Did Alan Moore write this week's episode of Last Resort?

Probably not. But it is consumed with the sort of questions about legitimate authority that drove V for Vendetta, and ends up with a similarly sticky wicket.

Despite two attempts on the life of Captain Chaplin and a live grenade on the Conn, this episode felt a little slower to me, but it seems to be setting up some major developments for the show. I don't talk much about what's going on back in the U.S., because, well, I think it's boring. But this week, intimations were made that President Bolton (former UN ambassador John? Michael? How dystopic are we going to get in Last Resort universe?) was waltzing towards a military dictatorship. The characters back home are aligning themselves as either resistors (Sam's wife, the chick who designed the Colorado's cloaking device) and collaborators (chick's dad).

And the question of alliance also surfaces, both literally and figuratively, back on the island itself. Due to what could politely be called dissent, Chaplin puts up a "Stay/Go" list. Crewmembers can publicly declare whether they are for the Captain or against him. Because, you know, they can't so much "go" anywhere. Stepping into that vacuum is the brand-new Secretary of Defense, who surreptitiously sends orders to several sailors to take Chaplin out. Which brings us to the fallout from last week.

I'm surprised, pleasantly I think, that Cortez isn't being shunned because of her sexual bribery of Serrat. But her fellow captive, Brannan, is a hot mess after sacrificing Red to save them both. After submitting to Serrat's torture, he in turn submits to the secretary's order, storming the Conn with the aforementioned grenade and attempting to commandeer the ship. In a masterful display of down talking, Chaplin reminds Brannan that he swore an oath not to him (Chaplin), nor to the president, but rather to the Constitution of the United States. Sometimes it is necessary to defy the orders of men (or kings, presumably) in order to uphold principles like justice and liberty. Brannan allows himself to be disarmed, because it really was a damn fine speech.

So as Last Resort continues, I'm very curious to see what will happen to America--will it descend into a military dictatorship, possibly by using the crew of the Colorado as a handy scapegoat? And also to Chaplin himself. I haven't forgotten his speech in the pilot when he rather creepily seemed to cast the island as an unfallen Eden over which he could rule.

Oh, and there's also some sort of valuable mineral on the island. If it's unobtainium, I swear to you right now I will set fire to my television set.

Last Resort went somewhere I did not expect last week

Last week's episode of Last Resort,"Eight Bells" (which I think is a fairly obscure and rad reference to a Winslow Homer painting), is consumed with the theme of compromise. Compromise not so much in the sense of give and take, but rather of compromising one's self and principles. When will you give up something important, and for what? This throughline is introduced in one disturbing scene that is almost marginalized by its subtlety, but turns out to be the crucial encapsulation of what matters in this episode.

Local island strongman Serrat (perhaps another homophonic painterly reference?) has kidnapped three sailors--two men and a woman--from the USS Colorado in a bid to get Chaplin to bend the knee. His frustration at being ignored by the Captain leads him to threaten one of the male abductees, Red. The female captive, Lopez, saves Red's life by offering to have a private "conversation" with Serrat that is quickly confirmed to be a trade of sexual favors for the safety of her fellow crewpeople. Um, holy shit. As I said, this scene is almost brusque in its presentation--it is not melodramatic or even dramatic, neither in performance nor in staging--but its very matter-of-factness makes it all the more chilling.

Lopez's sacrifice, her willing to compromise her bodily integrity to save a comrade, is echoed by Chaplin's decision to commission the nuclear sub as an ersatz drug runner for Serrat in exchange for the freedom of the captives, and by Liquid Metal Man, er, Prosser's, decision to quit his campaign of quiet insurrection and serve under Chaplin in exchange for the promise that he will be the star witness for the prosecution at Chaplin's inevitable court martial. These men give up a portion of their definition of personal honor in order to serve a greater good. But as the episode reveals, that bargain doesn't always pay off.

Due to the intermittent failure of the state-of-the-art cloaking system prototype on the Colorado, Chaplin and his men miss Serrat's deadline for the exchange. The strongman, just as desperate to demonstrate his tenuous hold on power as Chaplin, asks the prisoners to choose which one of them should be executed. The other male captive nominates Red, and he is shot. Does Lopez feel Red's death made her earlier sacrifice meaningless? Her stoicism makes it difficult to tell, and the episode closes with the two being returned to their people, both knowing what the other was willing to compromise. I really hope that the reverberations of those decisions--and what they have to say about power, sacrifice, and gender--will continue to be explored throughout the season.

Last Resort Recap: Who Are You?

Episode 2 of Last Resort isn't as balls-to-the-wall as the pilot, but I'm still willing to go out again next week, mainly because the show now seems to be revealing one of its central concerns: Identity, and how it shapes the characters' decisions in this extreme situation. Spoilers aplenty follow!

The central drama of the episode, titled "Blue on Blue," is the probable landing of a Delta Force on the island to take out our merry band of mutineers. XO Kendal (dude from Felicity) takes a team into the uninhabited part of the island in order to take them out, which includes perpetually disrespected Lt. Grace Shepherd (um, the girl), and the soldier who Master Chief Prosser (guy from T2) has Lady Macbeth-ed into trying to kill her as payback for killing a fellow soldier who had Kendal and the chick from NATO at gunpoint last week. There is much internal strife and discussion about the decision and willingness to kill fellow Americans to protect themselves, as there should be, but once the Lasties encounter the special ops force . . .  they turn out to be The Others! Just kidding. They turn out to be Russians trying to steal the nuclear sub. Since it's okay and not a moral conundrum to kill Russians, they do so. In this case, identity was mistaken. In the other threads of the episode, identities are concealed or suppressed.

Back at the homefront, we find out Kendal's wife Christine has been essentially kidnapped by government interrogators who are trying to get her to convince Sam to throw Captain Chaplin under the bus. To try to sew some seeds of mistrust about her husband, they show her a debriefing video where Sam describes being held prisoner for 17 days in North Korea--a little element of the mission he didn't share with his new bride. A flashback also has Christine numbering at 127 the days they've spent together out of the three years of their relationship, and playfully asking, "Who are you, Sam Kendal?" However, once they get him on the phone with her, she breaks character and tells Sam not to trust them, or anything she says on their behalf. Go Christine! Then the feds bring in a ringer--a friend of Sam's, a lawyer, who tricks Christine into thinking he's there to save her. She falls for it. Damn, Christine!

Meanwhile, back on the island, upon returning from the firefight in the jungle, a soldier breaks rank and threatens to murder the POWs the group has brought back. Chaplin talks him down by saying "It's time to remember who you are"--the gist of which is Americans who don't execute prisoners of war. A nice sentiment. But then another big reveal comes when Prosser, from his cell, continues to stir the pot by telling the Lasties that Chaplin's son was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan three weeks prior to the start of the show, um, to the missile order, thereby putting all his "I'm not doing stuff the government tells me to" motives into question. Kendal meets up with Chaplin on the ship, tells a touching story about his son, grabs his captain's hand, and tells him "I know who you are. I trust you." This is rhymed with Shepherd's "If I die on this mission" video to her father, where she admits to being scared, but also knows "I won't run from this. That's who I am."

Oh, and also? The chick from Dollhouse, the bartender who keeps the Navy Seal drunk and conflicted about his allegiances, shares that the island might not be as safe as it appears either: It's a gd volcano. Of course it is!

The episode concludes with a shot of the American flag that has just been raised over the NATO base commandeered by the sailors, but who best represents that country? The government back home or the mutineers on the island? Is Kendal's trust in Chaplin well placed? How messed up is he from those days as a POW? And who is this show? A military action adventure? A political critique? An investigation into power and how it ultimately corrupts? So far, I'm interested in finding out.