After an awesome two-part premiere that featured events eerily similar to the Orlando nightclub shooting, this week's episode of The Last Ship managed to keep this season's momentum going by serving up another stellar installment.
This week's episode found Chandler, Danny, Sasha, and Wolf heading to an Asian Dodge City to learn more about their captured crew's whereabouts. While navigating these dangerous quarters, the team comes across a man wearing Slattery's naval uniform. As they attempt to get information from him, they are ambushed by agents of the Ministry of State Security (MSS). This results in an intense shootout. However, the firefight promptly ends when Jessie (who previously planned to leave the Nathan James crew after repairing her helicopter) arrives with a gunner, who swiftly takes out the MSS agents. Fortunately, the strife faced by the team during this mission wasn't for naught, as Chandler learns that the pirate who took the crew is named after the Japanese God of Sea and Storms, Takehaya.
Elsewhere, Slattery and the captured crew members attempt to escape the grasp of their kidnappers, who are trying to drain their blood for some strange reason; President Michener's attempts to keep the Asian conflict under wraps are foiled when the "Vampirates" release a video of their POWs on the web; and Burk's brother is perturbed by Chandler's decision to name Granderson his XO.
This episode had a lot going for it, all in all. The tension brewing between various characters over how to proceed with this rescue mission made for some great drama this week. We had conflict between Chandler and Sasha, Chandler and Burk's brother, Chandler and President Michener (man, everybody just hates Chandler this week...). The show's writers certainly aren't making it easy for the crew to bring these characters home, which I am all for. This in-fighting between our heroes is just as compelling as their battles with Peng and the Vampirates.
Another highlight of this episode is the fact that it continue's last week's trend of getting the crew off the ship and into new settings. I have often complained that this show becomes stale when it keeps the characters confined to the Nathan James during certain episodes. The writers have done a wonderful job this season by taking the characters into uncharted territory. Three episodes in, this season has perhaps been one of the show's strongest due to the writer's willingness to try new things with the characters.
Overall Episode Grade: 10 Anchors Out of 10
