Season 1, Episode 3
I feel like I’ve mentioned this before – and odds are pretty good that I have, even if I can’t remember where – but out of all the TV tropes that annoy me, the one I truly hate is that of the Irrational Parent. Even though I myself am a rational thinker to a fault (or maybe I just think I am?), I get that people lose their heads when it comes to those that we love. But what bothers me about the Irrational Parent is that so rarely is this type of character used to tell us about the people involved with the story; no, more often than not the character is simply little more than a plot machination, some who is required to do something stupid in order to create some sort of action on screen. Often times this is done under the auspices of moving the plot forward, but other times – like tonight – it’s just a way to pad out the story by throwing in a scene where people have to get out of the mess caused by the Irrational Parent.
This week’s Irrational Parent was Mike, and his turn in the role infuriated me more that most Irrational Parents do. I’m not sure that I can ever really stand Irrational Parents, just because using a character as a plot device instead of depicting them as a actual person always rankles me, but I can at least lessen how much such a character bugs me by thinking of them as a soulless plot motivator. Mike, however, was not presented to us as a soulless tool. When we met him, he was calm, cool and collected, and legitimately rational person who missed his son, yes, but was able to control those feeling and focus on the greater good. He was, in fact, a lot like Tom, a man who is able to balance his family obligations with those of the army. Or he was until tonight anyways. Instead, in a scene that just made me roll my eyes, Mike turned apeshit irrational upon the mere sight of his son – who, according to plan, wasn’t meant to be rescued – and ended up putting the lives of those with him in danger, and ended up getting Hal and Karen kidnapped.
It’s interesting to note then that the night stupidest moment was almost immediately followed by the runner up in the stupidity contest, with Tom, after being knocked out due to the fracas caused by Mike’s stupidity, wakes up in a plot hole underground bunker with a barely rational explanation for how everyone got there. Luckily the show quickly pulled out of this nosedive by following this up with the coolest moment of the night, wherein Tom takes down and captures a skitter single handedly. While the scene itself was nicely paced and quite tense, the real power of this scene comes from the fact that Tom took down the skitter using the method Pope told him about last week in “The Armory”. As much as Tom waxed on philosophically last week about the skitter’s right to life, when your back is to the wall with a skitter bearing down on you, all that shit goes out the window. War makes us all into amoral killers. (I was even more enamored with the show for not calling attention to this fact. Falling Skies hasn’t exactly proven itself great in the subtlety department.)
Also of note is the fact that that kickass takedown of the skitter marked an uptick in quality for the episode as whole. Last week, I discussed at some length the challenge that FS faces in terms of originality; when you tell a story in a subgenre that been worked to death, it can be hard to engage the audience when it feels like the same old, same old. But, I’ll reiterate again, this show has a secret weapon in terms of its willingness to turn to philosophical discussions amidst all the standard sci-fi action. Yet the first half of this episode was so concerned with setting up storylines, but short term – the introduction of Dr. Michael Harris (Steven Weber), the location of the child work camp, the solving of the Harness problem – and long – the aliens are collections scrap metal, there are other resistance units all over the country, as well as other alien structures – that there wasn’t any time for the show to divulge in these kinds of musings.
Luckily, however, the plot shuffling did die down and we were able to get a few good moments to chew over in our minds. The first, and the best, came during the episode’s final scene, which saw a very nuanced discussion between Tom and Harris about the meaning of human life after the invasion. While I wasn’t wild about the back story thrown in here – and I’m still not sure whether we’re supposed to believe that Harris was having an affair with Tom’s wife Rebecca – I did like the idea Harris presented that maybe being noble and a rebel in this post-invasion age isn’t really a good thing if it ends up meaning you get killed.
We also got to see the show deal with the idea of non-military war-tactics. Hal had to watch five kids get gunned down by a mech, as the aliens make a turn towards psychological warfare, while Colonel Porter decides to examine Tom’s alien POW in order to gain more knowledge about the enemy. Both of these tactics are on morally shaky grounds at best – Hal’s in obvious shock after witnessing that mass execution, but the humans are no better, as they leave an alien to suffer, waiting until it has to go under an even more painful medical examination. Both of these beautifully play into the theme of the moral degradation war can cause on the soul, something that was hinted at with Tom’s vicious takedown of the alien earlier in the episode.
Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t think a show lives and dies by how much thematic material it has on hand, and I understand that without plot momentum, an episode just feels like it’s spinning its wheels. And I especially enjoyed the scenes tonight where we learned just how the Harnesses work, and what effect they have on the kids. Its nice bit of exposition that helps to move the mystery of the aliens forward, and it shows that the show has a plan for how this season will unfold. (Who wants to bet we’ll find out what all the scrap metal is for within a few weeks’ time?) But without those thematic moments to back these plot elements up, the experience as a whole would be far less rich.
Falling Skies still has some problems that it needs to work out, problems that are best exemplified through tonight’s C-story/runner, which saw Pope stumble into the position of camp chef. Since I like Pope as a character, I was initially excited when this plot came up, as I thought there was potential for either a) Pope to wreak mass havoc or b) some comedic scenes where Pope fussed around the kitchen. The character is strong enough already that I feel like either one of these options would have been entertaining. Yet this plot went practically nowhere, as it took just one additional scene to wrap it up, and everything returned to the status quo.
The show has a lot of basic elements to play with here, and if it could improve upon all of them, give them each a unique twist that would apply only to this show, it would become very strong indeed. Instead, the show decided to personalize only the elements it finds most interesting, leaving everything else to feel like leftovers from the large cannon of sci-fi survival fiction. The end result is that the show at times ends up feeling half-baked, and that makes the viewing experience far less pleasant.
Next Week: Those kids and their pesky Harness addictions.
Quotes, Etc:
The regular title screen is still around, and it’s still messing with the episodes’ momentum.
One strong thing that the show has going for it: Even though the Tom-Anne relationship seems inevitable by the Law of TV Physics, the show has yet to push, or even hint at, such a development. Hell, I’d be happy if those two remain plutonic friends for the whole run of the series, so well is that relationship defined.
“Nobody puts paprika on chicken. What are you, Hungarian?”
“For the love of god, can someone please get me some olive oil?”
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