Sea Patrol is an Australian television series focusing on the crew of the HMAS Hammersley. The first three seasons have their own Jigsaw Puzzle Plot that is slowly revealed over the course of the season, though each episode was more focused on giving one or two crew members their day in the limelight. The fourth season ditched the Jigsaw Puzzle Plot and just focused on the characters. The fifth season, which is currently airing and the final season, has gone back to the Jigsaw Puzzle Plot of the first three seasons. Has been aired in many countries though not in the USA
Tropes Include:
Acceptable Feminine Goals: Played with Bomber and Bird who are the chefs of the ship and the assiend medics...who never let the men push them around and are handy with the guns. Averted with Kate and Nav who can both navagate the ship and lead the men who respect and are loyal to them.
Accidental Kidnapping: Occasional plot, when it involves the crew it's normally Kate.
Action Girl: Kate and Bomber qualify, Nikki rarely sees action but never lets anyone down and Bird can be generiously described as too young and inexperienced to be one.
Authority Equals Asskicking: Normally Kate but when Mike is given the rare chance he proves that his reputation isn't just talk and Nikki isn't a pushover.
Bettyand Veronica: Kate and Dr Ursula Morrell/Mike and Rick Gallagher/Jim Roth and Mike/ Mike and Dutchy (own choice for which fit)
Big Eater: Charge mostly though he occationly fights 2Dads for the muffins.
The Big Guy: Buffer, Dutchy replaces him in season 4.
Bilingual Bonus: In one episode the crew were attending a event at an French embassy and when Spider asked for a beer the French waiter pretended not to know English and said, "I'm proud of my bum when I see your face". Bomber came to his rescue and told the guy "Don't mess with me, w***!", and got his beer and one for herself. She then told Spider that she could just speak high-school French.
Boarding Party: Since they enforcing Austrailian law this happens once an episode. Rarely does it go smoothy...
Brainsand Brawn: On the outside the officers and NCO but the officers can hold their own in a fight and many of the NCO (particulary ET, Charge, Swaine and 2Dads) clearly could out do them in their fields.
Cool Boat: 'HMS Hammersley' Some occasional boats that are pirated.
Curse: The ship suffers one in the first season when Thor, their mascot, is stolen while they're in port. As a result;
There are strange knocking noises in the walls.
Had to swollow their pride and leave their mascot in the Kingston's arms even though they've put Thor in pink hotpants and waving it right under their noses.
The refiagtor stops working.
A boreding mission goes badly.
Relationships go though a bad patch. (ET, Buffer and Nikki's most notably).
The generator room catches fire.
Changes bad eye is affect by the fire.
ET gets some bad news.
Mike and the Hammersley part in understanding the jigsaw plot hits a hard stummbling block.
Curse Escape Clause: Which involves getting back their mascot, stealing the other ship's mascot (of the crew that stole their's) and Buffer dressing up as Neptune to give a offering to appease the sea.
Deadpan Snarker: Name a character, though RO and Buffer are, arguably, the most prominent examples.
Death by Childbirth: An Chinese illegal immagriat dies on 'Hammersley' however there were clear reasons for this and the baby survive.
Disposable Sex Worker: Poor women looking for a better life are force to be this and are the centre of an episode in the 3 season.
The Drunken Sailor: Of course there's shore leave but while Buffer and 2Dads took on two dangerous men and won poor RO 'needs' to stay away from the boooze. The poor golf buggie...
Embarrassing Tattoo: Buffer on a night out descides to get another tattoo and forces Spider to come along and get one himself. Buffer (who's definally drunk) goes to sleep in the chair while his tattoo is being done. The next day Bomber is teading to the slightly infeted tattoo and it becomes clear that it isn't the tattoo Buffer wanted. Bomber concers Spider who admits that he didn't get one then reliases that he messed with Buffer's choice. It turns out that he changed it to a heart with XO in it. And the first person Buffer shows it to is the XO...Spider is very lucky not to be mained let alone alive when Buffer is finished with him.
Green-Eyed Monster: Interestingly, not much of a problem in ET and Nav's relationship (mostly by Nav accepting that he is an incurable flirt and he makes sure she knows she number one). However when Mike or Kate show interest in someone else they are clearly upset and snark at each other, though they keep it mostly out of the crew's way ... well, Kate does.
Bomber after two seasons of being the only girl in the ranks finds herself pushed aside when young Bird turns up.
Going Down With the Ship: Poor Swaine nearly has this fate after a bad run in with some diamond smulggers.
Good With Numbers: Kate and Nikki are qualified navergators. Charge, ET, 2Dads, Swaine and RO would have to be good at maths to do their jobs. Mike is implied to be but there isn't much reason for his to show it.
Interservice Rivalry: A few times when an army man appears or once when the crew found weapons stolen from an army base but there is a problem with the FE Ds everynow and again, while the crew isn't blameless there are one or two moments when the plot wouldn't have happened if the FE Ds had just warned 'Hammersley' something would happening in the area.
Love Martyr: While he does love her, and it's not a one way street, some of the things Mike pulls on Kate feel like this though it's subverted by Kate knowing this and NOT being happy with it and she calls him out when it gets too far.
Makes Sence In Context: Some of the nicknames such as 2Dads which is because his surname is a double barrel Kosov-Meyer. Bomber is traditionally given to people with the surname Brown in the navy, sources differ on the origin.
Malicious Slander: 2Dads spreads a rumour about Kate and Buffer being in a secret relationship after a (deservedly) harsh dressing down. Mike nearly physically throws him off the boat and Kate and Buffer make him retrieve perals that a thief had shallowed.
Mistaken for Pregnant: Kate. Although to be fair she did have a tummy bug and showed the classical signs of pregnancy so Swaine giving her the pregnancy test (to rule it out) and RO seeing the test and her behaviour makes it understandable that it happened.
Never My Fault: RO suffers from this to some extent. Everyone lets him know when he doing though
Ensign Newbie: Spider and Bird though Spider found himself coming in for more than Bird because he wasn't a she and pretty. Both are very gullible though, to everyone's delight.
Non Sequitur Thud: During the course of her duties, the XO of HMAS Hammersley was surreptitiously dosed with Rohypnol by a fisherman/murderer. After Hammersley saves the day, the Captain came down to her cabin to check on her condition; she didn't wake up when he arrived, and he was greeted with "I don't believe in pre-marital soy sauce!"
Not Me This Time: 2Dads increasingly suffers this as the series goes on. He does deserve it sometimes though.
Open Secret: ET and Nikki's relationship ends up being this. While everyone is more or less a shipper on deck no one wants them to leave and so they keep quite about it. Mike and Kate are so good that it comes as a bit of a surpise when they show that they know about it.
Put on a Bus: Chefo between seasons 1 and 2, and Nav, Spider and Buffer between season 3 and 4, and Bomber between seasons 4 and 5, tough at least Bomber going away was referenced in the season 4 finale.
Justified in that people in the Navy change boats regularly, just in the course of their careers.
Quicksand Sucks: 2Dads falls into a pit in Season Four, even briefly falling beneath the surface.
Reality Is Unrealistic: Characters leaving the show at the end of most seasons unexplainedly, which happens on real boats all the time.
Real Women Never Wear Dresses: Averted the women are as femenine as they would be and wear desses off the ship, eye the candy eye men and have realistic converastions between themselves.
Screaming Birth: This happens in the penutunant episode of the first season. She give plenty of abruse to the father as well.
Sea Mine: In the first season a mine washes up on a beach after a cyclone. While it is unstable, the only real danger comes from a pair of Too Dumb to Live preteen boys who find the mine, don't report it straightaway. One even runs towards it when the bomb disposal unit are about to destroy it to save a tortoise.
Zigged zagged between the other ladies when paired with each other. Bomber despite being the cheif generally comes off as the Tomboy however.
Traumatic C-Section: Though the mother was dead Swaine is haunted by doing this.
True Companions: Very strong crew and even when new troblemakers **cough**2Dads**cough** get into trouble they are saved.
Uptight Loves Wild: A mild example with Mike and Kate. He more laid back, happy to socialise and inclinded to take risks while Kate is more withdrawn, keeps her distant with the crew and by the book.
UST: Kate and Mike. Bomber and RO. Bomber and 2Dads.
Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Buffer, Spider and Bomber end up stuck on a boat with about 10 deadly snakes at one point.
Will They Or Won'tThey?: Mike and Kate. ET and Nikki ET and Nikki do but before it is finalised and fully out in the open he is murdered. Mike and Kate finally get together at the start of the fourth series when he is promoted off the Hammersley but he is back at the end of the second episode and their relationship is put on hold for the rest of the season to Kate's increasing fustration. She breaks it off in the fifth season and goes out with old flame Jim but they get together in the final episode.