Round Two: Last Resort

Last Resort: Season 1, Episode 2 “Blue on Blue” (B-)

And now, expectedly, we have the problem of sustaining this show after a monumental premiere. The fact that Marcus made the no man’s land public in the first episode means that it’s going to be difficult to have anything happen on a given week unless the island is invaded by enemy forces each time. That said, finding out that supposed American troops are actually Russians is a decent twist, though it’s hard to get attached when main characters like Sam and Grace are put in harm’s way, only to obviously survive since they’re such central characters to the show. Christine’s brazen act of loyalty to her husband was considerably overdramatic, and that once again underlines the problem of having the stakes be so high with such low possibility for anything transformative to occur each week. James is proving himself to be more stubborn than useful, whining about not wanting to be involved and then showing up in the nick of time to save the day since he and only he can actually shoot properly, but still not arriving early enough to prevent casualties. I’m glad that Kylie is pushing to figure out what happened, but the poisoning of her ally doesn’t suggest that it will be easy to get to the truth. I’m not ready to throw in the towel just yet, but it’s hard to imagine how this is all going to play out one small twist at a time over what could very well be a full season of twenty-two episodes.