A review/recap of the fifth episode of Falling Skies after I watch late-night cop shows because I couldn't sleep.
Oh Falling Skies. You desperately want to be a good show and have us like you but you struggle. The premise to the show is very good. Although an alien invasion is not technically new, the part that Falling Skies tells is. The show mixes a variety of different genres (science fiction, thriller, human drama) to create a show, but unfortunately it doesn't always work.
The first four episodes have practically the same main plot with interchanging subplots designed to make the audience understand and care about the characters on an emotional level. Tom (Noah Wyle) and his group have to either do reconnaissance work or sneak around the aliens (the humans call them "skitters") to try and save or recover a person or items. "Silent Kill" was no different.
The main plot of "Silent Kill" was for Tom and his team to save Tom's son Ben (Connor Jessup) from the skitters. The skitters kidnapped children when they invaded and put these large slug-like harnesses onto the backs of their necks to control them. They find that Ben and other children are being kept in a hospital, and Hal (Drew Roy), Tom's oldest son, comes up with a plan on how to save the children.
The plan is that Hal will put one of the skitters' harnesses on his back and sneak into the hospital and then pretend that he is a harnessed child. Then he will kill the skitter controlling the group of children and then they will be able to save the children. This is the best part of the episode, as Hal is sneaking around the hospital trying to find the children, as skitters are wandering the hallways as the music is similar to other creepy thriller-movie/television music. When he finally finds Ben, he is able to sneak into the room with them. However, (of course) complications arise when the children go to sleep with the controlling skitter on top of them petting Hal's head as he too goes to sleep. Hal tries to stab the skitter in the throat which kills them, but the skitter wakes up right before he is able to do so. The two fight, until Tom and Maggie (Sarah Carter) rescue Hal by shooting the skitter with a crossbow so that Hal can stab him in the throat, killing him and saving the children.
When they get back to the school where they are living, Anne (Moon Bloodgood), who acts as a surgeon for the humans takes the harnesses off of the children. The harnesses have some power on the children that has yet to be fully explained, but she is able to save five of the six children they brought back. Tom, Hal, and Matt (Maxim Knight), Tom's youngest son, are happy to have Ben back.
The subplots of Falling Skies are the most problematic. They are used to make the viewer feel for and understand these characters but something just doesn't always connect. That is why a show like Lost was successful, while shows like Flashforward and The Event weren't. The audience cared about the characters in Lost; they knew who they were. The characters in Falling Skies don't always connect with the audience. For example, in an earlier episode, Karen (Jessy Schram), Hal's girlfriend and another scout in the human's army, is kidnapped by the skitters. Hal is sad right afterward but not much since, and the audience didn't really care because there was no real connection to the character. We didn't care about her.
The new girl in Hal's life, Maggie, is slowly entering the point where the audience doesn't care about here either. The character is interesting (she can fight and shoot guns, she's mysterious, and Sarah Carter is good-looking which certainly helps), but does the audience doesn't know much about her to care about her. In last night's episode, the big reveal about her character is that she had cancer when she was 16 and the doctors gave her a 50-50 chance of living. That's why she knew where to find drugs at the beginning of the episode and why she knew so much about the hospital. I guess it's a small step towards the audience caring but the show is going at such a slow pace in showing the audience about these other characters that we won't care about them when something does happen to them.
Another example in this episode is that we find out that Anne has a son who is missing and was probably taken by the skitters. We didn't know anything about this before. Where is the father? How come she hasn't asked Tom if he has seen her son on one of his patrols? It makes it convenient for the show that she has a missing child, because Tom will probably want to save him now due to the fact that there are some sparks going on between the two.
Two other characters that are hurting from this slow pace of revealing information are Lourdes (Seychelle Gabriel), the med-school student who helps Anne, and Captain Weaver (Will Patton), the person in charge of this group of humans. All we know about Lourdes is that she was in medical school when the invasion happened and that she is religious. Other than that, she doesn't really do much, except be the voice of optimism. Captain Weaver is a hard-nosed former military officer. In last night's episode he takes a record that is playing and tells the people that they can play any music except that one. Later in the episode he is listening to it alone, crying. Also, at one point he takes medicine while his back is turned to Tom and Hal. Why does he do this? We have no idea, and at this point we don't really care, it's just a mystery that may or may not be solved.
The next episode will have to be a turning point for this show. Now that Tom has his son back, will they now go after Anne's son and continue on the same path of the main plot being Tom's group trying to rescue children or will the show take a different direction and be more about the war with the skitters? Will Tom and Anne, and Hal and Maggie, get together like it seems they are going. The show has potential, I just hope it's not wasted.
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