentrated the episode
more on Grace. It's true that we find out that she was raped in her
military academy but this character development felt less like it's
coming from the actual character and more as a weak way to create
conflict. Procedurals will sometimes fall in the trap of revealing
that a particular case is eerily similar to something a protagonist
had experienced before even though that event was never referenced
until then. This is always a cheap attempt to create a personal
connection between the weekly case and the characters to try and
generate some drama. Last Resort is a serialized show where it
doesn't really need to fall under that trap. It could have easily
revealed that Grace was raped before this episode. It could have even
done it in the beginning but it waits until the very end to do so.
It's kind of like the writers realized that the only thing missing
from their trial was having the woman defendant miss some kind of
connection to the crime and added one in just to cover their bases.
This inner conflict of defending a rapist when you were raped in your
past can be good but only if the episode had concentrated on that
because we knew from the beginning. It instead didn't really
concentrate on the feelings of any character. This is what made the
episode feel more like filler than something relevant to the main
plot.
Adding
to this feeling is the actual narrative that is developed in this
episode. It establishes that a boat is crossing the blockade to bring
in fresh supplies, allow the crew to visit with their families, and a
way for those crew who signed up to leave to go back home. This boat
isn't actually going to come until the next episode. This episode was
more about setting up the next one. This is proven with the plot back
at home. It's all about Christine manipulating Paul to get on that
boat. She succeeds because Paul is actually falling in love with her.
The episode does take some time to develop Paul's character but it's
not that terribly interesting. He just has a tendency to fall for the
people he tends to save. The episode also develops the plot with the
CIA operative who continues to try and convince Sam to betray Marcus
until he's ordered to kill Sam. The CIA operative ends up dead but at
least Sam knows where the radio is. He's one step closer to finding
the sleeper agent. Once again: just setting up the pieces for next
week. The boat, Christine being on it, and knowing how to trap the
agent are all undoutedly going to come up next week.
Big
Chicken Dinner delivers what is largely a filler episode. That
doesn't make it any bad: a good television show will have great
filler episodes. This one is actually pretty good but it's held back
because it choses to concentrate on the wrong character while not
going as dark as it seemed to want to. It does lack the tension that
almost every episode of Last Resort has but it manages to remain
entertaining nonetheless.
Other Notes:
There
are no references to the COB. Do his people not realize he's missing?
It's always terrible storytelling when something this important is
ignored for an entire episode.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please be respectful of people's opinions. Remember these reviews are MY opinion and you may disagree with them. These are just TV shows.
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.