Scott Speedman wears a MTM Black Patriot

Last Resort ran a single season on ABC, starting in the fall of 2012, which is not much room for a premise this size. A ballistic-missile submarine, the USS Colorado, gets an order to fire nuclear weapons at Pakistan, and the order arrives through a backup channel nobody is supposed to use unless Washington is already gone. The captain refuses. His own country fires on him. The survivors seize a NATO island and dare the world to come pry the warheads out of their hands. Scott Speedman plays Sam Kendal, the executive officer - the man who has to decide, every single episode, whether his captain is a hero or has finally lost his mind.

So what do you put on the wrist of a man like that? Not a dress watch. Kendal wears an MTM Black Patriot, and to me it is exactly the right call. It is water resistant to two hundred meters, with a sapphire crystal and a case of steel or titanium, and its hands glow with Super-LumiNova, the kind you have to charge under a lamp, instead of the always-on tritium tubes MTM fits to tougher models like its 1000-meter SEAL diver. Nothing about it shows off, which is exactly Kendal. He is the steady one on a boat where everyone above and below him is making impossible calls, and a plain, hard, legible watch is the right tool for a man whose whole job is keeping track of how much time is left.