The Last Ship - Air Drop - Review - In Over Our Heads

The United States searched for allies, while some surprising Gustavos backstory was unveiled, and a couple mysteries were raised.

Gustavos is something of a fraud. He's able to pull the wool over everyone's eyes, because the plague and the toppling of civilization have made it impossible for him to be exposed. For all his talk about Latin American oppression, he is in fact from the United States. As a young man, Gustavos fled, wait for it, a job "mopping bathrooms in Disneyland." He was a joke, mocked by the people he now claims to be leading to salvation and glory, until Hector Martinez took him in. This new information makes it all the more curious and perhaps implausible that Hector continues to follow Gustavos. Especially now that he has turned his power against civilians. We witness Gustavos having a little father-son outing to watch several people, including women and children, be executed.
"They're not boys. They're animals. Worse than animals. They're traitors."
In private, Martinez questions what is happening. Gustavos is angered by his doubt and his use of the phrase "my army." He has Martinez execute one of his own friends, after giving him a not-so-concealed warning. Gustavos also basically tells his wife that he doesn't need her fortune-telling gimmick anymore, which doesn't seem to please her.
"Am I your enemy now?" Martinez asks Gustavos that, and the other man says he isn't. But there's an implied threat being made, and maybe Gustavos isn't the only making it.

While Gustavos continues to alienate his friends, Chandler leads a mission to Cuba to contact the rebels there. Nathan James's own Delta Team will work with the Marines' Lima Team.

Ensign Swain is recruited to cook up a program to jam the Cuban systems so they won't detect the plane coming in. Everything goes according to plan. Chandler was to remain behind on the plane, but moments after Lima, Delta, and the weapons package made their jumps the plane is struck. To everyone, it looks like Chandler perished went down with it. Sasha and the others find themselves on the ground with the weapons nowhere in sight and no real idea how much danger they might be in. They have absolutely no time to fear or grieve. Their mission must go on, but first they have to retrieve the weapons case, which apparently landed in the city.

Naturally, Chandler did not die. He was wounded though and has to apply TV's favorite bit of emergency first aid: cauterization. I don't think I've ever seen it done using hot campfire stones before. Chandler makes his way to the rebel camp and finds out that Fuentes is their leader. This was surprising in a good way, as he seemed to have integrity during his conversations with Chandler on the Nathan James. However, Chandler still seems wary of him, which is only wise. They rescue Delta team from enemy fire and help retrieve the weapons. It's rather easy peasy, other than the whole plane getting shot out of the sky bit.

There are a couple loose ends in this episode though. Both come with up a bit of mystery, although one is significantly more interesting than the other. The Nathan James discovers that the plane was attacked not by the batteries but by the same vessel they fought earlier in the season. Gustavo's battleship seems to have disappeared off their radar though. It is odd that we haven't seen this ship yet. Is it a ship or is it something else entirely? A vessel of that size couldn't have snuck off into the horizon, could it? Either way, it's stealthiness makes it even more dangerous.

And then there's Kelsi. Despite the nationwide manhunt, she's managed to stay hidden after murdering Alisha. After a disastrous attempt to steal a hot dog, Kelsi hides out at her sister's house, where we find out that she has a history of issues. Also, her sister is raising Kelsi's daughter Zoey as her own child. Definitely haven't the foggiest idea or interest in all of this. Kelsis's sister knows about the murder apparently, but she clearly wants to think that the situation has been exaggerated or misconstrued. Shockingly, the episode ends with Kelsi leaving her sister and daughter unharmed, although she did thoroughly trash the guest bedroom. And a text message from Columbia on her burner phone not only alerts Swain to her location but also indicates that somehow in some way she's still caught up in all of this. Did she work at Disneyland too?

This episode might as well have been filler, even with the important developments and smooching, as any episode is that has time to watch a drunk guy urinate for a long time. We already knew there was tension between Gustavos and Martinez, so nothing new there. Meeting up with the Cuban rebels took about 20 seconds out of this episode's run time. And there was way too much Kelsi. I can't imagine that she has valuable enough information to justify her continued presence on this show. But we're getting somewhere.