Five episodes in and this is the first chance I’ve had to sit down and write a Falling Skies review. With only five more episodes to go, I’m hopeful that I’ll be able to write for each and every one of them because at the level this show is going, I don’t want to miss anything!
Previously on Falling Skies: After seasons of feuding with the Masons and just witnessing Sara die in his arms, Pope decided enough was enough and finally, publicly declared war on Tom Mason by abducting Hal.
One of the things that Falling Skies has excelled at in the last five years is producing a show that is not only character based, but character driven. It would be very easy for the writers of Falling Skies to come up with some big Espheni weapon that everyone needed to destroy, destroy it, and then go sing Kumbaya, but, luckily, that’s not the show they’ve opted to produce. Colin Cunningham is arguably the best actor Falling Skies has so it’s really nice to see him get to flesh out the character of Pope. Last season, I felt that the show focused too much on the Lexi storyline and lost out on a lot of entertaining Pope vs Tom interaction. As a result, I’m very, very happy with the direction the writers have taken Pope this season. After watching Pope suffer through his losses and come to terms with his situation, it’s difficult to not feel at least a little sympathy for him.
Not only is this the first episode that I’ve had to a chance to review, but this is also my favorite of the season so far. Everything about this episode worked well. The bowling alley location was perfect, the dialogue was perfect, and the action came together almost perfectly!The scene where Pope tortured Hal with Tom forced to listen in the background was grueling to watch, but it did a great job of showing what lengths Pope is ready to go to in order to make Tom understand the pain that he felt with Sara’s death. I’d like to say that I think there is a way for Pope to be redeemed before this is all over, but I don’t see a way that a man can come back from the type of transformation that he has undergone. Let me know if you think Pope will be one of the good guys in the end in the comments below.
Sara was the only person who Pope shared an honest personal connection with and ever really understood. Because of Pope’s isolated personality it makes the fact that after all of his family affairs, Tom didn’t choose to save Sara even worse. Ultimately, I think it’s obvious to viewers (and on a certain level to Pope) that Tom made an unfortunate, yet necessary military decision. Through his terrible transformation we are getting to see all new layers to Pope that we didn’t even know existed. While he’s always been a gruff and, at times, heartless leader, I never expected to see Pope save an entire group of people only to tell some of them that they needed to split up from the rest of their group because they weren’t of any use to him.
Hal’s part in this episode was remarkably well done considering how often the hostage in a tv hostage situation is forgotten about. I really liked his scenes with the new character of Isabella (Catalina Sandino Moreno who previously starred on The Bridge) and hope that she can be a decent character for the few episodes that remain in the series. When I was at Comic-Con last month, Drew Roy (Hal) told me that we would see the infamous Ben-Hal-Maggie love triangle temporarily turn into a square and then, finally, come to an end with a resolution that is yet to be seen. For me, this storyline cannot come to an end soon enough. Let me know your thoughts on this in the comments.
The only negative side that I saw to this episode was the rest of the 2nd Massachusetts being held hostage by one single guy. Maybe I’ve just watched too much TV, but I swear I knew what was going on the second I heard the guy yell out the orders. In that sense, I found the storyline particularly wasteful in that it was extremely predictable, but I also enjoyed the bits where Weaver talked about his family and what it was like to lose them. Assuming Tom doesn’t kill Pope beforehand, maybe we’ll get to see Pope and Weaver talk about this in the next few episodes to help Pope move forward a bit.
Rating: 8.8/10 - This episode was a giant step in the right direction for Falling Skies. Less random alien encounters and more character development mixed with all the crazy alien stuff that we all enjoy so much in between.
Favorite Lines:
“You don’t say that name! I’ll cut his heart out, right here, right now if you say that name right now.” - Pope
“Anne…honey…I’ve got this.” - Weaver
“I’m gonna kill you.” - Tom (to Pope)
