Contributor: Henry T.
Written by Patrick Massett and John Zinman
Directed by Steven DePaul
Perhaps I was wrong when I wrote that Captain Chaplin would go the way of Colonel Kurtz in “Apocalypse Now”. He’s desperately trying to hold his crew together while more and more of them are growing disillusioned with every passing day. He decides to do something about that: Give the crew a choice between staying with him or leaving via one of the ships in the blockade outside the perimeter of Sainte Marina. Initially, there are more names on the go list than the stay one. It’s Chaplin and Kendal’s jobs as the lead officers of the Colorado to get more of the crew to stay, otherwise the submarine becomes non-functional and that’s the end of this little exercise in creating their own country.
The plot goes through the usual motions, starting out with most of the crew getting antsy and mutinous. It’s complicated by Julian killing Redman in response to Chaplin’s tardiness with a package. Redman washes ashore here, and those involved in the hostage situation are still torn up about it. All of this is a very complicated ordeal for Chaplin and Kendal to handle. One of the more thorny issues is the fact that personnel in key areas of operation, such as the man responsible for firing the nuclear missiles, have to stay, even if they might disagree with Chaplin. It culminates in the episode’s best scene, with Brannan bringing a live grenade into the conn and threatening to blow up the submarine unless Chaplin surrenders it to him for delivery to the ships in the blockade.
It’s yet another tense situation on the submarine (every episode seems to have one) that has to be defused by a patented Chaplin speech about honor and duty and questioning authority to make the right decisions. While it can seem predictable to constantly have Chaplin be the voice of reason, Andre Braugher really sells it. By the end, more people stay than go, but this is going to remain an ongoing issue. The depletion of personnel will need to be resolved, but I sense that it won’t happen very neatly.
Many of the crew on the Colorado believe that Chaplin simply defied orders and that was why the submarine was fired upon and attacked. The Navy SEALs are brought back into the narrative and the reality may be that the Colorado was fired on for picking up the SEALs from their mission in Pakistan. This was a suspicion coming out of “Captain” but there was no concrete follow-up until now. Again, that suggests that there is something larger at work here but the writers don’t want to spend too much time on the subplot. It connects in a small way to what’s happening on the mainland. Christine explodes at the cameras parked outside her house and when her garage is defaced with the word “traitor.” Kylie’s father is revealed to have stolen the Perseus data that she holds in such high value. Her subplot continues to go nowhere, though. Aside from a couple of scenes, Christine isn’t given much to do either.
Going back to the Navy SEALs, King is at least a little more interesting in this episode. The guilt he has over the (botched?) mission in Pakistan drives him to get into a fistfight with anyone who gets in his way. His friend ends up dead, buried on Sainte Marina instead of getting the full military honor burial at Arlington National Cemetery. While I liked that King and the other SEALs get some character development, there isn’t enough detail in the subplot to keep my full attention. With the series struggling in the ratings department, this is likely not going to take precedence over the scenes involving Marcus Chaplin, Sam Kendal, and the submarine. It just sits there, and the writers will get to developing it when the time comes.
A few episodes in and it’s clear that the military plotlines have a clarity and tension that is lacking with the other parts of the series. When an episode cuts away from anything involving the submarine, it’s either a mess or characters are at a standstill. The writers don’t know where to go with any of those subplots. The natives of Sainte Marina might have a conflict with the crew in one episode, then there’s no sign of that conflict at other times. Julian could be a mysterious and unpredictable villain, but I think the actor lacks the charisma that Andre Braugher has as Captain Chaplin and it results in a weird imbalance when the two of them face off onscreen.
This episode demonstrates the tension that can still be present when there’s a straining conflict within the crew. That can only take the show so far, though. There is a lack of an external conflict that keeps the show from taking off like it should. That struggle to find an identity is dragging the show down, and I fear it’s not going to have the time it needs to recover or develop into something worthwhile.
Score: 7/10
