Originally Posted by
ChahDresh
The hilariously terrible show “Last Resort” aired its fourth episode Thursday. The people I work with happen to know a thing or two about submarines; on a lark, we watched as a group something we could never have stomached individually. Our enjoyment was lessened somewhat by the fact that we couldn’t devise a drinking game that wouldn’t kill us.
Spoiler alert. You.... have been warned.
I’m not going to discuss technical issues. The writers did not seek out any outside sources of information when writing the details of submarines, and this is painfully obvious. Here’s a sample. After the initial confusion when no one knows what’s going on, the female officer laments to the executive officer: “Whenever I’m eating on the crew’s mess, I can feel the enlisted staring at me. They want to know what’s going on.” Even if your submarine education consisted entirely of watching “Crimson Tide”, you would know that officers don’t eat meals on the crew’s mess; they eat in the wardroom, in large part to avoid exactly the above situation.
So I’m not going to discuss technical issues. And why would I need to, when the show has such a rich bounty of flaws in more fundamental things like cinematography, direction, and plot?
We’ll start small, because in a show with such an obviously big budget, it appears no one’s paying attention to details. At various points throughout the show, the crew complement is listed as 150. (Whether this counts or discounts the SEAL team that is onboard for no obvious reason is not discussed.) During the events of the first episode, thirteen people are killed. At the end, the CO states his submarine has 150 people onboard.
I didn't catch that one, but at the end did he say they had 150 living people on board? because when someone dies they don't evaporate, their body is still there.
On another occasion, the CO declares, “Open hatches, let the world see them!” The sub is underwater at the time.
Obviously he meant surface first.... come on...
The sub seems capable of submerging and surfacing instantaneously. The first and second episodes both feature sequences in which the sub is on the surface, but its missile tubes open underwater ten seconds later.
It's called a time laps, no one wants to watch a sub submerge, so they skip to the good parts.
The CO has a direct line to the American and Russian secretaries of defense. (This is particularly amusing in light of a line earlier in the second episode, “I thought all the phones were out!”) When Russian Spetsnasz invade the island, the CO calls up the Russian minister, and the two of them reminisce about times “when they put the Cold War on hold”. The Cold War ended 22 years ago. Given the timeframe it takes for a submarine officer to get command, that would put the CO in high school when the Cold War ended.
How do you know the CO's age? and were they reminiscing or just talking about it?
The show uses Hawaii for its location shots. That’s understandable; Hawaii is beautiful, and production crews love going to Hawaii. The trouble is that the Hawaiian Islands are volcanic. The barhop on the island relates to one of the SEALs that the islanders know at any moment that they’re one eruption away from death. The island in the show is in the Indian Ocean—an ocean with no appreciable volcanic activity. Actual Indian Ocean islands, like Diego Garcia, are coral-based, and tend to be flat as a pancake.
Not a big deal to me.
All the rules of ridiculous gunfights are fully in effect. When the island is invaded by bad guys, the XO leads some submariners to fight them off. (Aside: if your security depended completely on launching ballistic missiles, and the XO was needed to launch ballistic missiles, why would you send the XO into a gun battle far from your submarine?) On a whim he steps into the open to confront the bad guys with a moral appeal. After he rambles on for three minutes, we cut to the CO, where there’s a shocking reveal: the bad guys are actually Spetsnasz! The XO’s moral appeals won’t work!
The XO was needed to launch the missiles when they were still a part of the US military, ranks no longer matter when you are fugitives from your government.
Think about that for a second. A dozen highly trained Spetsnasz watched an enemy in an enemy uniform ramble on in a language they didn’t understand for three minutes before they even raised their guns.
Name a TV show where the main character doesn't give out a speech before shit goes down.
It’s just as well, because when the bad guys do raise their guns, the XO’s Good Guy Shields are up. The hundreds of shots that they fire all miss the XO completely as he runs out of the open field back behind cover. Once he’s behind cover, an unnamed extra standing next to him behind a tree takes a bullet to the chest and dies instantly.
It's a TV show, there is not a single TV show in existence that doesn't follow Hollywood's gunfight rules. Complaining about it is stupid.
The Female Officer is shot in the forearm. (As a female, her Good Guy Hit Zones are smaller.) Her arm was in front of her body at the time. Somewhere between her arm and her body, the bullet evaporated.
I'm not going to watch it again, but was there an exit wound? it could still be stuck in her arm... Or you got your angles wrong.
Okay, you say, so you can’t watch anything out of Hollywood without the gunfights being super-unrealistic. Suspend disbelief, why don’t you? Sure, I can do that to an extent. But I won’t suspend disbelief about the downright stupid.
The Chief of the Boat on the good guy sub doesn’t take kindly to the direction things are going, so the CO imprisons him. Does he lock him up in an out-of-the-way location? Heck no; that would make sense! Instead, he’s put in an open cage along the main thoroughfare, along which every character walks multiple times an episode. This is so that he can heckle, spread discontent, and foment rebellion unimpeded. Which, when you think about it, is probably what he’d be doing if he weren’t locked up at all. So… the locking-up is for cosmetic purposes, I guess.
Yeah that's a pretty bad one, but it's part of the plot.
The good guy sub has a new system on board that makes it less detectable. (They should have called it the “caterpillar drive”. Instead they call it Perseus.) It’s highly experimental, never-before-used, and potentially dangerous. Imagine, for a moment, that you’re an admiral in the Navy. You have a sub outfitted with a highly-experimental, never-before-used, potentially dangerous system. Do you:
a) Test it out in local waters, with no missiles on-board, until you figure out the system’s properties, and so that you can rescue the sub if something goes wrong, or…
b) Send it AS FAR AWAY FROM THE U.S. AS PHYSICALLY POSSIBLE ON PLANET EARTH. With a full load-out, to boot.
It was on board, it wasn't meant to be tested yet. They just used it because they had to.
The attack on the good-guy sub originates from the USS Illinois, which the good-guy sub figures out instantly. (Set aside pesky questions like, “How?”) At the end of the first episode, the CO calls out the USS Illinois by name. That begs the question: Who does the Illinois think they attacked? When the attack is launched, the U.S. is not at war with anyone; but the Illinois gets orders to attack… someone. “Someone” turns out to be the good guy sub. If the Illinois starts asking who gave that order, and why, then the conspiracy would start to unravel. The result would be the same if the Fleet in charge of the Illinois started asking the same questions. So, of course, no one asks those questions. That would make sense! In fact, the only person who seems interested in asking these questions is a civilian contractor on the shore-side.
This one confuses me a little, but what I'm getting is that you are wondering why the sub CO questions the orders and the USS Illinois doesn't? I don't know... I guess not everyone questions their orders? it's not unheard of. This is obviously about a giant government conspiracy, so maybe they used the secondary channel for the good guy sub(To make them question the ordered), and the main channel for the USS Illinois(Why would they question orders from the main channel).
After the good guy sub is attacked, the U.S. nukes Pakistan, which it believes destroyed the good guy sub. (We must presume the conspiracy is firmly in control of this outcome; the last few times warships have been attacked, the response has been lukewarm.) Wait, what? The first thing that happened was the good guy sub got orders to nuke Pakistan. That is, the nuke orders came before the attack they were in retaliation for. If the good guy sub followed the launch order, then nothing afterwards would make sense.
It seems to me like they were meant to question it, as in that was the plan all along. Like I said in my last comment maybe they used the secondary channel for the good guy sub, and the main channel for the USS Illinois.
Doubling down on this absurdity, in the second episode, after the good guy sub has announced to the world it has gone rogue, there is a news broadcast which announces Congress’ unanimous support of the “retaliatory” nuking of Pakistan. Congress unanimously approves a nuclear attack in retaliation for sinking a sub that wasn’t sunk, against a country that didn’t attack it. Really?
The plan was for the US to sink the sub and blame Pakistan, so that's what they did. Only one problem, The sub didn't sink!
The writers are attempting to build this big atmosphere of paranoia and conspiracy, and in so doing, throw in lots of things that make no sense. At some points, the conspiracy seems framed around getting the sub to go rogue. At others, it’s portrayed as depending upon the sub’s sinking, and the sub’s surviving is thwarting the conspirators.
One sub-plot implies that the actual reason for all of this is industrial espionage—an attempt to steal the Perseus system. (Problem: if the good guy sub was sunk in the attack, as was apparently supposed to happen, this plot thread collapses completely.) Apparently the writers haven’t been paying attention to all the recent news about cyber-attacks on defense contractors. There are far easier ways to steal technology than, oh, say, starting a nuclear war.
Why would the US government try and steal technology off of their own sub? Nothing you said there makes any sense.
And that’s the biggest silliness of all. If your conspiracy is powerful enough that it can start a nuclear war when it’s convenient, what objective would it need a nuclear war to accomplish?
According to the show the US government wanted to nuke Pakistan, but they didn't want to be the aggressors so they blamed Pakistan for the bombing of their submarine so the rest of the world would see the US's attack as justified.
Don’t watch this show. It’s weaksauce.