Falling Skies: "Silent Kill"

Season 1, Episode 5

Humans of emotion, humans of action

The further we get along in this series, the more obvious it is that Falling Skies is a show divided against itself. There are things that the show does well, and things that the show doesn’t do well. What’s interesting is that what fits into the first category is “action” and what fits into the second is “pathos”, and with those being the main two elements of the show, it meant that tonight’s episode was only at about 50% quality tonight. (I supposed it should be less, considering not even half the episode was action, but I’ll get to that in a moment.)

I have discussed in weeks past about how I believe that one of FS’ main strengths is its ability to tackle more high-minded more/philosophical questions, and I maintain that’s true. Unfortunately, no such element was present tonight. Sure, there were debates about how best to rescue Ben and the other kids, and that brought up some questions of military tactics, but these were rolled out more as perfunctory plot elements than anything else. In fact, given how many debates were had and how often the rescue plan changed, it often felt as if this episode was trying to draw out Ben’s rescue even more than it already had. And it’s probably not a good thing for the show that I couldn’t help thinking “Finally!” upon learning that they were rescuing Ben, and this is only the fifth episode. It seems like this plot has felt so dragged out because of how front and center it was in the last four hours without anybody actually doing anything.

In addition to all this, we also had two new plot developments which suffered mostly from feeling unearned. Harris’ death was such a letdown that there’s really not too much to say about it except that it’s unbelievable because A) it happened so quickly and B) it came about from the character doing something stupid that is completely antithetical to his actions last week. For a man who supposedly hates the Skitters, he sure did seem eager to open up that cage tonight. What makes it even worse is that Harris was more of a sketch than a character, so his death didn’t make an impact, something that that episode didn’t even bother trying to pull off.

Ann’s characters development is something that I should like, but that fails due to her slight presence up until tonight. Before this episode, she was mostly defined by her profession/role within the survivor community, and so for the show to suddenly plunge headlong into her backstory with her lost son and everything felt a bit off/forced. Likewise, her newfound courage/stupidity vis-à-vis her willingness to kill a Skitter with her bare hands could have been more powerful if the show had been focusing on her slowly becoming more and more frustrated with her predicament and the alien’s role in it, but here it just felt completely unmotivated.

The action set pieces were of course riveting, perhaps even more so tonight because everything that came before it was so boring. From Hal’s initial entry into the hospital all the way through the tense six-deep group harness removal surgery, I was thoroughly engrossed. What’s more, Hal’s romp through the hospital clued us into the weirdly caring relationship between the Skitters and the Harnessed kids, something that I hope will be dealt with in the back half of this season. I also liked the idea that when the Skitter dies, those in the harnesses die as well, as it adds to the idea of this weird symbiotic relationship between controlled humans and Skitters. Bonus points to the episode for avoiding spelling that connection out for us.

(Though on that note it’s becoming more and more possible/obvious that my theory that the harnesses turn people into skitters might be true, and if that’s the case and I’m predicting this way ahead of time, well then the show is also failing in any sort of mystery/mythology aspects it’s trying to foster.)

And what’s especially interesting is that the scenes of the pathos that came after these two action-heavy scenes actually felt more engrossing than those that came before, though whether this was because they were actually better or because the episode now had my attention, I couldn’t be sure. The reveal that Maggie had cancer was schlocky to be sure, and a bit unrelated, but at least I appreciate how the episode kind of slowly built to it, and it does give us some new shading on the character. (Does it really matter that she had cancer? I mean that’s not going to pop up again, right?...Oh, I see what you’re doing, show. Please don’t go there. I can guarantee everybody will hate you for it.)

Ann was finally able to get a character moment this hour that made sense, as there is actually evidence that Ann would be upset about losing one child out of six, thus this moment lands a lot better than the one with the Skitter did. And Hal’s moment with Tom could have been good – Tom’s speech about watching his son grow into a man was well-written/delivered – but it suffered from following Maggie’s moment, especially since both involved Hal. In fact, I beginning to think that these episodes might be better, or at least the attempted moments at pathos wouldn’t grate as much, if they weren’t so clumped together as they were tonight. In fact, the show should probably to weave actions pieces throughout the hour, and then maybe the audience’s attention wouldn’t wane so much.

Tonight’s episode closed with a weird sort of baby-shower, and while it was a stupid plot in general, it also gets at the heart of one of the main criticisms people have for the show. (It also kind of throws my “weaving the action and pathos together would make the show better” theory out of whack, considering it was setup before the raid on the hospital and came to a conclusion afterwards, but whatever.) While most people bemoan the continuous insistence on treacly endings, I don’t mind it so much, probably because that’s part of Steven Spielberg’s style, and his movies were so influential on my childhood. But there’s only so much treacle I can take, and I usually prefer when these moments reflect back on the whole of the survivor camp (and thus represent humanity as a whole). But a baby shower? Well, that’s just centered around one person, and that scene just made the episode go out on the same kind of sour notes that it played at the beginning.

Next Week: The battle for control over the children begins.

Spillover Thoughts:

Apologies for not doing a write-up for last week’s episode. I went to visit family for the weekend of the 4^th, and by the time I was able to catch up with the episode, the review would have come out too late.

In case you haven’t heard, TNT has renewed the show for another 10 episode season, due out next summer.

Oh, so apparently Ricky is now out of his harness, and completely fine except for his zombie-like emotionless. Anybody else feel like that was too easy, as if the survivors should still be having difficulties with the harness? Yeah, me too.

The introduction of Weaver’s little character arc made me groan, if only because it’s the umpteenth one to revolve around a child. Sure, putting children in danger seems to be almost a theme of the show, and it’s normally an effective tool when it comes to pathos, but it feels as if the show keeps pilling them on because it can come up with anything else for these characters to do.

So, had Hal just completely forgotten about Karen, or what? Because he was flirting pretty hard with Maggie tonight, that bastard. (Though maybe I shouldn’t judge, since I had to go look at my last review in order to confirm her name.)

“What’s the distress signal?” “I yell ‘Help!’ as loud as I can.”