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After a great episode that involved the ridiculous, yet awesome, decision to fly to the moon, Falling Skies proves that when it wants to be good, it can be great. Drawing Straws picks up not long after the end of Till Death Do Us Part with a dream sequence for Lexi. Dream sequences basically have a fifty fifty shot of working in TV. In this case, the dream sequence was used fantastically as a way to show that Lexi is still concerned for her human family and also that she has maintained (some of) her humanity after the crazy cocoon thing. I'm sure we haven't seen the last of that yet since she obviously underwent some sort of a transformation, but so far that cocoon doesn't seem to have done much, but provide the writers with something for Lexi to do in that episode.
While Lexi feels guilty about her betrayal, Tom and the Second Massachusetts (at least what is left of it) attempt to figure out how the alien ship works. Resisting the urge to roll my eyes at the thought of even beginning to understand alien technology, I can say that I enjoyed Matt's short discussion with his dad about the teenage rebellious years. That one got a chuckle out of me. I laughed out loud when Matt actually figured the whole thing out. This proves that complete implausibility works...when it's done right.
My favorite parts of this episode were Lexi's scenes with the Espheni overlords. These scenes were perfectly used to add onto the fact that Lexi is feeling guilty about betraying her family. Not only did Lexi begin to question the overlords, but she also began to suspect that the overlords might have other intentions than peace. Beyond the revelation that they were going to kill her, it was great to see Lexi finally come to that conclusion on her own. Additionally, after seeing a million skitters killed over the course of four seasons, it was quite refreshing to see Lexi decide to put her powers to good use and dispatch that overlord.
The scene with Pope and Weaver was among my favorite of Pope's scenes this entire season. This season has been a major low point for Pope in my opinion. Beyond not having much to do, he was setup with an incredibly lame love story. Finding that he was actually doing something noble (removing Tom and Weaver's names from the list of people to go to the moon) was great. Pope is a wild card character that can be good one second and a pain in the ass the next and this episode proved it. I've always thought of him as the Sawyer (Lost) of the group so hopefully the writers can use him to their advantage later this season.
Surprisingly, the love triangle does not fall under my list of complaints for this episode. However cheesy, the writers have done the love triangle story justice by keeping their characters constant. A lot of times in TV with situations like this, writers force character responses that are so unlike them that it isn't enjoyable to watch. This has not been the case with Falling Skies. Hal is understandably upset, but by the end of the episode, he is able to realize what is really important are the people in his life, not his jealous feelings. I do hope that the writers put this story to bed by the end of the season, but so far no fatal transgressions have occurred...in that story line at least.
My least favorite parts of this episode included the never ending complaining of Anne Glass. I desperately want to like her scenes because Moon Bloodgood was so nice when I met her at Comic Con, but her scenes in this episode absolutely bored me to tears. She kept complaining about Tom's leadership or complaining about their current situation and just didn't seem to want to stop complaining. I totally get that she was sad and her worries were completely justified, but that doesn't mean that every single second of her screen time needs to be used for that. If less screen time had been used for Tom and Anne's first official marital dispute, you wouldn't hear any complaining from me, but please give her something else to do!
Rating: 8.6/10 - Boring conversations between Anne & Tom aside, this episode was fantastic. By the end, Lexi returned from her journey of discovery and the Second Massachusetts would look to be back in business.
