Resort Review

Thursday night also saw the debut of the new series Last Resort on ABC. It was co-created by Shawn Ryan, creator of The Shield and showrunner for The Unit. The series chronicles the rogue crew of a submarine, the Colorado, whose captain questions a suspicious order to fire missiles on Pakistan and winds up hunted by the United States.

The pilot was a taut and very slickly produced hour of television. It reminded me of the pilot episode of Lost, in that it seemed to achieve film-quality production value on a television budget. The sets and the visual effects were all a cut above what is typical for television. The episode also had a film director, as seems to be the new custom for debuting high concept TV series. Martin Campbell, director of many action films (more notably the James Bond films GoldenEye and Casino Royale), was at the helm of this first episode.

I mentioned The Unit earlier because this show seems to have a few connections to the show. Besides the obvious military setting, the two central characters seem cut from the same cloth and cast with similar actors. Andre Braugher plays the submarine captain, a powerful leader who can project authority with calm grace (much like Dennis Haysbert on The Unit). Scott Speedman is his executive officer, a soft-spoken younger man who is largely unaware of his own authority (much like Scott Foley on The Unit; interesting that both Scotts themselves were together on the show Felicity long ago).

Both series include Robert Patrick in their cast, but here is where the apparent similarities fall aside. His character here is a much more skeptical and down-to-earth man (rather than the beyond-reproach leader of The Unit). The are several other characters in the main cast, though only one has a significant part in this first episode -- Daisy Betts as the sub's navigator. She's part of an interesting subplot dealing with women in a position of authority aboard a submarine, but it remains to be seen how that will play out in future episodes. I was also intrigued to see Dichen Lachman, from Joss Whedon's Dollhouse, though we barely get a taste of her character in the first hour.

I found the first episode to be very entertaining, but I'm left somewhat skeptical about what the series itself will be. The plot of a rogue submarine seems very much made for a film or a novel, a story with a finite and set ending. Telling an open-ended story about it seems to me to present a great challenge -- though the final few minutes of the pilot very methodically (and somewhat awkwardly) tried to lay out exactly what the weekly premise will be. Also up in the air is whether the show will be able to maintain the high price tag appearance on a regular basis.

But all that said, if the show can deliver the same kind of fun and excitement (maybe with a few less scenes of awkward exposition), then it could be a fun weekly thrill. For now, I'm planning to stick with Last Resort and see how it develops.