What Happened:
Continuing from last week's epic ending, this episode of The Last Ship finds the crew trying to solve the puzzling mystery of Neils' death. Due to certain aspects of his demise that just don't seem to add up, Rachel and her fellow scientists fall under suspicion. Fearing that her work on the contagious version of the cure will be put at risk by the investigation, Dr. Scott decides to inject herself with it. She tests out the new cure by breathing on an infected mouse. It is later revealed that the mouse survived, meaning that Rachel's work was a success. However, her jubilation over this news is short-lived, as she comes clean to Chandler about her role in Neils' death during a particularly heated conversation. Later, Chandler decides to punish Rachel for her crimes. He essentially places her under house arrest by disallowing her from leaving her quarters or interacting with the rest of the crew. He tells her that although she can't be tried for her crimes at sea, she will be handed over to civilian authorities once the ship reaches land.
Throughout the hour, viewers were also treated to flashbacks that revealed a bit more about what makes Rachel tick. As a child, Rachel apparently traveled with her missionary parents to a refugee camp in a war-torn country. Unfortunately, her mother contracted malaria during their travels. Instead of letting her be treated, Rachel's father decided to leave his wife in the hands of God, thus resulting in the woman's death.
This week's episode also featured a B-plot that saw the crew working to figure out how the Immunes are communicating with one another. After taking their attackers from last week prisoner, the crew realizes Ramsey's people have been using a cell phone game to transmit coded messages back and forth to one another. Later, Tex and Danny take one of the prisoners to help them scout the Ramsey's fleet in New Orleans. While on this mission, the prisoner receives a message indicating that the Immunes are aware of the crew's presence. They follow this revelation by blowing up their own fleet and film it in such a way that makes it look like the Nathan James was responsible for the attack. Communicating with Chandler over radio, Ramsey indicates that he plans to use this propaganda video to turn the world against the crew.
What Worked/What Didn't Work:
This episode was a particularly captivating entry in this series. This episode explored Rachel on a deeper level than this show ever has before. We were given a much better sense of what makes this scientist tick. Despite all the great character development featured in this episode, however, the flashbacks included throughout the hour seemed to fall flat. This was due in great part to the fact that they came off rather inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. These flashbacks were far too brief and gave too small a glimpse into Rachel's life to carry any real meaning. Also, the thematic connection between her mother's death and Rachel's role in Neils' death was too tenuous for the flashbacks to make any sort of impact on the present day story line.
It is pleasing to see that the show is moving in such a direction that will find humanity turning against the crew. It will certainly be interesting to watch how the crew works to dismantle the propaganda campaign being launched against them by Ramsey. Hopefully, such a storyline will give the show the opportunity to venture away from cheesy action scenes such as those featured in tonight's episode. It is clear that this show has a limited budget around which its producers must work to pull off some of their more explosive scenes. In most respects, this week's episode failed in this endeavor. The animation featured in the missile strike scene was poorly rendered and obviously fake. Not helping the situation was the fact that much of the action of this scene was created by showing the actors looking intensely into the camera. Usually, this show does a pretty good job of pulling off scenes like this. Unfortunately, this episode simply wasn't up to par.
Overall Episode Grade: 7.5 Anchors Out of 10
Season 2 of The Last Ship is quickly drawing to a close and the fight between Chandler and Ramsey only continues to intensify! Who the heck knows where things will go from here!
