Last Resort Series Finale Discussion *Spoilers Possible*

[Romulan_spy]

Anyone see the series finale for Last Resort? What did you think?

I was glad that they were able to wrap up the story considering the series was cut short. To me, it was the perfect ending. I got teary eyed at the end.

 

[Roshi]

The President's assassination was badly shot/thought but overall everything was nicely wrapped. And for a brief moment I had the feeling Scott Speedman could act.

 

[BigFoot]

It was far from a perfect series, but I loved the finale.
And yeah, Speedman was very good.

 

[auntiehill]

I thought it was too rushed in some areas, while others too drawn out. They crammed far too much into that last hour, but at least they did wrap up the series. That's more than most cancelled shows get to do.

 

[ThunderAeroI]

I thought it was crap. I know it was suppose to be a season ending but really it was bad. The series was bad and why my wife liked it I have no idea.

It could have been awesome, I think I was very put off by the story and how stupid it was. I missed too many episodes, can someone tell me why 'we' nuked Pakistan anyway and what that plot point was cause it wasn't referenced in the ending.

 

[auntiehill]

Yeah, I have to agree. I thought it started out strong but quickly went to hell. Characters changed in an instant without any clear motivation. Actions and reactions made no sense in light of previous behaviors or statements. The writing was terribly inconsistent.

If this had been a mini-series, it might have been pretty good and might have had good ratings. But dragging it out into a series was a huge mistake.

 

[Romulan_spy]

I missed too many episodes, can someone tell me why 'we' nuked Pakistan anyway and what that plot point was cause it wasn't referenced in the ending.

It was referenced a couple eps back. Basically the Prez was a nutcase who gave the Spec Ops guys that the Colorado picked up an illegal order to assassinate the UN nuke inspector and plant suitcase nukes in Pakistan so that he could start a war. This was the basis for the coup against the President.

 

[Enterprise is Great]

IIRC in the pilot there was a newscast talking about impeachment. The President was wagging the dog to avoid impeachment.

 

[bigdaddy]

The President's assassination was badly shot/thought but overall everything was nicely wrapped. And for a brief moment I had the feeling Scott Speedman could act.

I haven't seen the episode since the Chinese took over a boat with the sailors' families on it. That was the last straw for stupid. The black guy running the island should have been killed about 100 times over. Then I saw he was still alive helping the Chinese last night and just rolled my eyes.

But the last scene with the woman shooting the president a few weeks after a coup?!!? That is just stupid. No way would have have even come close to happening. This show is a fantasy, but that just took me too much back.

It seems they had more than enough time to "tweak" the ending because what was a plan for a second season? Plan? Right they had no plan.

This would have made an amazing 13 episode miniseries, instead of the great 2-4 episodes we got with too much bullshit thrown at us for no reason.

 

[Enterprise is Great]

Eh, it's really hard to give a proper sensical ending on such a short notice. I wonder what the original ending for the episode was before they tweaked it into a series finale.

 

[Beagleman]

I quite liked it, one of the better episodes (not saying much)... and I'm glad I've one less our to waste every week...

 

[Trek4Ever]

Being that the show was cancelled before they could really flesh out the stories and yeah some of it was rushed but they did the best they could and for the most part it worked.

I found myself really rooting for the captain and was saddened by his ultimate fate but at least they got resolutions on the most important arcs.

Hopefully this will come out on Blu-ray/DVD cause it's one of the most unique network shows of recent history compared to all the crime procedurals and soapy stuff.

 

[Brolan]

All in all the writers on this show were horrible. They had no clue what to do with the crew once they got to the island. The show slowly turned from a military/political thriller to soap opera dreck. It's good it was cancelled.

 

[Mr. Adventure]

I think the ending was decent enough for what the series was (I wasn't expecting it to elevate to some new level). If nothing else, it wrapped the major fates up including the ship/situation and there was some tension and action.

 

[C.E. Evans]

IMO, Last Resort should have just been a 4-hour miniseries. The more the situation dragged out, the worse it became.

 

[degra]

IMO, Last Resort should have just been a 4-hour miniseries. The more the situation dragged out, the worse it became.

I gave up on it 4 episodes in,,,I wasn't about to get fooled into another high concept series that starts out with a very limited premise that the writers try to drag out so it can be a multiple season show. It ends up watering it down and frustrating viewers in the process,,,that's assuming the show is solid to begin with,,,which last resort most definitely wasn't.

if you are going down that road then commit to the notion it is just a mini series.a lot of tv now is really just limited premise mini series pretending to be shows with legs,,,deception, the mediocre new series the following, revenge, the killing, last resort, the upcoming ABC drama zero hour, last years Alcatraz, etc.

 

[Rowdy Roddy McDowall]

But Robert Patrick's COB survived against all expectations. What more could anyone want?

 

[Enterprise is Great]

Shawn Ryan talks about how the rest of the season would've played out if the show wasn't canceled

 

[bullethead]

IMO, Last Resort should have just been a 4-hour miniseries. The more the situation dragged out, the worse it became.

I gave up on it 4 episodes in,,,I wasn't about to get fooled into another high concept series that starts out with a very limited premise that the writers try to drag out so it can be a multiple season show. It ends up watering it down and frustrating viewers in the process,,,that's assuming the show is solid to begin with,,,which last resort most definitely wasn't.

if you are going down that road then commit to the notion it is just a mini series.a lot of tv now is really just limited premise mini series pretending to be shows with legs,,,deception, the mediocre new series the following, revenge, the killing, last resort, the upcoming ABC drama zero hour, last years Alcatraz, etc.

Yeah, I dropped it after 2 or 3 episodes because things were already ridiculous and I couldn't care about most of the cast. If it had been a miniseries that was tightly focused around the whole issue of the morality of the order to fire on Pakistan and the conspiracy in the US, then it might have done better.

 

[bigdaddy]

Shawn Ryan talks about how the rest of the season would've played out if the show wasn't canceled

Thank god this got canceled...

we accelerated and really minimized a story that was going to play bigger in subsequent episodes with James and Tani and these prospectors that were on the island and starting to mistreat people from Tani's tribe. That was going to play out as a much bigger thing.

And the plans for the back nine, having people coming to the island looking for a new America of a kind, and having the blockade gone. Just weird to me. It shows that this show was very limited, and had no real plan from the beginning. I also like how he talks about how ABC liked the plans for the back nine. Like they would come out and say it sucks. But they ordered two extra scripts because being canceled. Ratings were on the line for a back nine, I can't help but think that if the scripts were better ABC would have went "Fine, here are 9 more". It's not like any of their other shows have been a huge success this year.

It sounds nice though that ABC didn't really fuck with the show, just let them do what they want.

We talked about this in the summer, and Paul Lee was fairly open about this: this show was not an ideal fit for ABC's brand. Given all that, is there anything you could have done with the show — forget about quality for a second, but in terms of making it fit in more with the brand to maybe make it more successful?

We talked about this in the summer, and Paul Lee was fairly open about this: this show was not an ideal fit for ABC's brand. Given all that, is there anything you could have done with the show — forget about quality for a second, but in terms of making it fit in more with the brand to maybe make it more successful?

Shawn Ryan: Probably. But nothing that I could have lived with creatively. In retrospect, probably the thing I could have done was sell it to NBC and have them air it after "The Voice."

At least he has a sense of humour.

I'm loving this interview! He started to like the show more when the rest of us started giving up on it! I think this is why the show had no future!

I think we struggled a little bit in the first couple of episodes after the pilot to find a strong, simple throughline for the story. I liked those first couple of episodes, but I didn't love 'em. I felt like we really got into a groove starting around episode 5.

Yes ABC really loved the show... That's why they didn't bother moving it...

that we had a network that really loved the show — Paul Lee, creatively, really loved the show, and so did his execs, and we were on time and we were on budget, so we had a lot of goodwill over there. ABC wasn't looking to get rid of us, and Paul was a little heartbroken that America didn't discover it. I knew things were dire early on, and I just kept working and controlling what I could control.

I miss Chicago Code.

Great interview, thanks for posting.