The crew of the Nathan James drew a little closer to their holy grail: the stolen African flax seed.

Even more incredibly, Giorgio actually got humanized (a bit) on The Last Ship Season 4 Episode 7.

Let's follow the forward-charging narrative first.

Since Vellek has the seeds, the only logical thing for the James leadership to do was to find the location of his lab.

Tom recalled the encrypted data and lab results that he had seen while breaking into the map room of Giorgio's mansion. So it was back to Giorgio's, wherever that is.

Using a distinctive, ancient watchtower as a landmark, Tom made way-too-quick work of that, pinpointing a tiny, Greek island.

It was a hoot having the away team land right smack in the middle of Giorgio's celebratory house party, which changed the whole scope of the mission. No need to blow open the map room door when you can just abduct Giorgio instead and use his beetle key.

But how to separate host Giorgio from his party? That's where Azima, my favorite new character, comes in.

She stripped to a bikini under her uniform (why was she wearing that? A detail with which I'm just not concerned.). Then she entered the party, jostling and seducing man-whore Giorgio, getting him to his bedroom where the team captured him.

I also loved how she lovingly inspected the guns that Giorgio had hidden in the map room, choosing the biggest one to lay down cover fire for her teammates during their escape.

The best part of the map-room scenes was the verbal jousting between Tom and Giorgio. Freed from being a strong, silent warrior, Tom was getting in his licks on the preening Giorgio. In turn, Giorgio was trying to plant seeds of doubt about Tom in Sasha and Azima.

After all that, Giorgio found out that Omar was still alive (temporarily). Giorgio, if you're going to shoot an ally in the back, make sure he's dead because he knows where you live.

All this led to the obligatory five-minute firefight, ending with an explosion that ruined Giorgio's hideout. At least Burk came out of his funk. Of course, venting through gunfire and explosives may have that effect.

Yes, Giorgio, like a cockroach, survived that explosion. But I've almost, almost, come to feel sorry for him.

After all, his father is a real dick, treating him as a mistake. So Giorgio, always overstating his contribution to the overall project, is just begging for his father's love.

The whole Vellek family is screwed up. Lucia serves as customer relations, using her physical assets to keep men in line while acting as her father's lieutenant. Then there's Christos, the baby of the family and his father's lab buddy. All that leaves Giorgio as the family muscle, lining up security and fighters.

We did find out that Vellek's experiments with the seeds are but part of his plan for world domination. He's finding a way to curb human aggression, to create "sheep" who will do whatever he wants in order to be fed. It almost seemed that he was injecting the nostos directly into the miracle food he was creating.

He's already used his formula to take out the Greek admiral, Dimitrios, setting up Stavros as his puppet so that Vellek effectively controls Greece. His ultimate goal is to be treated as a god. No ego there.

Poor Fletcher. He did the patriotic thing for his country, leaving behind the Nathan James, especially Sasha. He must have figured out by now that Vellek has sold Britain a bill of goods. And now he's stuck in the asylum with the inmates. Might he still redeem himself somehow?

Since she blames herself for Fletcher's betrayal, Sasha has become the loosest cannon on the James. It was heartening to watch Tom try to console her. He knows how important she is to the ship's mission.

After such a sad opening, with the memorial service for the fallen crew members, there was a surprising, and much needed, amount of humor in this episode. Granted, a lot of it was at Giorgio's expense.

But there was also Miller's mentioning the negative impact of techno music and Omar's muttering "Oh, shit!" in his native tongue just before the explosion.

That helped to lighten the mood in what has been an intense season so far. Granted, world hunger doesn't provide much opportunity for laughs, but even gallows humor would be appreciated.

Next comes the hard part: finding and capturing Vellek's lab ship without damaging it and without getting shot at by the Greek navy, which must always be nearby. Also, that needs to be done over the course of three episodes without the narrative feeling draggy.

To catch up on anything you've missed. watch The Last Ship online.

Where you surprised Omar was alive? Do you feel differently about Giorgio? What is Vellek's master plan? Comment below.

Dale McGarrigle is a staff writer for TV Fanatic. Follow him on X.