Last Resort (ABC) - Cancelada

[JRibeiro]

The show is about the renegade crew of a United States Navy Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine, the fictional USS Colorado (SSBN-753), that defies an order to launch nuclear missiles towards Pakistan, a decision that cost the previous commanding officer his job when he refused to follow similar orders without an explanation or confirmation. When his replacement also questions the same orders, the vessel is fired upon without warning and the crew are left for dead. Realizing that they have been declared enemies of their own country, they set up camp on the fictional island of Sainte Marina, and declare themselves a sovereign nation with nuclear capability. At the same time, the crew must find a way to prove their innocence, find out who set them up, and hopefully return home.

Trailer:


Canal e Horário:
EUA - Quintas - ABC

[JRibeiro]

Outra das séries mais promissoras da nova temporada, tem uma premissa original e um elenco bastante bom, veremos o que virá daqui.

[JRibeiro]

Grande, grande pilot, o melhor que já vi desde Lost, e vi-os quase todos que surgiram desde 2004. Esta série ser cancelada seria de uma estupidez avassaladora.

[JRibeiro]

Last Resort

A really good drama pilot is like a submarine. It’s densely packed, purposeful and efficient; there’s little wasted space or dead weight. Everything on board has to justify its existence and preferably serves multiple functions. Characters are introduced and work around one another in close quarters. Yet it manages to glide forward smoothly and seemingly without effort.

There are a lot of reasons Last Resort is one of the few new series worth getting excited about this fall, but the chief one is that the pilot never lets you forget that you are in the hands of skillful actors and producers who know how to make an hour of television. Co-producer Shawn Ryan has made shows for both cable and broadcast, from dead serious to comic (The Shield, The Unit, Terriers, The Chicago Code), and Last Resort strikes a good balance between mass popcorn entertainment and idea-driven drama.

That pilot–which you may have already seen while ABC has been previewing it online, with good reason–sets up a thrilling action premise. While on a peacetime mission to test new cloaking technology, the U.S. nuclear submarine Colorado receives an order to fire nukes against Pakistan. Capt. Marcus Chaplin (Andre Braugher) is immediately suspicious of the order, which inexplicably comes through a secondary channel—and when he asks for explanation before firing, his sub is immediately attacked by his own country’s military. Branded a traitor, he takes the sub on the run (with many of his crew members dissenting) and finds safe harbor on a remote island, entering a nuclear standoff against his own government.

That’s the plot, and there’s much more to it: the mysterious nature of the tech the Colorado was meant to test, a sinister cohort of Navy Seals who were on a mission related to the Pakistani nuclear strike and a Presidential impeachment scandal back at home. But more important to the show’s future potential as a series is how nearly every scene in the tense pilot (officially titled not “Pilot” but “Captain,” a naval play on words) pulls double duty, establishing not just the stakes and the premise but creating a sense of existing and well-defined relationships among the characters.

By far the best is the symbiosis between Marcus and his “XO,” or second-in-command, Sam Kendal (Scott Speedman). No one should be surprised by a great Braugher performance at this point, but Speedman–who gave soul and depth to what could have been a generic dreamboat character on Felicity–also shines here. When Sam joins Marcus in standing against the questionable fire order, the decision seems based in years of trust and respect, though you’ve known the characters for less than a half hour.

But as the hour plays out, you sense cracks in Sam’s certitude. Marcus explains his strategy in the standoff in terms of Cold War realpolitik; like Reagan facing the Russians, he must give the outside world the impression that he’s just crazy enough to shoot back. The first crisis plays out stirringly, sketching an idea of honor that goes beyond blind obedience. But the pilot’s end—and the second and third episodes ABC sent to critics—raises doubts among the crew that Marcus may be doing more than just playing crazy.

The other lines of conflict on board the Colorado are similarly well-drawn. Like Battlestar Galactica, the show uses the close confines and constant state of threat to heighten basic conflicts over duty, honor and ethics, as the crew is divided over Marcus’ decision to refuse orders. Lt. Grace Shepard (Daisy Betts), one of Marcus’ loyalists, has trouble commanding respect, partly because she’s a woman in a still largely sexist structure, partly because she’s the daughter of an admiral. Master Chief Joseph Prosser (Robert Patrick) sees Marcus as a traitor: the order may have been right or wrong, but if Marcus can’t accept his role as America’s “unflinching fist,” how can a military operate? As on BSG, one of Last Resort’s strengths is that it takes every argument seriously. And as on past ABC epics like Lost and Alias, the show is conscious of putting every firefight, every tense countdown sequence, into emotional context.

As the Colorado’s crew takes refuge on the island–for all intents and purposes now an independent country–the crew’s situation feels no less confined and agitated. U.S. warships are encircling the island, and the residents of the island itself–including an established criminal organization–see the Colorado and its crew as intruders and, potentially, a lucrative prize.

The show’s parameters begin to expand, which gives the series potential to grow, but so far the farther the show strays from the submarine’s crew members, the weaker it is. The storyline back home in Washington, key to understanding why someone wants us in a nuclear war, plays like a sillier subplot from 24, and the islander characters (including Dollhouse’s Dichen Lachman as a bartender) are thinly drawn and only nebulously connected to the story. (Also, this is superficial, but the series is shot in Hawaii, and it’s distractingly hard not to see Lost parallels everywhere once the action moves off the ship. A standoff scene in the second episode is so reminiscent of one in Lost that I half-expected to see Sam walk across the open field to negotiate with the Others.)

Still, the second episode is a decently encouraging answer to the worry I had about the strong pilot: can this idea work as a TV series, not a movie? And look: any show that manages to remind me at once of Lost, BSG and Felicity gets some mileage with me. In its early hours, Last Resort lays in enough plot and character provisions to potentially last a long, long journey.

[JRibeiro]

Review da série

Review: ABC's 'Last Resort' is the fall's best new drama

In the first episode of ABC's exciting new drama series "Last Resort," Navy submarine captain Marcus Chaplin refuses a sketchy order to nuke Pakistan, evades an attack by his own countryman, and takes over an island in French Polynesia, threatening America and the rest of the world with his boat's nuclear arsenal if they don't leave him alone.

This is, to put it mildly, a messy situation — one where the stakes and players and rules seem to be constantly shifting, and where Marcus and his executive officer Sam Kendal have to keep making things up as they go.

It's also a messy premise for a weekly television show. There's no formula for a series like "Last Resort," which combines a bunch of elements that you don't ordinarily see together — part Tom Clancy thriller, part "Lord of the Flies"/"Lost," part psychological drama, among other pieces — in a way that doesn't suggest a clear structure for how stories will be told each week, or how on Earth this fragile situation can be maintained for the seasons on end required of a successful TV show.

But "Last Resort" (it debuts tomorrow night at has two men involved who give me hope. One is Andre Braugher, who plays Marcus Chaplin, and is among the best, most convincing actors we have — the kind of magnificent talker(*) who could tell you the moon is made of delicious green cheese and leave you looking for a rocket and a really big grater. When Marcus swears to Sam (played by Scott Speedman) that he'll get them out of this catastrophe, I believe him.

(*) Braugher's signature role remains "Homicide" cop Frank Pembleton, who once described his skills at interrogation as "an act of salesmanship — as silver-tongued and thieving as ever moved used cars, Florida swampland, or Bibles. But what I am selling is a long prison term, to a client who has no genuine use for the product." Marcus Chaplin is not Frank Pembleton, but they share a similar verbal gift.

The other is Shawn Ryan, who co-created the series with screenwriter Karl Gajdusek ("Trespass"). Ryan was the mind behind "The Shield," one of the all-time champions of crafting storylines that seemed impossible to sustain — its pilot, after all, concluded with one of its cop main characters shooting the other in the head — but which kept on convincingly, beautifully going and going and going.

The "Last Resort" pilot episode is far and away the best I watched for this fall season. There are some bumps in the next two episodes, but also some very promising signs that, coupled with the talent involved, has me wanting to believe there is a great series here, and not just a great pilot that the series can't possibly live up to.

Of course, the pilot has Martin Campbell — not only one of the best action directors alive ("Casino Royale"), but the director of the quintessential "Homicide" episode "Three Men and Adena" — behind the camera. He gives the thriller scenes an added zip, and he makes all the disparate pieces — the submarine, the island, and scenes on the homefront involving Sam's wife Christine (Jessy Schram) and weapons contractor Kylie Sinclair (Autumn Reeser) — feel like one cohesive whole. The pilot has to cover more story ground in an hour than I would like — if networks still consistently made two-hour drama pilots, this would be an ideal candidate — but the writing, direction, and performances by Braugher, Speedman, Robert Patrick (as chief of the boat Joseph Prosser) and Australian actor Daniel Lissing (as James King, a Navy SEAL traveling on the Colorado at the time of the Pakistan incident) make it work. And even if the rest of the pilot was a catastrophe, it would be worth it simply for Braugher's delivery of the speech where Marcus tells the world the new rules and his intentions towards anyone who tries to break them.

The next two episodes were directed by Kevin Hooks and Michael Offer, who each have experience with action (Hooks did "Passenger 57"), but who don't have Campbell's facility with it (nor the budget he had to work with on the pilot), and there are more rough patches in the later episodes, particularly the Hooks-directed second installment, where the actors seem to be moving at half-speed in several sequences meant to be thrilling. The island/mainland split also becomes starker in that episode, and while the actors deliver certain corny lines in the pilot with enough conviction to get by, they're clunkier in week two. James spends much of his time on the island getting drunk and trying to stay out of everything, until rookie officer Grace Shepard, played by Daisy Betts, tells him, "One of these days, you're going to have to decide what you believe in." (Braugher can get away with a line like that. Betts — the weakest link in the cast in the early going — can't.)

The third episode smartly confines most of the tense material to the sub itself, as it's an accepted part of the genre that actors standing on a set tensing themselves for depth charge explosions will always seem exciting. And in a storyline involving local crimelord Julian (Sahr Ngaujah), the show seems to acknowledge that a premise this complicated will not allow for the kind of neat, tidy and safe resolutions we're used to from network TV. And the tension remains believably, fascinatingly high between the members of the crew who are 100 percent loyal to Marcus and those who don't understand what they're doing disobeying orders and conquering a tropical island.

What Marcus is doing should probably not work long-term. But if "Last Resort" wants to be around a while, it's going to have to find a way. There are enough good signs in these early episodes to suggest it's possible.

[BurnCycle]

Pelo que vi até agora parece de facto ser a melhor deste ano.

[benfikix]

hmmmm é interessante. "jogam" com uma das teorias de conspiração sobre o ataque de 11 de Setembro

[Cyborg]

Tenho ver o pilot, ainda não tive tempo/oportunidade

o 2º episódio sai na 5ªf

[Musicslave]

ninguém vê isto? é que estão a perder uma boa série, tem vindo a decair um pouco desde o pilot, ainda assim tem tido qualidade, com uma boa intriga e personagens, o que se vai passando na ilha é que não tem sido tão interessante quanto podia ser.
as audiencias é que não estão a ajudar e a serie pode ter os dias contados

[superman]

Concordo
A série promete a meu ver

[Bladder]

É como dizem, o piloto é excelente e prenunciava mais.

Os últimos episódios estão a banalizar a série.

O tema é algo irreverente e provocante mas apenas aflora, os personagens são um bocado caricaturais.

Acho que tenta ser um pouco o Galactica em terra em termos de dinâmica mas falha.

Não ajuda manterem escondido qum estava por trás da trama, mais ainda cheirar-me que vão esticar isto até ao fim, este enigma, e eu detesto estas coisas até porque desconfio sempre que nem os argumentistas sabem em concreto e depois inventam uma treta qualquer.

Não havendo coesão e uma linha narrativa interessante torna-se mais uma série com monster of the week e aqui há muito material para isso.

Outra série mais recente que sofria disso era o The River mas depois a meio da época melhorou neste aspecto.

[superman]

Sim
entendo o que dizes, mas o The River via-se que ha muito tinha o seu destino traçado

[Bladder]

Sim
entendo o que dizes, mas o The River via-se que ha muito tinha o seu destino traçado

Até fazia força para ter mas na minha opinião julgo que se dispersaram um pouco, pode ser impressão minha e acredito que se tivesse mais episodios seria assim mas como ficou esteve quase perfeito.

Pena ter sido cancelada, mais ficou por ver e teria sido bom ver uma participação com mais tempo de antena do Bruce Greenwood.

[superman]

Infelizmente é o mal de muitas series
É o cancelamento que não se entende

Temos um exemplo que é pelo menos para mim um que não compreendi.
O John Doe. Ainda Hoje não entendo e o fim?!?

Outra que fiquei extremamente frustrado por verem a serie como banal pela cadeia foi o Jericho.

[Bladder]

Pois, também não entendo o caso do John Doe.

Assim como também não entendo o fim do "V" entre muitas muitas outras.

O Jericho ainda não peguei nele, estou a guardar para um dia de chuva e ver do início ao fim.