The Last Ship season 4 premiere review: Cameron Burk’s pain; Chandler’s hope

The stakes were high on The Last Ship season 4 premiere, and it took very little time in order to figure out precisely why that was: The virus jumping over from humans to plants. The good news is that no humans were dying anymore as a result of it. The bad news? Well, the entire world was on the brink of a massive food shortage. There was only one type of seed with a proven immunity to it, and a certain someone was choosing to hoard it. Oh, and it also doesn’t help that this same someone is also in the midst of a medical situation where he’s not exactly capable of telling anyone where his supply.

Eventually, the Nathan James crew was able to track the man down with one goal in mind: Locating those all-important seeds. We saw Sasha and Slattery lead the way in the (peaceful) interrogation, though they didn’t learn much other than a name. It was just enough to give them something to work with, but not enough to make it easy.

As if trying to pull a needle out of haystack wasn’t enough for the crew of the Nathan James to take on, there was another problem that quickly made itself clear: An attack that unfolded on the base, otherwise known as another sign that even in this chaotic world, it’s still hard to find any sort of peace and cooperation. Basically, the mission here was clear: To get to the man with the seeds before anyone else could.

Cameron Burk, unfortunately, found himself in the crossfire. Big Burk found himself in a position where he could lose his leg, and was sent off away in a helicopter. In the aftermath of this surprise Slattery and the team were able to use a simple clue (a lion) in order to determine that the seeds were heading elsewhere to Algeria.

Through all of this story, we’ll give the show some credit for really moving into the story at a fairly rapid pace. There was no significant amount of exposition — we were told what the story was, and then dove right into it almost immediately afterwards.

Where was Tom Chandler in all of this?

While all of this chaos was going on with the Nathan James trying to stop the operation, what we saw from Tom Chandler couldn’t be any more different. He was relaxing off the coast of Greece with a new family, a new love, and a new job working as a fisherman. It was a nice, idyllic little world for him — though he hated the music.

It’s too bad that it was clear that this was not going to be the sort of thing that lasted for him. Before the end of the hour we saw his boat on fire. In the wake of the attacks that started to hit his new home, a new fire and spirit awakened in him. He found a new drive to keep fighting that wasn’t there previously, and it was looking like the James was going to have a familiar face on board soon. The key word there? Soon. First, he had to deal with Giorgio (the wealthy stooge causing so much trouble) and some of his men.

Overall

We’d say that this was a very nice start for the Last Ship season 4 premiere — after all, you had almost everything you could’ve wanted from peaceful moments with Chandler to chaos elsewhere. It was very much an entertaining start to the season; one way or another, the paths will cross soon. Grade: B+.

What did you think about The Last Ship and its season 4 premiere? Share in the comments below, and head over here to get some other news when it comes to the show, including a review for episode 2. (Photo: TNT.)