The journey south to Charlotte brings in some strange and potentially big changes to the series.
What They Say:
A familiar face returns to the 2nd Mass; a skitter is captured and brought back to the camp as a prisoner; Maggie opens up about her past.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
After a good look at some of what the kids go through in the previous episode when they go through the conversion, we got to understand Ben a whole lot more as well with his kind of unique place in things. He’s changing in a lot of ways but there’s still a good deal of control that’s being exerted over him through the studs on his back from when he was one of them. While he spent a lot of the first season kind of on the outside in a lot of ways, more a shell shocked wounded victim more than anything else, he’s overcompensating in obvious and expected ways with how he hunts them down now. But there’s also that connection to the skitters there that’s intriguing, especially as we see at the start here.
While the 2nd Mass has seen its fair share of action while finding places to hole up around Boston, their move further south has them coming across even more trouble. Trouble in unfamiliar areas which makes it more dangerous for them since they don’t have some basic familiarity with a lot of the areas. This does have them being more careful in general and there’s a better sense of organization about them when they find themselves near a combat zone. Keeping the core group prepared to move is smart but it’s also good to see they send some support out there to whatever form of resistance there is as they’d hope for the same themselves. What it leads to is certainly curious as there’s no sign of any resistance, some dead skitters and the apparent return of Rick, one of the kids that was saved alongside Ben in the first season. Only he couldn’t resist the call of the skitters.
Rick ends up leading the group to a potential changing point in the series as it turns out that while Ben has gone missing again, it’s because he’s helping a skitter. Not just any skitter, but the one that was involved with Tom on the ship, the one present during the interrogation. Ben and Rick are both all over the map on this as they try to protect him and the skitter itself does what it can, before it passes out, to try and gain some help from Tom based on the strange relationship that exists between this weird little group. Bringing the skitter back to the camp is a dangerous plan on its part, but also for the rest of them since there’s the potential for a connection there but also a whole lot of people that will want it dead on the spot, regardless of what it could tell them.
The exploration of the idea about a skitter rebellion is what Tom says, an interesting story, but it’s one short on actual details and things to latch onto in order to believe. It’s a difficult crossroads because you have to believe that the path that’s opened up may be just a trap and nothing more. But there’s also the desire to believe that there may be something more to it, that there is a small but steady number of skitters who have fought back for over a hundred years in small ways. The idea that the attack on Earth has given them a potential ally in the survivors who can show them a different way to fight makes a certain sense since it continues to push the alienness about things rather than all species generally being the same.
The show also spends a good bit of time working through the relationship between Hal and Maggie. The two of them have had a playful relationship for quite some time now and there’s been a certain fun to it, but also a desire on Hal’s part to make something more of it. But Maggie has her reasons for being distant, a lot of it going back to the pre-invasion days, but you also have to believe that a lot of people would want to avoid relationships of any kind in this new world for fear of losing even more that they care about. Maggie’s story helps to flesh her out a tiny bit more, and we get some decent emotion out of it, but it is all still a surface kind of situation. One that does slowly thaw the ice a bit which is a positive.
In Summary:
Falling Skies is trying to up its game a bit more here with the slow build of events this season. With the introduction of a potential skitter resistance, we get something that you can take at face value easily enough because it’s something we’ve seen across just about every invasion series that’s ever been done. With the 2nd Mass on the move, the series does feel like it’s at least heading somewhere now and we’ve got a few different things in motion, but there’s also still that sense that it’s spinning its wheels. What I do like is that we are slowly getting a better look at the world, showcasing different areas as the move south now and the devastation that’s there, and the make or break potential of what’s in Charlotte based off of what the pilot indicated. You almost want it to be a disappointment in order to beat them down some more, but there’s also the curiosity of where it can go with something bigger in mind.
Grade: B
