‘The Last Ship’ 2.01 & 2.02 Recaps: “I Didn’t Come All This Way to Die in Baltimore”

When we last saw them, the crew of the Last Ship had left the ship and gone ashore to find the last semblance of civilization on dry land. Yet the show is still called ‘The Last Ship’. The title was confusing enough already given that the Last Ship was never actually the last ship. Can the Season 2 premiere resolve this conundrum?

Last year, our infrequent blog contributor Wayne did a bang-up job recapping ‘The Last Ship’ with all the humor it deserved. Sadly, despite my repeated badgering of him, Wayne is not available to cover the new season at the moment. I’ll do my best to fill in for him on the two-part premiere, but I can’t guarantee that I’ll stick with this for the whole season.

Where are we? The crew is divided. On land, Cap’n McSteamy has rescued his family (minus dead wife) from the concentration camp at the Olympia sports arena. McSteamy is appalled to discover that evil Governor Alfre Woodard has been herding up sick people and murdering them to burn their bodies for fuel to keep the city’s lights on. More importantly, she’s keeping Dr. Hottie a prisoner! This clearly cannot stand. McSteamy devises a plan to take down the Queen Bee.

Meanwhile, the remaining crew of hundreds of super-competent Naval officers still on board the Last Ship are overtaken by Fat Cop and his small squad of bumbling police deputies. When Dr. Weasel tries to play hero, Fat Cop shoots him in the gut. This is kind of a problem, because Fat Cop has been ordered to retrieve the vial of primordial virus strain so that the Governor’s scientists can use it to synthesize a cure. When he can’t find it, he demands that XO Jayne and the ship’s medic revive Dr. Weasel to tell him where it is. Little does he know that they’ve actually hidden it themselves and Dr. Weasel has no idea where it is anyway.

Remember how Cowboy Tex said sayonara to the Last Ship so that he could go off and be a loner? That doesn’t last. He runs into a wise-beyond-his-years teen who tells him all about the awful things the Governor is doing, so Tex promptly hightails it back to the city to rescue Dr. Hottie.

McSteamy leaves his family behind to hide in an abandoned apartment with Master Chief Master Chief, while he leads a raid on the incinerator factory where the dead bodies are burned up for fuel. Much shooting commences! McSteamy makes a whole lot of new dead bodies! He shuts off the incinerator and stops the corpses from being burned. Hooray! However, all the victims are still being murdered over at the Olympia sports arena, which he hasn’t done anything to stop. But at least their corpses aren’t being burned up anymore!

During the raid, McSteamy meets a mole from the Rebel Alliance, who introduces him to their leader, the Man in Bosch (Titus Welliver).

As a condition of agreeing to be a Nazi Collaborator, Dr. Hottie forces Gov. Woodard to allow her to go out on the streets (supervised, of course) and cure sick people. Unfortunately, she only brings a half dozen vials of the cure with her. When she gets down to her last vial, she must make a Sophie’s Choice between a sick mother or the woman’s sick son.

On the Last Ship, Dr. Weasel won’t tell Fat Cop nothin’. What’s the worst Fat Cop can do, kill him? He’s going to die anyway. When Fat Cop threatens to shoot Mrs. Weasel, Dr. Weasel bravely removes the bandage from his gut and croaks. For some reason, Fat Cop doesn’t immediately blow his wife’s brains out like he said he would. Instead, he comes up with the brilliant idea to send Lt. Preggers to Evil HQ so that the evil scientists can cut the baby out of her and use its stem cells to make the cure. If he’d thought of that earlier, it could have saved us a lot of screen time.

Next, Tex sneaks into Evil HQ and rescues Dr. Hottie. XO Jayne gets loose on the ship and hides in a communications room so that he can watch the rest of the episode on TV.

Cap’n McSteamy cuts off the power at the incinerator, causing a citywide blackout. Gov. Woodard sends all the troops she can muster to reclaim the station. She even diverts a bunch from the Last Ship, which only leaves about a dozen baddies on board. Chief Engineer then leads a crew uprising to take back the ship. Random guy on deck machine-guns down a helicopter, and XO Jayne fire-axes Fat Cop in the chest. Hell yeah!

Of course, the blackout is just a diversion. Cpl. Boyfriend stays at the station to single-handedly hold off an army of Evil Stormtroopers with just one rifle, an unlimited supply of bullets, and a hand grenade. Meanwhile, Cap’n McSteamy and Man in Bosch break into Evil HQ. The Cap’n rescues Lt. Preggers and Bosch gets killed by Gov. Woodard. She tries to escape but doesn’t get very far before McSteamy captures her. Realizing that she’s been defeated, Gov. Woodard orders the rest of her people to stand down and then kills herself.

The next morning, Cap’n McSteamy is reunited with his family while swabbies clean up the gallons of blood splattered all over the ship’s deck (which is weird, because not many people actually died up there). Dr. Hottie gets her primordial strain back. Having valiantly saved all the sick people in the city from being quickly and painlessly put out of their misery by Gov. Woodard’s goons, McSteamy and the Last Ship set sail the hell away from Baltimore, leaving the city’s populace to die horrible lingering deaths from the virus instead. It’s a happy ending for everybody!

Most importantly, the entire crew of the Last Ship is back on the Last Ship to have further adventures at sea and allow the show to retain its title.

1 comment

  1. Wayne

    “XO Jayne gets loose on the ship and hides in a communications room so that he can watch the rest of the episode on TV. ” HAHHAAHAH!!!!

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