Season 2, Episode 3
I love possibilities. Give me a show with a strong
start, and I will follow it for a long time, long past the point where I should
have given up on it. (I’m looking at you, Smash.)
Simply knowing that a show could be
good, seeing that it has the basic elements to make a quality program, is
enough to entrance me, if only for a short time. That’s what got me interested
in Falling Skies in the first place,
and what made me like the apparent retooling of last week’s premiere. However, it
now appears that the path won’t be as smooth as it first appeared, and that the
show has some more growing pains to get through.
Jimmy’s death, or that of any minor character,
doesn’t have to all the problematic, because there were other things going on
in the hour, enough that they could have made up for the dead stretches of
screen time. However, Jimmy’s death sent shockwaves through the camp, for
reasons that make sense logically – of course the loss of somebody you’ve spent
months (years?) surviving alongside of would effect you – but aren’t really
supported by on-screen evidence. We’ve seen Weaver wax on at length about what
a good soldier Jimmy is, but the two were rarely on screen together – and that
was the strongest character connection Jimmy ever had on the show. It thus
becomes very difficult to buy that so many people would be so affected by one
death, especially when they’re surrounded by it every day. (I mean, did you see
the size of the group when they were gathered for Jimmy’s funeral? They can’t
all have known him intimately.)
The problem with having Jimmy’s death be so
far-reaching is that it affected the other storylines, storylines that were all
well and good on their own, and didn’t need Jimmy’s death to serve as any sort
of justification for further action. Let’s start with the most remote one,
which was Tom’s continues reintegration into the 2nd Mass. following
his abduction. Like I said last week, I’m interested in seeing the group begin
to crack from the inside, and this episode continued to deliver on that,
showing how distrust of Tom was slowly destroying group cohesion. However, the
big cracks within group dynamic that we saw tonight seemed to be caused, or at
least egged on, by Jimmy’s death. It was his death that led the Berserkers to
go out to the dead Skitters, which led to Tom’s order to let the Skitter
collect their dead in peace. And it was the search for Jimmy’s compass that led
to the knockdown drag-out between Tom and Pope.
And it’s sad that this had to happen this way,
because I can think of a dozen different ways that Tom and Pope could get into
argument that wouldn’t be centered on somebody’s death. The 2nd
Mass. spent so much of the first season mostly working together to achieve
their goals that it was inevitable that those little tensions would bubble over
in such a manner that they did tonight. If the show had just let them happen
more organically, then it wouldn’t have felt as forced or as if they were
serving some other bit of storytelling besides itself. In truth, Pope striking
out on his own (with Anthony) feels like the kick in the pants that the show
needs, because having the 2nd Mass face not one but two antagonistic
forces is solid way to increase the pressure on the main characters.
Another new development was the introduction of
the Continental Congress, the new human government that has sprung up in
Charleston. (Between calling it the Continental Congress, and new character
Avery likening herself to Paul Revere, this episode leaned way too hard on the American Revolution metaphor.) Though there
have always been certain quest or goals that individual characters have pursued,
the 2nd Mass. has been a fairly aimless mob, just going from place
to place with the vague goal of staying alive. Giving them a specific place
that holds specific value to them – better organized civilization, greater hope
of survival – fixes that, and now the episodic trails of the group will have a
point, will feel like they are leading somewhere.
However, for this decision to be made because Weaver
wants to honor the memory of Jimmy, along with everybody else who died, doesn’t
necessarily connect. The reason that Weaver originally wanted to go to the
Catskills was to survive, and the reason he decided that Charleston would be a
better place to honor Jimmy is because their they could…survive? It doesn’t really
track, and it becomes clear that the only really reason that Weaver made that
choice was because the story required him to do so.
The development that was the closest to Jimmy’s
death (at least in terms of proximity) was the continuing insinuations of Ben’s
half-Skitter nature, which in this case meant that we saw two (TWO!) instances
of his spikes glowing upon close contact with another Skitter. (In this case,
it was Two-Face, though I don’t know if the particular Skitter really matters.)
Again, this is the sort of thing that could have happened at any time, and
really didn’t need Jimmy’s death to spur it on, though I will agree that having
it be a source of guilt for Ben was a nice touch. This is obviously one of the
long games that the show is playing for the season, and it’s good that they’re
keeping track of it, but I’m not sure how it adds anything to what we already know.
So that makes for three developments worthy of
exploring tonight, all of which were brought down by the circumstances surrounding
them. Without Jimmy’s death, this would have been a much stronger episode overall,
and I hope it means that we can have such episodes in the future that don’t revolve
around such unbelievable histrionics.
Other
Thoughts:
As a minor character, Jimmy’s death proves my
point last week about the show’s need to be willing to kill off a major
character. It’s hard to raise the stakes if the only people who die are those
that we don’t care about.
Speaking of Pope, he’s become an even bigger
antagonist than he was last season, but not in the fun way. The character lost
a lot of his moral ambiguity tonight, and that makes him a lot less easy to
enjoy.
Boy, everything else went to shit when the aliens
invaded, but at least the 2nd Mass. can scrounge up a nice outfit to
bury Jimmy in, huh?
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