Inside Television with Alan Sepinwall

Review: 'Last Resort' - 'Big Chicken Dinner': You're out of order!

A Colorado crewman goes on trial for rape, and Sam works Booth

By Alan Sepinwall Thursday, Nov 29, 2012 9:00 PM

Grace (Daisy Betts) plays defense attorney on "Last Resort."

Credit: ABC

A quick review of tonight's "Last Resort" coming up just as soon as the backup singers transpose the lyric...

So, since we last discussed an episode of "Last Resort," ABC announced that it would not be ordering additional episodes, meaning that the show will end after the 13th. Still, ABC should air all 13, and Shawn Ryan has said that the news came in time that they were able to get permission from Sony to make that last episode into a proper series finale. And given that one of the main concerns early on about this show was how it would be sustainable over a full season, let alone years on end, maybe wrapping things up neatly this soon would be better than watching "Last Resort" fumble along, sometimes getting things perfectly, and at others clearly struggling with how to extend the concept.

"Big Chicken Dinner" was yet another hour where parts worked quite well and others not at all. I worried in the early going, for instance, that we weren't spending enough time on the Sam/Booth mind games for it to have a real impact, but the second half of the episode focused enough on it that I felt something in the moment when Booth asked Sam to say his real name out loud, knowing that one of them (and likely Booth himself) wouldn't be walking away from the conversation.

The trial story, though, was largely a mess. The moment when Marcus figured out that Serrat had rigged the jury to foment anger against the sub crew was a nice one — if that Serrat had been the villain all along, cleverly working angles in a way that he couldn't be touched by Marcus, as opposed to openly kidnapping, assaulting and killing crewmembers, participating in a chemical attack on his own people, etc., he'd have worked — but the show's attempts to deal with the island's culture have so far felt clumsy, and turning the series into a courtroom drama to do it didn't really improve things.

Shawn Ryan's last canceled show, "The Chicago Code," also waxed and waned for me — its lows weren't quite as low as some of the goofier "Last Resort" moments, but its highs also weren't as high as Andre Braugher threatening Jay Karnes — and closed really strongly, and in a way that suggested what the show should have been all along. I'm hopeful that "Last Resort" will also end well, but it's yet another show that makes me wait for the moment when someone will crack the business model for a 13-week network miniseries, so shows like this can tell the right amount of story and not worry about years and years.

What did everybody else think?

Alan Sepinwall
Sr. Editor, What's Alan Watching

Alan Sepinwall has been reviewing television since the mid-'90s, first for Tony Soprano's hometown paper, The Star-Ledger, and now for HitFix. His new book, "The Revolution Was Televised," about the last 15 years of TV drama, is for sale at Amazon. He can be reached at sepinwall@hitfix.com

Related Searches: Last Resort, Shawn Ryan, Andre Braugher, Scott Speedman

NeoGeo12

The Adventures of Officer Anders on his "JUNGLE RUN".
November 29, 2012 at 10:46PM EST Reply to Comment
- apearlma But wouldn't the COB be responsible for making the arrest?
  
  The whole Serrat makes no sense. Maybe he gets away with killing one soldier, but anything after that involves him getting taken down.
  December 4, 2012 at 12:45AM EST
Ken Reed

I like your idea of a 13-week miniseries. My further advice: fewer characters, fewer subplots. Focus on a single, tight story and tell it well.
November 29, 2012 at 11:12PM EST Reply to Comment
Prettok

Will this show beat American Horror Asylum for best miniseries Emmy next year?
November 30, 2012 at 12:59AM EST Reply to Comment
- kneejerk That made me lol
  November 30, 2012 at 1:42PM EST
Kianna

It's hard to care now that I know it's not building to anything. Did not like the courtroom stuff, sort of cared about the women back home, and was super-annoyed that Tani is leaving. Dichen Lachlan is one of the best reasons to watch the show, and with Tani gone, there's no impediment to Grace and James getting together. Which will be superbly boring.

This show could have been fantastic in its second year, once they worked out all the kinks, and it's really frustrating they won't get the chance. Still, nice that ABC axed it quickly enough that Ryan can craft a proper finale. Joy, I guess.
November 30, 2012 at 1:15AM EST Reply to Comment
- Dave I I did not really get what Lachlan's character Tani character was doing. I'm sure she'll come back, find out the SEAL cheated on her, he'll ask for forgiveness, and they'll fall even further in love. I do not believe Grace & James are getting together though. Other than an adrenaline-charged roll in the sand, they have no connection whereas James seems to really like Tani. Just not enough to not cheat on her after diffusing a bomb last-second with a hot brunette, I guess.
  
  But I did not get what Tani was doing at the end of this episode.
  
  -Cheers
  November 30, 2012 at 6:19PM EST
- Kianna I guess she was going back to live with her father, after having gotten out from under his thumb after her mother's death. Remember she was worried about her little brother a few episodes back, and there was a lot of friction between her and her dad? Also in this ep, his whole "one foot in the water and one on the shore" thing seemed to be him telling her it was time to quit running the bar and come back home and devote herself fully to her family / culture. I'd have to rewatch from the beginning to be any clearer than that.
  
  Hope you're right about James and Grace, but he was all half-flirting with her this episode, so I don't know.
  November 30, 2012 at 9:25PM EST
- Dave I I just sort of thought she was undecided and going away while James fixed the deck. That said, I was not sure what she meant (e.g. "one foot in the water, one foot on the shore). It seemed like she was undecided, but I did not get the packing of the bag.
  
  I thought the James/Grace thing was a red herring (it's not like Grace returned any advances or had any connection except the adrenaline sex). It just seemed like awkwardness. Of course, this show feels some insane need to throw in random love triangles where they really do not need to. We'll see. Finding out your new boyfriend just banged some semi-random woman after cutting the wire on a time bomb might change how you effect your budding romance. Just guessing.
  
  Part of the problem is most of these love plotlines seem like the kind of things they throw out there and plan on taking their time to resolve. So while I have my suspicions on where they would eventually go, with the abbreviated season/series, I wonder if that might change things.
  
  -Cheers
  December 1, 2012 at 12:35AM EST
BWIBrendan

Agreed, Alan! Shows like this shouldn't even be CONSIDERING future seasons, and should wrap up in one season and treat themselves like a miniseries (which is literally what they'd be). I felt the same way about THE EVENT, which should've been conceived as a one-season show from the start. Instead, it ends on a massive, unsatisfying cliffhanger because of its being cancelled due to bad ratings.
November 30, 2012 at 2:33AM EST Reply to Comment
- Rachel Didn't care for this ep either. The courtroom stuff was mediocrity -- at best -- with delusions of something meaningful. The writers took a complex, sensitive issue in a political / cultural minefield and seemed to think they could indulge in both eating and having of narrative cake.
  November 30, 2012 at 3:57AM EST
FistOSalmon

This was another episode with a lot of jarring cuts. The inability of the producers to manage the number of subplots in the amount of time they have for a broadcast show is showing clearly in the editing. It seems at this point they don't know themselves which characters are really going to be needed going forward and they're hedging on all of them or they don't feel they can isolate the crew from the island's inhabitants for even one episode for some reason.

Strangely the cancellation is making it easier to tolerate whichever horrible tacked on subplot we're getting each week. But this episode was a complete mess and really shortchanged even the parts I found interesting.
November 30, 2012 at 4:53AM EST Reply to Comment
Extraneous_Ed

Did I miss something? Didn't the previous episode end with the COB getting his feet blowtorched by Serrat? How is there no follow up to that this week? Not even a mention of the COB? Shawn Ryan always gets the benefit of the doubt from me, but this really confused me. That seems like a hell of an oversight. My first thought was out of sequence airing, but the rest of the continuity matches up, so . . . ??
November 30, 2012 at 11:52AM EST Reply to Comment
- sepinwall I'm assuming they're going to play this as the COB keeping it a secret as he lapses back into junkiedom. Which I'm also not necessarily looking forward to, but which at least would explain why it didn't come up here (in an episode not featuring Robert Patrick).
  November 30, 2012 at 12:06PM EST
bearclaw

Don't care about any of the characters. I wonder if the show would have been better off showing the crew back in the US before war breaks out. Take it slow, show me how they live, what they do all day. End season 1 with the nuke hitting Pakistan. The show would probably be canceled anyway, but I feel we'd be more involved with story and characters.
November 30, 2012 at 12:17PM EST Reply to Comment
Blake

Thank you, Alan.

I DVRed this -- all the critics said it was promising -- and followed your weekly reports on it. You have saved me nearly an entire day of my life to do something else with. This is not trivial: imagine what most people would do at the end, given the opportunity to spend 13 more hours of waking life.

Frequently I DVR new shows and only start watching if it becomes clear that they're worthwhile. This method also saved me from The Killing.

But it only becomes clear because of your method of criticism, of staying with the show. The New York Times writes something before the pilot and never returns to it. So from their archives, The Killing is a fascinating show that spends an entire season resolving a single murder.

Anyway, I just wanted to spend 5 minutes of the extra 13 hours you have given me thanking you for it.
November 30, 2012 at 12:46PM EST Reply to Comment
- mrbilliam "This is not trivial: imagine what most people would do at the end, given the opportunity to spend 13 more hours of waking life."
  I guess it depends on how you think of it, or on how you distribute your time. Whenever I watched an episode of this show, I didn't really feel I was choosing between this or doing another activity; I wanted to watch TV anyway, and I was choosing between watching this show and another one. Still with the existence of Netflix, HBO GO, and DVDs (so that every great show is available to you whenever you want it) that's not entirely trivial either.
  
  December 2, 2012 at 5:48PM EST
kneejerk

Find secret radio. Tell no one about it.
And it seems you can tell if a person has been raped just by looking in their eyes- but only if you yourself have been raped.
Really weak stuff.
November 30, 2012 at 1:44PM EST Reply to Comment
VisionOn

The number one problem with this show is the island and the people who already live there. None of the characters add anything beneficial to the show except to fulfill some kind of melodramatic soap angle dictated by ABC.

If the sub had docked at an island consisting only of the NATO outpost staff and then the crew had to build their own base, it would have been a much better show all around. The characters would have been tighter, the focus on people the audience have an investment in and importantly more thriller, less filler.
November 30, 2012 at 4:45PM EST Reply to Comment
Dave I

I thought Serrat's plan was actually clever in that it showed him being opportunistic, and maybe being forced to be clever after his earlier manhandling efforts did not work out for him. It was like we were seeing a more complete picture of Serrat, and maybe why somebody had not killed him off long before. So that did not bother me at all.

What DID bother me, quite a lot, was the fact that after Serrat had killed one of his soldiers, anything Serrat did that did not immediately lead to Marcus just shooting him for killing an innocent man who was part of his crew just seemed false. Basically, every time Serrat does anything of any significance (compounded by beating up Sam or burning Prosser's feet to reignite his addiction) I cannot help but think there is no plausible way he'd still be alive.

Marcus ousting the (unfortunately for him) admitted rapist who got off was well-played. I do not really know or care about the island's culture or history much if at all, however I did not need to for that to be a nice payoff. In fact, Andre Braugher doing anything, especially anything where he gets to speak, is awesome. Please, somebody land this guy another gig as the protagonist. Preferably one with Donal Logue and Jason Isaacs starring alongside him. Heck, for that matter, cherry pick the cast of Terriers and Awake, then get Kyle Killen a/o Ted Griffin to produce it and I'll be happy. I'll tell everybody I know to watch that show!

The Sam/Booth scenes played pretty well. Except for the fact if I were Sam, I would not turn my back on Booth like he did. I mean, he was what Booth was capable of. He's not their friend. Still, amazing to see the personal and honest side of Booth. He made a pretty compelling villain and a faceted human being. TV and film could use more villains like that (**cough**Homeland**cough**TheWalkingDead**cough).

The stuff in DC? That was cringe worthy. Sorry, your husband's friend falls for women he's working with a/o protecting and loves you because of a kiss. Enough that he believes you've fallen for him after JUST raving about how much you loved/missed your husband? Really? So what you are saying is his IQ is about half that of my shoe?

I'm also not sure what to feel if anything about James & Tani or the fling w/ Shepard. Or any of the romances on this show. They should have streamlined some of this stuff out of the show.

I still really like the show. I REALLY like the idea of 13-week mini-series though. First, you probably get tighter writing. You also get a complete story all in one season, which would be nice for a lot of reasons. The least of which being it allows people like me who tend to love these (for lack of a better description) fringe shows to get closure, and not one or two seasons until it gets cancelled, or the rare show that gets signed on then is made far past its prime and you end up with LOST or worse The X-Files. I would love to see more mini-series, although not at the expense of shows like Breaking Bad with clear arcs and timelines.

-Cheers
November 30, 2012 at 6:08PM EST Reply to Comment
- Kianna I would humbly add Dichen Lachlan and Ray Romano to your dream cast of Braugher, Logue, and Isaacs. But only if the show is on HBO, so it won't get cancelled mid-story.
  
  And if any channel could bring back the miniseries model, it'd have to be HBO, wouldn't it? Since they're not advertising-dependent, so they don't need to set up a show as a cash cow (and then kill it after six weeks for underperforming.)
  
  Still bitter about Terriers.
  November 30, 2012 at 9:36PM EST
- Dave I @Kianna, no opinion on Romano so sure. I'm down with Lachan though she was great on Dollhouse. Ditto on HBO. Maybe Showtime, they've done right by me as far as Dexter and Homeland, but HBO would be great. If hypothetical mini-series does great, bring it back treating each series like a mini-series, kind of like The Wire (more reason to stick with HBO).
  
  I agree. Still bitter about Terriers.
  
  -Cheers
  November 30, 2012 at 10:15PM EST
- Kianna Romano was amazing in Men of a Certain Age (which also has Braugher, so if you haven't seen it check it out, both seasons got DVD releases). Prior to that I'd only ever seen him in Everybody Loves Raymond which never appealed to me.
  
  And Showtime, I always forget about it but they do have Nurse Jackie, which was okay and then dire and then sort of brilliant this last season.
  December 1, 2012 at 10:51PM EST
- Dave I @Kianna, thanks for the recommendation. I'll definitely check out Men of a Certain Age. I recall seeing previews, being interested, then promptly forgetting about it (I blame late nights w/ my young children). I'll definitely check it out though, thanks again!
  
  -Cheers
  December 3, 2012 at 6:06PM EST
nik

I've all interested to the characters and what ever it is they call plot, serrat should be dead
November 30, 2012 at 7:26PM EST Reply to Comment
Jacob

After that whole rape/trial subplot, I'm actually even more glad this show is ending. Why waste time on such a poorly executed storyline with a charcter no one cares about? Silly writers.
November 30, 2012 at 8:04PM EST Reply to Comment
Beekayz

Shawn Ryan has already created the perfect 13-week network miniseries (albeit accidentally):

Terriers
December 1, 2012 at 4:49PM EST Reply to Comment
- Beekayz oops....minus the "network" part.
  December 1, 2012 at 4:51PM EST
- Beekayz Not sure what you're getting at Tim.
  
  So, you're calling Sepinwall's assertion that, "someone will crack the business model for a 13-week network miniseries" 'some crazy network nonsense'?
  
  December 3, 2012 at 7:17PM EST
Barbara

I would pretty much watch Andre Braugher do almost anything, but this show never lived up to its promise. What was happening in Pakistan? What was happening in DC? That's where the story was, not with islanders and barbecue. This series wandered all over the place and did nothing but disappoint me all along the line.
December 2, 2012 at 4:03AM EST Reply to Comment
- Dave I While I would expect those answers would have come if they had gotten picked up for further seasons... It would have been nice to have that instead of the islanders' justice for accused rapists or their pure culture. I still like the show and love large chunks of it, however it is hard to argue that the stuff in Pakistan or the orders from Washington D.C. probably deserve the full attention of everybody involved.
  
  That and, um, I'd watch Andre Braugher do must about anything too. He has such a great voice & presence about him. He deserves better.
  
  -Cheers
  December 3, 2012 at 6:11PM EST
Alicia

I love last resort and wish that ABC would reconsider cancelling this wonderful and intriguing showl
December 12, 2012 at 8:43PM EST Reply to Comment
Jim panyard

Sorry to see it go. Good show, good story, good action. How could it last?
December 14, 2012 at 5:15PM EST Reply to Comment

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Review: 'Last Resort' - 'Big Chicken Dinner': You're out of order!

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Comments

Option 1

Option 2

Option 3

NeoGeo12 The Adventures of Officer Anders on his "JUNGLE RUN".

apearlma But wouldn't the COB be responsible for making the arrest? The whole Serrat makes no sense. Maybe he gets away with killing one soldier, but anything after that involves him getting taken down.

Ken Reed I like your idea of a 13-week miniseries. My further advice: fewer characters, fewer subplots. Focus on a single, tight story and tell it well.

Prettok Will this show beat American Horror Asylum for best miniseries Emmy next year?

kneejerk That made me lol

Rachel Didn't care for this ep either. The courtroom stuff was mediocrity -- at best -- with delusions of something meaningful. The writers took a complex, sensitive issue in a political / cultural minefield and seemed to think they could indulge in both eating and having of narrative cake.

sepinwall I'm assuming they're going to play this as the COB keeping it a secret as he lapses back into junkiedom. Which I'm also not necessarily looking forward to, but which at least would explain why it didn't come up here (in an episode not featuring Robert Patrick).

kneejerk Find secret radio. Tell no one about it.And it seems you can tell if a person has been raped just by looking in their eyes- but only if you yourself have been raped.Really weak stuff.

Dave I @Kianna, thanks for the recommendation. I'll definitely check out Men of a Certain Age. I recall seeing previews, being interested, then promptly forgetting about it (I blame late nights w/ my young children). I'll definitely check it out though, thanks again!-Cheers

nik I've all interested to the characters and what ever it is they call plot, serrat should be dead

Jacob After that whole rape/trial subplot, I'm actually even more glad this show is ending. Why waste time on such a poorly executed storyline with a charcter no one cares about? Silly writers.

Beekayz Shawn Ryan has already created the perfect 13-week network miniseries (albeit accidentally):Terriers

Beekayz oops....minus the "network" part.

Beekayz Not sure what you're getting at Tim.So, you're calling Sepinwall's assertion that, "someone will crack the business model for a 13-week network miniseries" 'some crazy network nonsense'?

Alicia I love last resort and wish that ABC would reconsider cancelling this wonderful and intriguing showl

Jim panyard Sorry to see it go. Good show, good story, good action. How could it last?

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NeoGeo12

The Adventures of Officer Anders on his "JUNGLE RUN".

apearlma But wouldn't the COB be responsible for making the arrest?

The whole Serrat makes no sense. Maybe he gets away with killing one soldier, but anything after that involves him getting taken down.

Ken Reed

I like your idea of a 13-week miniseries. My further advice: fewer characters, fewer subplots. Focus on a single, tight story and tell it well.

Prettok

Will this show beat American Horror Asylum for best miniseries Emmy next year?

kneejerk

Find secret radio. Tell no one about it.
And it seems you can tell if a person has been raped just by looking in their eyes- but only if you yourself have been raped.
Really weak stuff.

Dave I @Kianna, thanks for the recommendation. I'll definitely check out Men of a Certain Age. I recall seeing previews, being interested, then promptly forgetting about it (I blame late nights w/ my young children). I'll definitely check it out though, thanks again!

-Cheers

nik

I've all interested to the characters and what ever it is they call plot, serrat should be dead

Jacob

After that whole rape/trial subplot, I'm actually even more glad this show is ending. Why waste time on such a poorly executed storyline with a charcter no one cares about? Silly writers.

Beekayz

Shawn Ryan has already created the perfect 13-week network miniseries (albeit accidentally):

Terriers

Beekayz Not sure what you're getting at Tim.

So, you're calling Sepinwall's assertion that, "someone will crack the business model for a 13-week network miniseries" 'some crazy network nonsense'?

Alicia

I love last resort and wish that ABC would reconsider cancelling this wonderful and intriguing showl

Jim panyard

Sorry to see it go. Good show, good story, good action. How could it last?

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