This episode defies all reason. It's like the writers thought that throwing in a survival horror theme might somehow break the monotony of explosions and illegal immigrants. And to really drive the point home they introduce an expendable reservist officer who knows how to teach karate to Lisa McCune, but not how to use it himself when he gets the axe from a stowaway maniac. There's a whole bunch of cheap editing mistakes that I won't even bother describing, and the shock ending is too stupid for words.
No, the bit that got me - to the point where I replayed the sequences just to make sure I wasn't fabricating this ridicule - has to do with the bridge crew's dawning realisation that the 4 member steaming party they left aboard an 'apparently' deserted ship (the Flamingo Bay) are actually stuck in the floating lair of a psychopath. The plot device for this revelation is the afore-mentioned ship's log book, confiscated earlier. The chain of disclosure runs something like this:
1. The last entry of the log tells of the ill-fated vessel finding a stowaway the day before and putting him to work for the rest of the voyage. No names are mentioned, but the entry is signed off by a Capt Nathan Talbot. Fair enough explanation so far.
2. The navy HQ people later tell the Hammersley crew that the registered captain of the Flamingo Bay is meant to be one John Larson and that a Capt Talbot does not exist. Hmm, mysterious.
3. A subsequent email from HQ (who obviously thought this info too unimportant to radio in) reveals that Nathan Talbot is, in fact, a psycho serial killer who recently escaped from psycho serial killer prison. Dun! Dun! Dun!
4. In a quantum leap of conclusion, the Hammersley bridge crew finally figure out that - given the original crew of the Flamingo Bay are dead or missing, and that the ship, along with their 4 member steaming party, are now also missing - the killer may still be at large! Quick, make an inexplicably accurate course for the missing ship before Lisa McCune is forced to employ her new-found, slow-motion karate skills!
Damn, too late.
So, who spotted the slightly confusing error in my plot recital?
That's right, in part 1 the Flamingo Bay's log entry was supposedly written by the killer (Talbot), and not the legit captain (Larson). Hence, Talbot axed the crew and, in his deluded state, assumed captaincy (a point later inferred when we see him dressed in a captain's blazer as he's screaming "Peek-a-boo!" and stalking McCune). That'd be a great twist, but only if it made ANY FUCKING SENSE WHATSOEVER! If this was his motivation to fabricate log entries (using his real name no less), then why also mention the stowaway who is actually himself?
Or maybe that last entry was actually written by the late Capt Larson, only to have Talbot sign off on it with Larson's blood:
Sunday, July 5th, 2009: The crew have discovered a giant, gibbering stowaway eating cat food in the hold. I think his name is Pikabu - could be Hawaiian. We're making him work for his passage by putting him in charge of the fire axe. In between ranting about his whoring mother and his missing medication, he tells me he would "kill to be a captain one day"*. I tell him to never give up on his dreams. Seems a little slow, but I'm sure he means well.
* Lol, when he says 'one day' it kinda sounds like 'Monday'.
Either way, a thrilling race against time ensues. I guess. Lisa, the XO, forgets the fundamentals of handgun operation, Buffer and 2Dads share an intimate embrace in the only walk-in meatlocker in the universe that can't be opened from the inside (or so Buffer would have 2Dads believe - wink), and Seaman Spider defies Darwinism by surviving both coral poisoning and being run over by a ship in the one episode.
