NOT the Final Frontier.  We’ll get to Star Fleet Academy at some point I am sure.  No, the “last” frontier is here on Earth, in Alaska apparently.  Or so the show of that name on Apple TV would have us believe.

So, The Last Frontier.

Did you like Con Air?  Were you a fan of Runaway Train or whatever that movie was with Liam Neeson out in the Alaskan wilderness?  Have you been looking for a ten episode show that will spend at least six episodes mashing that all together?  Then The Last Frontier might be for you.

The whole thing starts out with a JPATS plane, not the transport from Con Air but something a little more modern, full of prisoners being transported getting diverted to Fairbanks, Alaska… which is literally not on the way to where anybody in the plane is headed, so is a ridiculous contrivance from the get go… to pick up a mysterious prisoner who is chained up, with a mask to prevent him from seeing and headphones to preventing him from hearing, and loaded into the back of the plane in a row all by himself, the camera taking him in from multiple angles just to make sure we all know that this is the guy we need to keep track of.

Then the plane taxis out, takes off, crashes, and this guy along with almost all the other prisoners… again, a full plane that somehow got diverted to the middle of Alaska… survive the crash and are scattered about in the snow… where they all continue to survive well past the first night.

This all becomes the problem of the local US Marshals office, headed by Jason Clarke, whose character has some sort of tragic backstory about being a marshal in Chicago and his daughter dying and then moving back to Alaska, where he is from, where he and his wife and son are trying to put their family back together.

Meanwhile, in Langley, Virginia, the CIA finds out about this and sends Haley Bennett out to get a handle on all of this and follow some discreet instructions regarding the ominous prisoner who was added to the flight in Fairbanks.

She shows up and she and Jason Clarke bicker a lot about jurisdiction and the missing prisoners and for the next six or so episodes we get a drip feed about what the main story arc is around this mystery man while playing “fugitive of the week” where we focus in on one escapee, or one small group of escapees, and what they are up to and how they are trying to survive and while evading the law and how Jason and Haley always seem to end up catching up with them.

This is the Con Air aspect of the show, as we go down the list of semi-predictable prisoners… all of whom were on this plane that got sent to Alaska… because JPATS miles are a thing or something… so we meet the mafia accountant and the black widow and the small time grifter who got caught up in something by mistake and the doctor who murdered patients in the name of efficient allocation of scarce resources, and the guy who believes that the government is controlling out minds via HAARP… and we do spend a scene or two actually at something that looks a bit like HAARP, which is up in Alaska… all to pad out the main story line, which doesn’t have a lot going for it quite honestly.

Meanwhile, Jason goes on in a very Taylor Sheridan “people who don’t live in cities are the only real people” sort of way about how Alaska is different and the people there are hardy and not to be taken lightly as gun owners, trackers, hunters, and survivors of no mean prowess, wily and able to take care of themselves… and then they constantly get outwitted and taken by this batch of city slickers in orange jump suits like a bunch of gullible sheep.

Some nice work there.

Meanwhile, there is the primary guy on the plane, who starts off being called Havlock.  We spend a bit of each episode moving his story forward and learning a bit about him and having him be involved in some sort of vehicular mishap or shootout or whatever like he is trying to make Jack Bauer look like a wimp.  Falling out of the back of a tundra buggy that is being dragged by a helicopter and off a cliff?  Super easy, barely an inconvenience.

I mean, by the time that happens you know he’s going to survive anything.  It was one of those times when I was happy I taught my wife the phrase “plot armor,” as in main characters generally don’t die because they are protected by plot armor.

And as Havlock’s story evolves so does the view of who the bad guy is… if you’re as gullible as Jason of the locals in Alaska.

I mean, sure, the details change the story as to WHO is really pulling the strings and what the plan is, but if you get out of the first episode without thinking the CIA is extremely sus I don’t know what I can say.

Anyway, as noted above, the show eventually runs out of convicts who have survived outside in winter in Alaska in orange jumpsuits and what they could con the locals out of around episode eight and we have to get everybody pointed in the same direction for the grand finale.

That includes a multi-car crash scene that kills everybody involved except Havlock and Haley, who walk away unscathed, so we can continue to explore the link between them that has been on a slow reveal throughout the series.

And, because no cliche is left unexplored, the entire main cast ends up at the final showdown which results in two of them… and I won’t spoil it by telling you who… fighting while hanging by a cable from a snow covered dam.  That the ultimate bad guy falls to their death will be no surprise once you get there.

On the bright side, the story wrapped up.  There was no cliff hanger for a second season, which works because the show was cancelled after the first season.  That was probably the right decision as where does one go after all of the chaos of the first season?

All of that said, it wasn’t awful, just silly.  It asks for a level of willing suspension of disbelief that neither my wife and I could manage, much less sustain over ten episodes.