Sunday, December 2, 2012

Last Resort

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.

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