the actors deliver certain corny lines in the pilot with enough conviction to get by, they're clunkier in week two. James spends much of his time on the island getting drunk and trying to stay out of everything, until rookie officer Grace Shepard, played by Daisy Betts, tells him, "One of these days, you're going to have to decide what you believe in." (Braugher can get away with a line like that. Betts -- the weakest link in the cast in the early going -- can't.) The third episode smartly confines most of the tense material to the sub itself, as it's an accepted part of the genre that actors standing on a set tensing themselves for depth charge explosions will always seem exciting. And in a storyline involving local crimelord Julian ( Sahr Ngaujah), the show seems to acknowledge that a premise this complicated will not allow for the kind of neat, tidy and safe resolutions we're used to from network TV. And the tension remains believably, fascinatingly high between the members of the crew who are 100 percent loyal to Marcus and those who don't understand what they're doing disobeying orders and conquering a tropical island. What Marcus is doing should probably not work long-term. But if "Last Resort" wants to be around a while, it's going to have to find a way. There are enough good signs in these early episodes to suggest it's possible. Related Alan Sepinwall has been reviewing television since the mid-'90s, first for