[QuickTidal]

McLovin, on 11 October 2012 - 01:42 PM, said:

Yeah, but this goes back to Abyss' advice that a show needs to be awesome NOW, not just promise it'll be awesome eventually. LAST RESORT gave you THREE nuke launches in its first hour.

Yes it did!



And I still think it's the strongest a show has been right out of the gate in a number of years.

[Abyss]

SPOILERS FOR EP 1 and 2 below...



Second ep wasn't bad. It held my interest at least.

I liked the complete sense of 'Deltas on the island so we're fucked'. The 'we can take them' attitude rings exactly as false as it should... it's 'the bestest killers on the planet are here and we're dead meat, might as well go out fighting i mean bleeding and dying'.

I enjoyed the Russian twist and how they resolved it, especially incorporating the communications with the secdef.

I'm liking the dynamic between the XO and the Capt, and how they keep shifting the reasons to believe the Capt is either nutfucks crazy or the sanest man around. Great performances from both so far esp Speedman.

I disliked Manipulative Scientist Girl in the premiere but she was mildly more interesting this ep.

Grace's leadership whiny isn't scoring any points with me. The COB's rebellion is predictable. Wifey-in-pseudo-danger and the scummy fake lawyer plot made my eyes bleed.

The Delta guy's conflicts are interesting but his acting is borderline and Bartender Girl from Dollhouse is worse.

I'm a bit put off by the '150 sailors' thing in the way that LOST was able to kill off random passengers routinely to pretend to make a situation serious without risking the main cast. dead redshirts do not compelling tv make.

Am also uncertain how interesting the 'off island' plots can be with only science girl, wifey and the decrepit admiral guy to drive them.

I agree that nuking Pakistan AND Washington in the premiere raised the stakes but the trick now if to maintain that level and not drop into stock plots wasting time. The russian play was a neat and logical development but if this gets bogged down with the COB's entirely predictable ranting and Grace trying to prove herself.

[QuickTidal]

Abyss, on 11 October 2012 - 03:14 PM, said:

I'm a bit put off by the '150 sailors' thing in the way that LOST was able to kill off random passengers routinely to pretend to make a situation serious without risking the main cast. dead redshirts do not compelling tv make.

Eh? LOST had all those other people on the show, but they rarely killed them off. And if they did they built a story around it. Arnst and then Paolo and Nikki are the only ones I can think of. The other non-descript passengers seemingly survived the bigger stuff that happened, sicne they were always there to be in the background. They certainly weren't cannon fodder you seem to be suggesting.

[Abyss]

QuickTidal, on 11 October 2012 - 03:28 PM, said:

Abyss, on 11 October 2012 - 03:14 PM, said:

I'm a bit put off by the '150 sailors' thing in the way that LOST was able to kill off random passengers routinely to pretend to make a situation serious without risking the main cast. dead redshirts do not compelling tv make.

Eh? LOST had all those other people on the show, but they rarely killed them off. And if they did they built a story around it. Arnst and then Paolo and Nikki are the only ones I can think of. The other non-descript passengers seemingly survived the bigger stuff that happened, sicne they were always there to be in the background. They certainly weren't cannon fodder you seem to be suggesting.

I don't want to derail to a LOST discussion, but while Paolo and Nikki were a failed attempt to intro new characters who were killed off for lack of anything better to do with them, Arnst was intro'd specifically to give 'impact' to the scene where they killed him, ie intro a character, show him for about two eps, then kill him.

I'm semi-expecting a lot of Arnsts on LAST RESORT.

A lot of people forget this but for the first two seasons LOST also killed off random passengers to give the characters a reason to stand around looking stressed, and in the last few epsodes it was practically a bloodbath of people we had never seen before.


....Hey, as a complete aside if they start developing Bartender Girl's mysticism plot ('We're on an island on a volcano full of evil spirits, now i'm going to paint your face with the number 7....'), i call dibs on calling the show 'LOST RESORT'!

[QuickTidal]

Last Thursday's episode was absolutely NUTS! I didn't think that show could add anymore tension than it already had...but when...

Spoiler

Marcus flipped the negotiation table, grabbed the Sec Def by the scruff of the neck and swore that if he mentioned Marcus' son again he would squeeze the jelly from his eyes.

Holy. Shit.

Also...

Spoiler

the COB seeing Grace actually in command and respects her enough to stand the men to attention when she walks by at the end. Emotional.

[champ]

Shows been cancelled... grumble, grumble!

Writers have said they are going to go out with a bang... will be interesting!

[Abyss]

Bummer, but not surprising. I expect i'll still watch to the end.

[McLovin]

Can't say I'm surprised. It had potential but IMO didn't go anywhere interesting. Too bad because the cast was pretty decent, and the first episode was gratifyingly WTF.

EDIT - I think the problem is, the writers felt they had to add in a bunch of stupid interpersonal "drama" (COB vs. female officer, island gang vs. sub crew) to make it watchable, as opposed to just extrapolating from the pilot situation and thinking how an actual sub crew would react, and where they would go from there.

This post has been edited by McLovin: 19 November 2012 - 07:37 PM

[QuickTidal]

I hear tell it has more to do with the night it aired as opposed to any ratings from quality. At least that's how Variety was reporting it.

We never found it was bad, we liked each and every ep.

Sad it was cancelled.

And I'm not watching to the end. I deleted the two unwatched eps I had saved on the PVR...I refuse to watch a show I won't get proper closure to. I've been burned before.

[champ]

You know they are going to end it on a huge cliffhanger, probably nuke attacks against America then bam, cancelled! Whack! Though I have to stick it out!

[Abyss]

Just my useless $0.02, but i think the failure lay in trying to do too many things with too big a cast.

We didn't need a mystic-back-to-nature plot with bartender girl. We didn't need whatever was going on with Speedman's wife. I accept that they needed one plotline back in the USA to have some link to the rest of the world, but manipulative-scientist-girl spent too much time with her ex-bootycalls to make that interesting either.

If they had focused on the command group and a few others, and kept it simple and perhaps blown something up every episode, it may have worked.

Points for ambition tho'. In its defence, it was better than both THE EVENT and TERRA NOVA.

[Cause]

I called it, I knew this show would end up burning its audience!

Abyss, on 19 November 2012 - 07:58 PM, said:

In its defence, it was better than TERRA NOVA.

What isn't?

[Abyss]

Saw the last few eps.

I think i see what part of the problem was... no matter how long the show lasted, that was the only was it could end...

Spoiler

Skipper goes down with the ship, Speedman goes home, big fight between crew factions

... As tho they wrote themselves into a corner from the beginning and no other outcome was possible.
Admittedly Science Girl's last scene was almost nice touch, but it felt forces and probably the least compelling part, which more or less applied to her entire storyline really.

Neat idea but i won't miss this show.

[masan's saddle]

Abyss, on 15 February 2013 - 04:48 PM, said:

Saw the last few eps.

I think i see what part of the problem was... no matter how long the show lasted, that was the only was it could end...

Spoiler

Skipper goes down with the ship, Speedman goes home, big fight between crew factions

... As tho they wrote themselves into a corner from the beginning and no other outcome was possible.
Admittedly Science Girl's last scene was almost nice touch, but it felt forces and probably the least compelling part, which more or less applied to her entire storyline really.

Neat idea but i won't miss this show.

Agreed, it was a great premise but I stopped watching this show a while back as it was all over the place and quite frankly, bloody awful.

I watched the last episode just to see how they would end it, meh.

[Abyss]

That ending was hammered in because of the cancellation, but i suspect that even after a bunch o of seasons that's the only way it could have ended.

[Abyss]

Most of it if i understand correctly was produced after they knew the axe was falling.

[champ]

They changed the last few episodes after learning it was going to be cancelled.