The Last Ship: Tom Chandler Takes Back Command

The big takeaway from this week's The Last Ship is that Tom's (Eric Dane) back in command of the Nathan James. It sure didn't take him long to reassume his old position either -- even though he refuses to sit in the Captain's chair, believing it now belongs to Slattery (Adam Baldwin). To add a cherry on top, Tom's first mission back as ranking officer was to go find the ship's kidnapped crew, now POWs being held in an unknown location.

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Tom also made quick work of reorganizing the command structure on the ship post-hostage crisis, handing X.O. command to Lt. Granderson (Christina Elmore) and bumping T.A.O. Burk (LaMonica Garrett) to the comm room. Hopefully, this will become a sticking point in future episodes, allowing for a cool story arc that sees Burk dealing with being usurped by the next guy (or girl) in line.

As for Tom's mission, it's interesting to see a lot more of him on land this episode. Despite the risk of being one of the world's most recognizable faces, the man still leads a unit into town with hopes of finding his crew. But the whole thing, of course, culminates in a shootout with Chinese President Peng Wu's (Fernando Chien) forces, which is very entertaining to watch. One thing The Last Ship does best is good ol' fashioned summer action fun.

Watching Tom re-take command of the ship he gave up in order to, as President Michener (Mark Moses) put it, run the entire U.S.mMilitary, was a treat. Of course, eventually he'll need to find his crew and bring them back to their rightful home. After that, Slattery can reassume command and Tom can focus on bigger and better things, like stopping Peng before the virus mutates past the point of no return.

The Last Ship airs Sundays at 9/8c on TNT.