REVIEW: ‘The Last Frontier’ Episode 3 — “Country as F**k”

You don’t have to try this hard, man. The Last Frontier confounds me. Sometimes, it’s a really tight, really compelling pulp thriller. Other times it feels like it’s trying too hard, doing too much, too unfocused to really get to the good stuff. You can see it in the runtime for The Last Frontier Episode 3, titled “Country as F**k,” which… yeah, remember that thing I said about trying too hard?

It’s a shame, because there’s some really compelling stuff here. US Marshall Frank Remnick (Jason Clarke) and Sydney Scofield (Haley Bennett), whose relationship with the CIA could best be described as “it’s complicated,” are still dancing around how much they trust each other while also hunting down Havlock, aka Levi Hartman (Dominic Cooper). But that’s the long-running storyline, so we have to have stuff to do in the meantime, which means a lot of seeing what the other convicts who escaped that plane crash are up to.

The Last Frontier Episode 3 is compelling, but it’s just too overstuffed.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s some really nice stuff here. We get to catch up with that father and son who were out camping at the beginning of the first episode. Luke’s (Tait Blum) incredibly poor decision to take his girlfriend Kira (Kya Rose) out to the cabin continues to bear fruit, and we deal with the fallout from Havlock’s kidnapping of Sarah (Simone Kessell).

The problem is that a lot of this stuff just… resolves too quickly, like we’re doing the monster of the week episode in Supernatural or solving the weekly problem in… well, pick your favorite cop show or medical drama. That works in a twenty-two episode series where we have a new problem each week, but this is a ten-episode season. Havelock’s schemes are still the core problem, and we’ve only got so many other guys who got off that plane.

It’s crazy to say, given the length of The Last Frontier Episode 3 (which is over an hour long, and feels every minute of its runtime), but we might be simultaneously moving too slowly at a per-episode level and too quickly at a season level. Or maybe this is a one-off, and the pacing is just wrong for this particular episode. But the first couple of episodes felt overstuffed, too.

The Last Frontier Episode 3 offers good characters, but they’re both moving too slowly and too quickly through their narratives.

That’s not to say there’s not some good stuff here. There are a couple of really compelling action scenes that made me recall other things (yeah, The Last Frontier, I agree, The Lost World: Jurassic Park is really underrated). This episode does add a couple of very nice wrinkles to the overarching plot (one that involves Frank, and one that involves Sydney) that will keep me interested for as long as it takes them to play out.

Still, the latter involves a change in Sydney and Frank’s relationship that I’m not sure tracks, and the former, well… the former is interesting. I’m very curious to learn more about that.

This brings me to my issues with The Last Frontier Episode 3, which are many of the same things I noted last time around. The cast is game; the cinematography is often gorgeous, and when it’s focused on being a thriller with an air of “what is going on here?” mystery to it, it’s really compelling.

This Apple TV+ Original is just trying too hard.

There’s just so much stuff crammed into each episode, and each one is so long, that the instant it moves away from that, it begins to feel like a slog. Sometimes, you’re stuck trying to remember who certain characters are because you’re moving between so many of them so quickly. And that’s a shame, because there’s a lot here to like.

It just feels like it’s trying too hard.

Listen, I like “Blood on the Saddle,” too, but the use of that song and the one that the episode is titled after. Especially the scenes in which they’re played, never help assuage the feeling that The Last Frontier is trying to bolster its “rural, no-nonsense badass” vibes. Even in scenarios where the show would be better off (and it would feel less forced) if it just let the characters and the action on-screen speak for themselves. It’s almost as though The Last Frontier Episode 3 doesn’t trust us to pick up what it’s laying down, which is funny considering its best moments do just that.

The Last Frontier Episode 3 is a weird one. It’s got some great action and character sequences, and it does a good job of setting up new questions for itself to answer. But it’s also overstuffed, too on the nose, and just too damn long, too. If this show ever finds its footing, it’s going to be something. Until then, it feels like trying to walk on ice in the winter. There are just too many opportunities for slip-ups.

The Last Frontier Episode 3 is streaming now on Apple TV+ with new episodes every Friday.

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