El Toro | |||
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Written by: | Hank Steinberg Cameron Welsh | ||
Directed by: | Paul Holahan | ||
Running time: | 42 minutes | ||
Original airdate: | July 20, 2014 | ||
Nielsen rating: | 18-49 rating: 1.10 Viewers (million): 4.056 | ||
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El Toro is the fifth episode of the first season of The Last Ship. It aired on July 20, 2014. It refers to the name of a stranded yacht that is seen by the team who are searching for monkeys in the Nicaraguan jungle.
Summary[]
The crew has landed safely on a tropical island and the ship still needs repairs, but Dr. Scott need monkeys to begin testing a vaccine for the virus. Tex begins flirting with Dr. Scott and tries to coax her out of solitude and encourage her to bond with the rest of the crew.
There’s too much unrest in Costa Rica to get safe passage into the jungle via dry land, so the captain orders to take two small teams up a small river to get to a monkey reserve. The trip will take the ground team out of radio contact, forcing them to communicate with the ship through signal flares: green for “no radio contact, but all is okay” and red for “no radio contact, all is not okay”.
The boat crew makes their way into the reserve, but progress is halted when they run into a group of infected islanders who stumble towards them and beg for help. When the crowd does not immediately retreat at the sight of guns and heavy arms, and without any attempt at communicating, the crew retreats back to the river boats. The boats split up. Chandler orders Dr. Scott back to the safety of the ship and the other RIB to go inland to find the monkey test subjects. The upriver crew passes a boat labelled 'El Toro', a phrase echoed by the sick people upstream, but the captain chooses to move towards their destination. While they are walking inland, Ensign Mason is impaled in the leg with a spike. Everyone is then surrounded by armed men.
The captured men are led by armed men into a village filled with uninfected people. El Torro is introduced as the leader of this group of islanders. The captain demands their suits and arms be returned, threatening him with a larger force of sailors if they do not make their scheduled return. His threats are useless when he finds out that the spike Mason was impaled with is poisoned and he will die without the antidote well before the USS Nathan James sends help. El Toro decides to let him live, but not without reminding Chandler that it is generosity, not fear, which saves his man.
Back on Nathan James, Tex continues less than subtly trying to win Dr. Scott’s favor. She is surprised of his ability to find humor even in the darkest times. Tex reassures her that the men on land are fine. They're probably sitting around a campfire roasting marshmallows.
On land, Captain Chandler has a standoff with El Toro over dinner. El Toro says he is lucky to have survived his ship wreck and that he is now living in opulence because it took his men a week to get everything off of his yacht. He introduces the former Mayor Ervin Delgado of the former city Bocana Caoba who was leading what remained of his town into the jungle to escape the virus. El Toro says it's lucky for them they stumbled across him in their bid to escape. Chandler points out that it was lucky that the citizens had tents because El Toro didn't since he was expecting to live on his boat. Chandler points out that the citizens are left to sleep outside on dirty blankets while El Toro took all of their things. El Toro tells Ervin to explain the system. The man states that the system is based on the Inca infrastructure. His people provide the labor and El Toro provides the infrastructure and protection. Slattery points out that's actually called slavery. El Toro defends his system stating it is to keep the people across the river from getting into the healthy population. Slattery makes a correct assumption that El Toro was a drug runner before the virus.
El Toro pulls a teenage girl about 15 years old, Karina, into his lap and states she is the mayors daughter. He states the man was lucky to have all beautiful daughters. He says that Karina is in her prime. The retracts that and says her younger sister is actually the real prize. Karina gets upset and calls him a pig and asks for the Navy men to help them. Delgado grabs his daughter and tries to reassure El Toro that she didn't mean it, then begs Chandler to say she did not provoke them. Chandler states their only interest is getting out of there with Mason healthy. El Toro order Karina grabbed and she is led out of the tent.
Chandler moves to leave to check on Mason, but El Toro stops them. After a search of their boat, El Toro realized that they were not in the jungle to hunt, but to trap monkeys. Chandler says they have a theory that the virus came from the monkeys. El Toro says it did not, plus they just dined on the animals. El Toro tells them that if they needed monkeys, all they had to do was ask. He is upset over the secrecy and dishonestly because they cause problems. El Toro, however, found the flares. Chandler tries to lie and say green is for night but red is for daytime but El Toro does not believe him. His men shoot off a green flare and the ship sees it and assumes all is well. Slattery and Green try to fight when El Toro's men start to send Karina across the river to the infected people. This is her punishment for calling El Toro a pig and pleading for help. They are overpowered and forced to stand by as she is loaded into a boat and sent across the river to the infected people.
On the ship, Dr. Scott awakes from a dream, feeling that something is wrong with the boat crew. Tex assures her the signal proves that they are fine.
Back on the island, Chandler insists his crewmen be released after hearing about the girl’s execution. El Toro revokes his previously generosity. He gives them their lives, boats, and the monkeys, but keeps the weapons and suits. He then tells them the the children will be sleeping in his tent to prevent the ship from sending a missile to kill him. He then pulls Karina's younger sister out of her parents arms and states that it will start with her. As their boat pulls away, Slattery demands that they do something to end El Toro’s reign of terror and Chandler agrees. CMC Jeter attempts to remind them that they have no weapons, Mason is unable to fight due to his injury, and that they are the ship’s only leaders. Slattery and Chandler have already made up their minds. Green, Chandler, and Slattery will go back on land to help the people; Mason and Jeter will stay on the boat with the monkeys in case they don't come back. They turn the boat around.
Chandler and Green cut through El Toro’s guards, taking them out quietly. While the men sweep in, El Toro begins to try to seduce the very young terrified girl. Just as he is about to get the girl to remove her clothes, gunshots go off, warning him of the attack in progress. The men successfully retrieve weapons. Chandler goes into El Toro's tent to find him gone. El Toro retreats to the river, where there is a slight stand off with him holding a knife to Karina's sister's throat. El Toro is trapped and without men. He surrenders to the American crew, stating that he'll be happy to be a prisoner on the ship, but Mayor Delgado kills the tyrant before he can be arrested. The Navy leaves the uninfected village to straighten itself out with Delgado now in charge. The land crew radios back to the ship as soon as they’re in range and lets everyone know they’re safe and have monkey specimens.
While the men are on the water coming back they see a host of other infected. Tex tells Dr. Scott that they've heard from the crew and the landing party is on its way back. With a boatload of monkeys.
Quotes[]
We came to hunt.
Cast[]
Starring[]
- Eric Dane as Commander (CO) Tom Chandler
- Rhona Mitra as Dr. Rachel Scott
- Adam Baldwin as Commander (XO) Mike Slattery
- Charles Parnell as Command Master Chief Russ Jeter
- Sam Spruell as Dr. Quincy Tophet (credit only)
- Travis Van Winkle as Lieutenant Danny Green
- Marissa Neitling as Lieutenant Kara Foster (credit only)
- Christina Elmore as Lieutenant (Junior Grade) Alisha Granderson
Guest Starring[]
- John Pyper-Ferguson as Tex Nolan
- Jocko Sims as Lieutenant Carlton Burk
- Chris Sheffield as Ensign (Communications Officer) Will Mason
- Michael Curran-Dorsano as Lieutenant Juan "Gator" Meija
- Fay Masterson as Lieutenant Commander Andrea Garnett
- Alex Fernandez as Ervin Delgado
- Jose Zuniga as El Toro
Co-Starring[]
- Kevin Michael Martin as Miller
- Paul James as O'Connor
- Chris Marrs as Engineer Lynn
- Janelle Marie as Karina
- Murielle Zuker as Delgado's Wife
- Eryn Pablico as Valeria
- Emily Tosta as Luisa
- Anthony Nanakornpanom as Skinny Guard
- Fiorella Garcia as Mother Suckling Baby
- Gilbert Rosales as Infected Man
- Andy Demetrio as Infected Man #2
- Eloy Mendez as Infected Man #3
- Graciella Evelina Martinez as Infected Woman
- Nancy De Mayo as Infected Woman #2
- Vanessa Lua as Infected Woman #3
- Lorena Jorge as Infected Teen
- Thomas Rosales as Old Man Who Gets Kicked
- Eddie Perez as Villager Who Gets Smacked
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