Recap: THE LAST SHIP – Paradise

[All photos courtesy TNT]

Episode 309 “Paradise”
Written by Jorge Zamacona
Directed by Paul Holahan

Read our prior recaps of The Last Ship here.

After a two week wait, the episode begins with Chandler (Eric Dane) telling POTUS Oliver (John Cothran) Peng’s (Fernando Chien) plans for genocide. They know what island Peng is manufacturing this biological weapon and Chandler wants to get to the island to stop Peng and he wants two other ships as back up. Clearly, President Oliver is fed up with Chandler’s chase, but Oliver didn’t get to see the “4 Weeks Before” montage we got to see with Japanese soldiers receiving the cure but still dying gruesomely from the virus because the cure didn’t work because the green gas from Peng’s weapon hit there first. So, yeah, let Chandler take care of this!

Chandler’s Vulture Team head out to the island and they are met by a … tennis ball? Yes, a guy playing tennis on the island and I’m nervous watching because the guy is dressed like a yuppie and explaining how wonderful it is there on the island. I’m thinking, it can’t be all that great if they make you dress that way. Chandler is not buying this island of “Paradise” where they live in peace and harmony and work manufacturing shirts, yet this guy is wearing an ugly sweater vest? Luckily, a young girl runs by chasing her runaway dog and Green (Travis Van Winkle) chases her to help. When they are alone, the girl turns and informs Green they are slaves, and begs Green to help them. Chandler and Co. follow with sweater guy and finally sweater guy decides to show them where the real factory is. As soon as they arrive, they are fired upon. They make it inside, only to find out that there is nothing left, but they can see that they were in the right place, just late. With the stuff left behind, Sasha (Bridget Regan) figures out they are using a war ship and heading to Vietnam with the green gas bombs.

Okay, remember those proof of life videos that Kara (Marissa Neitling) and Dennis (Drew Fonteiro) were trying to get to play, but could only get audio and no video? Well, it turns out they can’t get the video to play because the bandwidth is being used for something else. It’s being used to transport voice recordings of simple everyday words. Dennis, in his total awesome geekiness, figures out that is a code for coordinates. He also figures out the signal is coming from the White House. He hands Kara the coordinates and she’s pinning each place on the map.

Now this is just perfect, wonderful, and suspenseful! As she’s pinning the map, she’s realizing it’s every place the Chinese Secret Service have just … shown up, out of nowhere! Finally, we figure out how they always know, someone from the White House is telling Peng! As this scene is playing out in Kara’s mind, the USS Nathan James along with two other ships are about to attack the Chinese ship harboring the bombs when suddenly they are attacked by the Chinese who low and behold, KNEW they were coming! Kara tries to warn them but she’s too late and one of the ships is sunk with the other one and the USS Nathan James taking heavy damage. The way it plays out is just brilliant. Kara’s realization as the attack is about to occur was just a fantastic scene.

Kara is unable to talk to Chandler. Chandler doesn’t understand why the Chinese always know where they will be and decides to go radio silent. Kara realizes there’s a mole and she begins to focus her attention on Secretary of State Rivera (Nestor Serrano) because, well, let’s face it: he’s been acting weird for the past two episodes and really squirrely in this episode. She follows him down to the parking lot where he meets with a senator and to our horror they are both shot in a drive by shooting. Okay, I feel like crap: sorry, Alex, for thinking you were the mole! Kara goes up to Alex and his last words to her are “You’re not safe.” Yeah, no sh … er, yeah, she’s not. He dies and Kara takes his cell and head into the city streets not knowing who the trust. This is how the episode ends, but wait … there’s more.

While this was happening in the parking lot, the REAL coup was happening in the oval office. Y’all are going to have to read back to my old recaps. I KNEW I didn’t like that Allison Shaw (Elisabeth Rohm)! I just knew she was up to no good, but I got all distracted by Wolf’s (Bren Foster) awesome fight scenes and then when I found out Allison and President Michener (Mark Moses) were intimate, I was blinded by romance! That chick doesn’t want a UNITED States. She wants the regions to just lead themselves and she wants the current POTUS to just be a poser president — he’ll have no power and he needs to play along or she’ll kill him and his family. To put some power behind her punch, she admits to killing Michener. Ugh, that bitch!

So, back to Kara: she’s wandering the streets of St. Louis, with Alex’s cell phone, not knowing who to trust. And me … screaming at the T.V. IT’S ALLISON, IT’S ALLISON!!!

Honorable mentions:

Takehaya (Hiroyuki Sanada), for offering his help to find and kill Peng. The scene with he and Slattery (Adam Baldwin), where he offers his help was just plain good. Although, since Takehaya told them where to go, Chandler is going to think it was Takehaya that led them into a trap. Hopefully Chandler is smarter than that.

Captain Joseph Meylan (Emerson Brooks), for all that arrogance and attitude.  I hope we see more of him in the next episodes.

The Last Ship airs Sunday nights at 9/8c on TNT.