TV Show Review

TV Review: THE LAST SHIP: Season 1, Episode 2: Welcome to Gitmo [TNT]

Adam Baldwin Eric Dane The Last Ship Welcome To Gitmo

TNT’s The Last Ship Welcome to Gitmo TV Show ReviewThe Last Ship: Season 1, Episode 2: Welcome to Gitmo does nothing to convince us that this series will be anything more than a series of explosions.

Fresh off the news that the world is rapidly dying from an airborne virus, Commander Tom Chandler (Eric Dane) resolves to keep his Naval crew at sea until a cure is found. Dr. Rachel Scott (Rhona Mitra) thinks she can put together a cure on the ship, but needs some extra supplies first. With the boat already low on fuel and food, Chandler sets course to Guantanamo Bay to find all they will need to survive. However, when they arrive at the massive prison facility, their retrieval mission becomes a lot more complicated.

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The fact that “The Last Ship” is called “The Last Ship” is probably only because they were staying true to the novel written by William Brinkley. I get the very strong feeling that producer Michael Bay would have preferred to call it “Macho Boomstick 3000”, because that more accurately captures the over-the-top stupidity of this show. While the pilot episode offered marginal character foundations, “Welcome to Gitmo” does absolutely nothing to humanize these cardboard characters. The performances are nothing but a parade of intense glares hidden behind sunglasses and automatic rifles.

If you are watching “The Last Ship” just for the action, then “Welcome to Gitmo” delivers just what you want. There are tons of fireballs and quickly edited sequences of rockets being loaded into giant guns. And the enemies in the episode are Al Qaeda, so all us hot-blooded Americans can get all fired up about watching the good ol’ boys pump terrorists full of bullets. Because America.

Next week, the enemy shifts from Al Qaeda to Russian, leaving me thinking that this show will just be a linear sequence of America kicking the crap out of other countries. It might be fascinating to see Chandler and his crew have to go up against an American enemy that has motives of their own. But that might accidentally give the show too much depth. We need to keep things simple.

Leave your thoughts on this review and this episode of The Last Ship below in the comments section. For more The Last Ship reviews, photos, videos, and information, visit our The Last Ship Page, subscribe to us by Email, “follow” us on TwitterTumblr, or “like” us on Facebook.

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Nick DeNitto

Nick DeNitto graduated with Honors from Adelphi University. He began writing movie reviews in middle school and has worked tirelessly to mold his own unique critical voice. He is currently affiliated with the National Board of Review and hopes that one day he is remembered as “The People’s Film Critic.”
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