If you were wondering/hoping/praying there might be some submarines in this week’s episode of ‘The Last Ship’, you may just be in luck. After last week’s fairly bombastic showdown on the Hospital Ship, the crew of the Last Ship have finally (maybe) figured out what they’re up against. Too bad Wolf or Girlfriend2 weren’t experts in underwater warfare. Oh well, maybe we’ll see them in Ep. 6.

First shot: SUBMARINE! YES!! It’s quite a bunch running this sub. Mostly a British lot, but I’m still not sure how they managed to wrangle up the number of people who are… a) qualified to operate a SUBMARINE, and b) IMMUNE to the virus. I think the “captain” even calls his crew a “motley bunch.” Yo ho, YO HO, a submariner’s life for me! Dr. Mouse Wrangler is introduced to the swarthy gents by the obviously grouchy captain. Seems like we may have an upcoming skirmish on our hands.

What’s the Nathan James up to? You know, searching for a SUBMARINE. It’s night time out on the open sea. That’s the best time to have a cat/mouse sorta episode.

“Sir, this sub sneakin’ about? Are we hunting or evading it?”

“Both.”

Now we’re talking! ROLL CREDITS!

Back on the Last Ship, the crew is still looking for the SUBMARINE. Too bad everyone has very little opinion of our brand new, good-for-nothing Sonar Guy.

Good-for-Nothing New Sonar Guy: “Hey guys, I’m pretty sure we have a bad ass Achilles class sub on our hands because it’s totally giving off a super silent Achilles class sub reading. In your FACE, haters!”

The bad ass Achilles class sub has a sonar guy too. He hears the Last Ship.

ARM TORPEDOES!!

The sub and the Last Ship are on a collision course. There’s some debate about whether or not the sub has seen the Last Ship. Just to be sure, Captain McSteamy decides to turn 20 degrees to starboard (DRINK!) to see if the sub is paying attention. Of course it is.

DOGFIGHT!!

The Last Ship slows all engines and puts out a “We’re going SILENT 2! Repeat: SILENT 2!” alarm. “Silent 2” means everyone has to be really REALLY, take-off-your-shoes kind of quiet so they can disappear on sonar. The sound of a single Nike could give the sub a footstep-sounding torpedo lock. It’s tense and sweaty but dang quiet. The Last Ship’s attack plan involves hoping they can quietly get into range before the sub fires. They’re also going to have a helicopter fly out there and drop some torpedoes on it. I approve of this plan. Soon, they will eventually get close enough.

However, apparently you don’t have to be so quiet up on the main deck. The Chosen prisoner, Juan Carlos, has given XO Jayne some answers, but not the ones he’s looking for. Juan Carlos insists that he be taken up to the main deck, and there he will tell everything. Sounds dodgy, but we need those answers! They take Juan Carlos to the main deck. They still keep it down, but once up on deck, there’s some confusion about why Juan Carlos wanted to go up on deck in the first place. He starts to bleed out of his abdomen wound while laughing. Could he have swallowed a beacon of some sort? Is the sub homing in on them?! Aww crap. Cut it out of him! Real quiet like!

They call Dr. Red in to perform abdomen surgery on Juan Carlos, with an iPad. Things look really endoscopic and a little bit like the abdomen of a tauntaun. What could go wrong?

All the while, the SUBMARINE crew is getting restless and loud/boisterous. They can’t hear ANY Nikes on the Last Ship and are getting a bit nervous. Sub Sonar Guy: “I can flip on the active sonar and see them.”

Sure, go ahead, IF YOU WANT TO GET THIS FIGHT STARTED!

Active sonar is flipped. Everyone can now see where everyone else is.

Last Ship: EVASIVE MANUEVERS! FIRE THREE TORPEDOES! OH CRAP, THEY FIRED **FOUR** TORPEDOES!

DIVE! DIVE! DIVE! The SUBMARINE goes into a REALLY steep (I mean like kamikaze steep) dive.

On the surface, the Last Ship makes a final evasive positioning adjustment and three torpedoes go by. (Not sure where the fourth went, but that’s not important.) Did we hit the sub? No one seems to know. Now the sub has vanished again.

It hasn’t actually vanished; it’s just taking a tight stroll through Beggar’s Canyon. Canyon walls are close and the hull creaks. Lots of close-up and quietly concerned man-faces are seen in sequence. These are reasonable/standard things to make sure are included in a show involving a SUBMARINE. Now if we only had some depth charges, we’d have all the pieces!

Dr. Red completes the iSurgery and her patient totally dies. (Mental note: If you need basic surgery, no one on board can do it.) Soon they discover it’s not a homing beacon Juan Carlos had inside him, but a USB drive. What would be so important he’d need to swallow a thumb drive? Turns out it’s the locations of all of the Cure labs, and a fundamental belief that only the Chosen should live. Not that it matters, as Mouse Wrangler found some Hospital Ship documentation that had all the lab location data anyway. Almost as soon as the Last Ship uses Juan Carlos’s swallowed USB drive to pull up a map with all the lab locations, the sub launches a gazillion missiles at said labs. Holy Crap! Attention Last Ship: FIRE ALL YOUR GUNS AT ONCE!! BALAAAAMMMOOOOO!

Did we get any of them? Yes, uh, we got, er, two of them. How many got through? Welllll, quite a bit actually… Maybe 26? Nuts. Frantic calls go out to all of the labs. “You’re screwed! Get out of there!”

To emphasize how bad things have gotten, McSteamy, Sr. Skypes in and informs his son that he really needs to take these people out. Thanks, Dad. I’m working on it.

Back on the sub. Mouse Wrangler: See? Sweet, huh? I’m a nautical war planning genius! I guess? So, now we take out the Nathan James?

No bruv, now we take America.

Stay tuned for next week’s episode: There’s probably gonna be lots of talking and maybe planning, but nothing really happening or getting blown up. Sigh. Fingers crossed for a report on those lab missile explosions. Let’s see if the Chosen are immune to bullets!