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There's a blockade closing in on the island, but if Chaplin wasn't going to give in before, he's not about to now, even though the government is refusing to bury his dead son until he does. For now, the captain has a more immediate concern: his missing crew members Cortez, Brannan and now Redman -- who we already know are hostages of the island's evil mayor, Julian Serrat. Chaplin releases Prosser in exchange for his help with the search, but it's Sophie who introduces Chaplin and Julian to each other. Without being an atom less obvious than he can get away with, Julian makes a deal: Chaplin's sailors back, if the Colorado will retrieve some contraband for Julian from a boat waiting outside the blockade.
Chaplin agrees to the deal, which allows him to use the Perseus prototype again, this time to duck under the navy blockade. Alas, it turns out the thing's no good for more than a couple hours, as it sucks power and fries circuits. As a result, getting back is a little hairier, with all the sub-movie tension and suspense and forced silence that implies. Fortunately, Sophie's back at the station to talk Kendal through guiding the sub back along a treacherous stretch, but their sultry voices over the radio connection hint that they may be about to enter dangerous waters of their own.
Meanwhile, Navy SEAL King explores a little more island culture with his new friend Tani, who has some past tragedy of her own, not that this subplot is at all interesting. And in D.C., Admiral Shepard convinces Kylie to start sticking her nose into the shadowy origins of that nuke order that started all the trouble. Which she does, carefully, asking her boyfriend to have his senator boss look into it for her. We don't find out how that turns out, because her boyfriend gets a late night visit from an intimidating fellow who is not unknown to Kylie. And she finds herself in deeper trouble when her one schematic of the Perseus prototype is stolen from right out of her safe.
The Colorado is a bit late getting back with Julian's goods, so he kills Redman. Although Chaplin isn't thrilled, he's not prepared to fight a war on two fronts just yet. But he promises Kendal the time will come and Kendal in turn promises that the time will come for Chaplin's son's actual funeral. I wonder in what order?
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Want more? The full recap starts right below!Kendal looks like he's out for a run, but he fires his sidearm into the air as he runs into the village square, where there's some kind of altercation going on between one of the sailors and a local over a shoplifted banana. Kendal orders the offender back to the boat and the other sailors to continue their search for the still-missing Brannan and Cortez, but the mutinous sailor refuses the order, throwing off his uniform tunic and telling his fellows, "Ask the COB." Who is watching smugly from his cage. "Without us, they have to surrender and we all go home." Why, that's so simple it'll never work. Kendal mocks him and orders him put in the brig, but that order is barely followed either.
At the station, Shepard reports to Captain Chaplin that a sailor named Redman -- one of COB's loyalists from last week, nicknamed Red -- has been missing since yesterday. I don't know what anybody expected of a guy whose name is practically Redshirt, but there's also still no sign of Brannan and Cortez. They both know the sailors aren't AWOL, but before Chaplin can elaborate he takes a phone call from his new negotiator, an Amanda Straw. Chaplin congratulates her on the new gig, and she threatens to impose a blockade by nightfall unless he surrenders. "That's a bit of a reach, isn't it, considering the 17 Tridents still in my control?" Chaplin says pleasantly, at which point Straw threatens to let Chaplin's dead son continue to rot in a Navy morgue until Marcus surrenders. Dick move, that. Chaplin hangs up and asks the newly arrived Kendal what's on his mind, as if there's nothing at all on Chaplin's.
Chaplin and Kendal visit Prosser and his shirtless new cage-mate to ask the COB about the missing sailors. Prosser lords over Chaplin's slipping control of the crew, and Chaplin says they both want the same thing: "Me in front of a court-martial where one of us will be proven right." That's not quite the same thing, but Chaplin asks for Prosser's help finding his people, offering to cut the COB loose in exchange for a promise to stop undermining him. They agree on it, but Kendal warns the COB he'll be watching.
From the bar, King looks up from his poker game with one of Julian Serrat's heavies long enough to witness the two sailors' release, but pays attention when he sees the watch his opponent just put on the table. He goes right to HQ and hands the watch to Shepard, who recognizes it as Cortez's. King says it came from a guy who works for Julian. "Friend of the French lady," he elaborates. I assume he means Sophie, but it's good to finally know her nationality. King leaves her to it, and when she tries to leave the room, Prosser comes in and lays down some intimidation. Or tries to, at least, topped off with a sardonic salute.
Sophie appears to be packing up her beachside camp to evacuate the island with her equally French boyfriend and his kids while Kendal asks for her help talking to Julian. She agrees, but only if she meets with Julian and Chaplin alone. "He's sweet on me," she assures a concerned Kendal, then takes leave of her disapproving boyfriend, who threatens to leave on the boats by six if she's not back by then. Aw, young love.
A battered Cortez, Brannan, and Redman linger over their lunch in Julian's house, while that worthy stalks around with his shirt gratuitously unbuttoned and bitching about what it's going to take to get Chaplin to come to him already. He's about to have his guys take a chunk out of them for the accidental shooting death of some island kid, but Cortez puts a stop to it, offering Julian a private moment, if he knows what she means.
SecDef Curry is on the TV, and now that we can see his face I recognize him as recurring nemesis Brennan from Burn Notice, back when I used to cover that show. Kylie's watching him claim that Pakistan had distributed portable nukes to terrorists, so there was no choice but to nuke them first. "Preemptive nuclear war is our new official policy," Kylie worriedly tells her bed partner as the TV wakes him up. It's Robert, the senate staffer she was bedding in the pilot, so apparently she's not done with that senator yet. She gets a call and goes out to meet whoever it is, first retrieving her only schematic of her prototype on the Colorado from her safe. Which she ever-so-wisely tells Robert all about.
Cut to Kylie in an abandoned parking garage. Admiral Shepard steps out of nowhere, relaying Chaplin's claim that the Colorado's nuke order came through the Antarctic network, which Kylie knows is impossible. "Who believes a trigger-happy madman anyway?" The admiral know that Kylie does, which is why she's here, and he needs to know who sent it. Kylie mentions Linus, now comatose from his shellfish allergy. "I'm allergic to nothing, by the way, so if that happens, throw a flag on the play, will you?" Shepard points out that Kylie's got a little more juice than Linus, what with a dad who plays golf with the president. And also, "You're a parasite who traffics in war without ever getting her hands dirty, and this country has made you rich behind your family's weapons. Aren't you ready to do something in return?" That seems to get through to her, and she hands over the order's file number she raided from Linus's pants pockets. The admiral says it's a start, but she needs to start making some real noise. I imagine that's something she's be good at, given how she got in his face in the pilot. Speaking of which, what are they doing meeting 24-style when the pilot showed the admiral walking into Kylie's apartment?
Cortez is thrown back into the room with the other sailors when Julian's done with her. Brannan thanks her for her sacrifice, and a moment later they're all dropped into a cellar and guns held to their heads, now that visitors are here. Sophie shows up with Chaplin and introduces the two leaders to each other, then makes herself scares. The meeting starts out amicably enough, but Julian soon starts preening angrily about the dead kid and how it's Chaplin's fault. Chaplin acts reasonable, saying there's no need to quarrel. "'Because if we do, you'll lose." Julian threatens Chaplin with death by a thousand cuts, but then initiates a thinly veiled negotiation in which Chaplin will get his crew members back if he uses the Colorado to retrieve some of Julian's cargo from a boat waiting outside the blockade. The only catch is that Chaplin has to do it by dawn. "I wish you had come to me sooner," Julian says.
The bar owner, Tani, is ferrying her new best friend King upriver on a motorboat to her family's place for dinner, I guess. In the course of their conversation, we learn that Tani's mom is dead, but King's folks aren't, which he conveys with a brief, "Yep." Maybe he thinks he's not going to dinner, but captured.
The Colorado is underway. On the conn, Prosser remarks to Chaplin and Kendal, "Can't say I like the idea of being a bagman for a drug lord." Chaplin pleasantly wonders who asked him anyway, and Kendal gets on the mic to remind his crew that this is to get their missing people back. Which I'm sure will motivate every member of the crew aside from those who share bunks with Cortez, Brannan, and Redman.
Back at the station, Shepard is manning the radar screen, reporting that the sub is approaching the blockade. Chaplin has Engineering fire up the Perseus prototype and the boat drops off the screen as Chaplin orders a timer set for the nine remaining hours to dawn. It's getting more 24 by the minute up in this bitch.
Kylie bursts into her boyfriend's office to have him ask his senator to pull the time stamp on her order, charming him into reluctantly agreeing to work on it. "Make sure it goes through the senator," she advises. "Don't do it yourself." God knows what Robert's allergic to, after all.
The Colorado is approaching the blockade underwater and is about to duck between two destroyers when suddenly the Perseus briefly crashes, and they're visible on sonar while they have to reboot it. Doesn't look like the destroyers noticed, though. Soon the sub surfaces in darkness near a boat anchored offshore, with almost seven hours left. They offload the cases without opening them and prepare to dive again. "What's in 'em?" a nosy sailor asks Kendal. "Three lives," the XO says. Funny, they look heavier than 63 grams.
King and Tani seem to be having a much more relaxed evening -- for about a minute. They join a camp of people who have apparently dropped out of society. Tani's dad, whose Australian accent is rather more pronounced than hers, appears to be the leader, and King seems to admire them for it. But then Tani gets pissed off at her dad for having apparently talked her younger brother into agreeing to the local manhood ritual. "How many lives in this family do you plan on ruining?" She storms off, which her dad is clearly used to. King politely declines her dad's invitation to stay, going after her instead. She is hotter, after all.
Beneath the ocean, red lights come on in the sub with a little over two hours left. Apparently Perseus is a giant power-suck and is going to need to be shut down. Chaplin gives the order to drop to a thousand feet and do this old school from now on. As they initiate silent running, there's a problem in Engineering that Prosser starts to head back to solve, but Kendal sends someone else, quoting an old Navy saying back to him: "Don't let the COB sabotage the sub." My dad was in the Navy, so I'll have to ask him if that's really an old Navy saying. It looks like the XO and the COB are going to come to blows over this, until Chaplin shuts it down. And they're just now getting back to the blockade, and two destroyers are closing in. Chaplin orders full stop and another three hundred feet of depth, carefully. They're being so quiet they don't even answer Shepard's call from the island that the blockade's onto them. The ship's hull starts moaning under the stress at the depth Prosser crudely calls "her G-spot." Chaplin orders them deeper, and the destroyer passes right over them when they're at 1800 feet, dropping depth charges as it goes. Chaplin barks orders as more ships come in and more depth charges hit the water, not that we see any of it; we're trapped in the conn just like our heroes. Which is a pretty effective way of telling the story. Normally sub engagements are filmed with all manner of exterior shots so we can see what's going on the water, but I think it works better this way. Not to mention cheaper. Suddenly Chaplin orders all stop, and they listen as the depth charges pass by and explode harmlessly in the distance, then proceed, the way now clear. But then someone drops a Maglite on the deck, and the noise is loud enough to give away their position. Maybe someone should consider equipping submarines with carpeting, or something. The deck would be less slippery, too. Don't see a downside, in fact.
Back from ads, the Colorado cruises as quietly as it can, dodging depth charges the whole way. Cut to the beach, where Sophie and her boyfriend crouch over a campfire. He tells her in French that they'll have to leave with the tide in thirty minutes. Sophie gets up and goes, but not to their boat.
Marcus directs the Colorado toward an underwater canyon. Kendal points out that they can't hide in there forever, not least because there are only 27 minutes on the clock. "We're going through," Chaplin insists. And we see the sub entering a crack barely wider than itself.
King finds Tani lying on the ground in the woods and apologizes for her dad not hating him more, like she was clearly hoping. He admits that it's not the first time he's been brought home to piss off fathers. Tani delivers her second major buzzkill of this outing by revealing that they're at her mother's grave, and that when she got sick her dad insisted on local medicine rather than taking her home to Australia. So, you know, Tani has a reason to be bitter. If only we had a reason to be watching this. She was hoping her brother would be able to get him away when he got older, but it doesn't look like that's going to happen now. King tells her she doesn't have to stay. So she leaves the scene.
Robert gets a somewhat scary-looking visitor in his office who asks, "Do you know who I am?" He's glad that Robert does. "Then this won't take long." Why is anyone even worried about time in this version of Washington? It always seems to be the middle of the night there anyway.
As proof, Kylie comes out of the shower in the apartment, thinking (or hoping) that the noises she's hearing are Robert. But the place is empty. And, aside from a few bricks of cash, so is her safe. Oh no, someone stole the one schematic of the Perseus prototype, and if it falls into the wrong hands, there'll be nothing to stop them from figuring out how to make the damn thing work properly!
Tani is still leading King through the jungle, as King says girls used to think they could fix him, but only one came close. "U.S. Navy. We're going through a bit of a rough patch now." Tani says they're in the spot designated for her brother's ritual -- a waterfall, into which she dives after stripping off her dress. King follows her fearlessly. Well, that doesn't look like such a taxing ritual. It looks like they're going to make out there in the water, but Tani says nothing good ever lasts long, and proves it by swimming away, saying it's a long walk back. If only they had a boat.
Underwater, Prosser reports on the status of the boat: Perseus fried half of its shit, including navigation, so they have no way to find their way out of here. Thanks a lump, Kylie. There are only eighteen minutes left, so Kendal gets on the horn to Shepard to ask her for a position. She's got nothing, and it sounds like they're cut off to boot, but suddenly Sophie comes on the line, with a handy undersea chart and everything. With Kendal relaying her instructions to the helm, she talks them through the canyon turn by turn, with only two sonar pings and just a little scrape on the side. I don't know how the entire Navy isn't picking up on any of this, not least of all the radio communication. Which I keep meaning to check, is that even possible from a submerged submarine? the show will be telling us Colorado can use her transporter beam with the deflector shields up. Sophie ignores the blip representing a small boat leaving the island and gets back to the task at hand, remotely reading the Colorado's sonar pings and guiding Kendal through its every move with a stopwatch in hand. I understand that they have to speak softly under the circumstances, but Sophie and Kendal are all but having phone sex as she gingerly guides his every move and he gives himself over to her totally trustingly. Get those two into a cold shower already, they're both taken. But soon the sub is clear of the canyon, and Chaplin orders them back to the beach. That's the good news. But the bad news is that the clock is at zero and the sun is up.
At Julian's compound, Julian has his prisoners manhandled into his presence and offers to let them choose among themselves which one of them is going to pay for Chaplin's tardiness. And since he's wielding a gun instead of a credit card reader, I don't think he's accepting Visa. "Take him," Brannan says, gesturing to Redman, who is dragged out and shot offscreen. That's what he gets for having the name Redman.
Chaplin and several of his crewmen meet Julian in the jungle to deliver his cases. "I could kill you right now," Julian threatens, still all crabby even though he's gotten what he wanted. 'Do you want a war?" Chaplin threatens right back. Julian makes kissy noises to signal that it's time to bring out the prisoners. Brannan and Cortez are brought out, and when Chaplin asks after the third, Julian angrily explains that Chaplin was late. Chaplin makes a face like there's going to be an epic Braugherian beatdown...but not now.
At the station, Kendal twists his wedding ring and goes in for a talk with Sophie. She makes some rueful observations about trying to give up bad men (like the one who ditched her on the island while she was flirting with Kendal), and Kendal promises to get her out, saying that responsibility is kind of what he does. She asks why he became a solider. He corrects that to sailor, and explains that he was "a bit lost early in life. The water was more forgiving." Christine's not a fan, though. Anyway, he wanted to thank her, so he does. This tender moment is disrupted by Prosser barging in and saying, "Giddy-up." But he also tosses Kendal a rifle, so he's not telling him to take Sophie for a ride.
Kendal goes and meets Chaplin and his two surviving prisoners as they arrive in the square, and when he hears Red was killed, he says with cold resolve, "Okay, then." Chaplin grabs him by his vest and asks if he's going to fight an insurgency and the U.S. Navy at the same time. Okay, Chaplin, it's Julian and four other guys, all of whom King offered to shoot in one sitting two episodes ago. I think you and your surviving crew of 131 highly trained, heavily armed U.S. sailors can handle it. Kendal asks what happens when word gets out about them letting one of their own get killed. "He gave us a deadline which we did not meet," Chaplin points out, like Julian had every right to kill an American sailor as a result. Kendal says all they have left is their loyalty to each other, but without that their deaths won't mean anything. "My son is lying unburied in a Navy freezer as the price for not capitulating, so please don't tell me about faith and vengeance," Chaplin spits. Sure, play that card. We will respond to this affront at the time and place of my choosing." Kendal says they can't get stuck again, and Chaplin says this isn't like before. "We're not helpless here. The time and place of my choosing." In other words, certainly not the final act of the episode.
In D.C., Kylie nervously watches as her apartment door opens. Robert's intimidating visitor walks in, but he turns out to only be Kylie's dad. No wonder Robert was so scared of him. She runs into his arms, saying they took it all. He assures her it's okay. Which, yeah, the thing doesn't work for shit anyway.
At the bar, Chaplin gives Cortez a grim debriefing over drinks. She doesn't say how it ended up being Red who got killed, and Chaplin says he and the crew did their best. "No one blames you for what happened," she assures him. The look he gives her isn't much better than being kidnapped, so she suggests he have a drink as well, which he does. Redman's blood is on the hands of a lot of people: Julian and his men, Brannan, Kylie, the blockade...but mostly the people who refuse to carpet submarines.
The funeral procession of the dead boy is going through the streets ,which much keening and singing. King and Tani come out of the forest together in time to see it go by. They must be very tired. Julian's part of the procession and locks eyes with Chaplin and Kendal while they watch from the bar above. While watching the funeral, Kendal promises Chaplin's own son a proper burial when the time comes, with 21 guns at Arlington; "We'll do it right." Chaplin nods like he doesn't really believe it, but he doesn't have a lot of other options at the moment.
M. Giant is a Minneapolis-based writer with a wife, a son, and a number of cats that seems to have settled at around two. Learn waaaay too much about him at Velcrometer, follow him on Twitter , or just e-mail him at m.giant[at]gmail.com.