Reviews

Falling Skies, Season 3 Premiere, Episodes 1 and 2

Falling Skies has returned to TNT for a third season with an extra-long, two episode, two-hour movie type season premiere. And what do we get? Creepy babies!

By Lisa Bernier | June 10, 2013 | | 0

Falling Skies returned for its third season with not one but TWO episodes, “On Thin Ice” and “Collateral Damage.” However, for all intents and purposes, since they were aired back-to-back, let’s just treat this as one long episode. I’ll jam the title episodes into “On Thin IceCollateral Damage.” That sorta makes sense. No? Well, let’s just get into things, shall we?Falling Skies season 3 picks up seven months after the season 2 finale. Things are swinging for the human race, with the war against the Espheni (the bad aliens) starting to turn in favor of all the native Earthlings. Much of this is due to their new alien allies who landed right in the last moment of the Season 2 finale. These new helpfuls are called the Volm and hey, they go around the universe chasing the Espheni and helping to liberate the planets the Espheni enslaves!Riiiight and the Easter Bunny hops around on little bunny feet every spring and lying is strictly something only humans do. But hey, my enemy’s enemy is my friend, right? After all, with the survival of the human race at stake, sometimes you have to get in bed with some pretty creepy, weird faced, potentially backstabbing non-humans. To say the least.Anyways, both the drama and the action begin immediately with Weaver, Matt and Jeannie spearheading an offensive against a skitter base that is using harnessed youths. One of the youths is Jeannie’s boyfriend, Diego. Team human succeeds in freeing the youths, with the help of Ben and his partner Penny (another unharnessed youth). They barely manage however, and Tom and one of the Volme, Cochise (Doug Jones) have to ride in with fancy new alien weapons and save the mission. Turns out, there’s a mole amongst them. Uh-oh.Immediately, our suspicion falls on Tom’s eldest son, Hal, who last season was infected with some weird tiny alien probe by his ex-girlfriend turned bad alien warlord. Of course, there’s a surprise in store: Hal now is restricted to a wheelchair. Huh? Either someone got shot in the wrong place, or that probe didn’t mix well with his nervous system. That’s the thing about the brain: you don’t want to frack with it, even when you are an alien species with superior tech.With the harnessed youths in tow, the group heads back to base where a very pregnant Anne, who, with the aid of new Volm tech, is able to unharness youths safely. She frees Diego, much to the happiness of Jeannie.She and Tom don’t have much couple time though, now that Tom is the President of Charleston, busy as hell and now has to deal with a mole. At a war council, where suspicions are raised about the rebel skitters, the mole, and concerns about the way the tide has turned, Tom decides to give the job of finding out who the mole is to ex-President Arthur Manchester.Later that night, Hal has a weird dream where he meets up with ex-alien girlfriend Karen and makes out with her. Then he wakes up and refuses to tell present girlfriend, Maggie, what the problem is. And he acts like a dick about the fact she put his wheelchair in the corner of the room. Nice, dude. I mean, I know you’re paralyzed and all, but that’s no excuse for being mean to your current lady after dreaming about your ex.Later, watching Hal in physical therapy, Maggie expresses her concerns about Hal to Lourdes. He’s been having bad dreams, he’s distant, that bitch Karen totally did something to him, I know it, etc, etc. Lourdes looks slightly uncomfortable being the sounding board for Maggie’s relationship problems, and just reassures her that they did all sorts of scans on Hal and found nothing. Hal, noticing something is amiss, calls Maggie over and apologizes for being a dick.Well at least he apologized, unlike some people who go incommunicado for hours and then finally let you know they’ve been MIA because they’ve been jamming all weekend while you were worried they might have died or at the very least had food poisoning. Yes, that rant is relevant to the show. It shows that in both reality and TV shows, men will always continue to be assholes when it comes to communicating with the women in their lives.Other men on the subject of miscommunication seem to be Anthony and Dr. Manchester. Dr. Manchester asks Anthony to help him ferret out the mole, on account of Anthony’s undercover work with the police. Anthony looks like he’d rather do anything else, but says yes anyways.See? See? Communication! It’s so simple and solves soooo many problems but nooooo. If you don’t want to do the job Anthony, just say so. JUST SAY IT!!!Meanwhile, Tom and Weaver meet with the rebel skitters who warn of an imminent Espheni attack, that Karen has become the new overlord of the area, and not to trust the Volm. Elsewhere, Jeannie, showing a recovered Diego around, also talks about how many people suspect the Volm. At Pope’s bar, people are talking about preeetttty much the same thing. Then Anne’s water breaks and the episode goes into full stop for their labor. Tom runs into Dr. Manchester in the hall, who tells him he narrowed the mole suspects down to a short list. Tom more or less says very cool, but…baby. Later, while everyone seems to be in the delivery room waiting for the baby to pop, Dr. Manchester gets murdered in his office by the mole.Interesting. Well, they killed him off fast.Tom, learning of the situation, tasks Anthony to find the mole stat. Then Anne has the baby! It’s a girl! Yay!Later, Tom leads a citizen’s forum where he reveals a) the baby’s name and then b) talks about how great everything is. Then, later that night his son Hal has another dream-meet with Karen and she talks about how she infected him with the probe to be connected to his…mind. Then she shoves him down onto the forest floor and takes her shirt off and kisses him. Yeah, you totally want the boy for his MIND evil alien Karen.Tom and Weaver share a tete-a-tete in Tom’s office where Weaver gives Tom a cigar for the birth of his baby (why is THAT a thing?) and talks about how he, too, distrusts the Volm. In an effort to wave his fears aside, Tom and Conchise take him to the secret underground Volm facility where they are apparently building a super weapon to take out all the Espheni.Yup. And that couldn’t be something else entirely. I don’t buy that fairy story, Tom, and from Weaver’s face, neither does he.The episode continues on with Ben and Penny discovering an Espheni base at a nuclear power plant where there are a lot of supplies and power and stuff that really, if they blew up, would probably put a wrench in the Espheni plans. How to do that however, at a nuclear power plant without creating a Chernobyl? Hmm. Marina comes up with a Dr. Roger Kadar, who apparently is a power/nuclear/scientist genius dude. Problem with him: he’s an agoraphobic.Hal continues on his quest to be dick boyfriend of the month by getting all jealous when he sees Maggie joking around with a soldier named Lars. She gets pissed at him and accuses him of keeping secrets, and, oh yeah, apparently his paralyzed condition is probably psychosomatic. Girl, you go!Other girls who are going but in a creepy way are Tom and Anne’s new baby. It can move. It can stick its head up. It can disappear and cackle like a scary witch demon baby. IT CAN TALK.It freaks Anne out, but apparently not enough that she shares this with Tom or Lourdes. Um, why? Fortunately, one of Tom’s truant children, Matt, provides a distraction by blowing up an old house with some of his friends AND skipping school. She yells at him. He says she’s not his mother. She sends him to detention. He gives an angry teenage glare under his stupid teenage hair.Tom and Weaver and Marina meet with Dr. Kadar (the as always lovely Robert Sean Leonard) who is crazy and could give them a solution on how to destroy the nuclear plant without nuclear fallout. He takes a day and then tells them they can do it, but he needs the blueprints to show them where to place the explosives. They tell him they have none, he has to come with and show them where. He panics. They tell him it’s to save the world (or well…them). He acquiesces.Hal and Maggie have another argument when she finds his boots a) not where they put them and b) with mud on them. Clearly he’s walking…but to where? What’s going on??? Some cheating is going on sweetie, and some mind-fracking as well.Weaver and the team talk about a plan to go into the back entrance of power plant, thereby setting a neat trap which the mole falls into. Weaver and his team provide the mole distraction while Tom and his team sneak in the front, place the explosives and blow the place up. Not without sacrifices however, as Lars gets killed. Sadness.Later, Matt finds his dad and apologizes for being a jerk and a stupid adolescent. His father lectures him about the value of school. They bond. Matt then goes to apologize to Anne and asks if he can call her Mom. She says yes. They hug (blech). The “perfect family picture” is complete by Tom entering and all three looking down at the baby…who then opens its eyes creepily! Yick.Tom and Weaver have another office night chat, where Weaver talks about how he still doesn’t trust the Volm and dude, that weapon could be anything. Tom concedes the point and discusses putting Dr. Kadar onto it. That means….more Robert Sean Leonard! Woohoo, love me some more Robert Sean Leonard, even as a crazy scientist with dirty stringy hair.The episode concludes with Maggie waking to find Hal missing, then tracking him down in the woods. She wakes him from his sleepwalk, points out he’s walking. Much happiness ensues. They walk back to camp. The camera then pans over to a bitchy, unhappy looking evil Karen standing in the shadows with a skitter. Imminent epic catfight seems guaranteed this season.Well, what of this long season premiere? Well, it’s Falling Skies. The writing is predictable, but the action is fun, and the acting is pretty good for what they show is. Basically, as always, it’s The Librarian (Noah Wyle’s other TNT series) but with aliens in a post-apocalyptic setting. And also, better production values, since Falling Skies is a Spielberg production.Nonetheless, all the season plotlines seem pretty well set up, if predictable: the mystery of what Karen is up to with Hal, whether the Volm can be trusted, who the mole is, and what the frack is up with Anne and Tom’s creepy baby.Alien babies are always the worst, man. So precocious with their stupid superpowers. Well, you might be able to talk and move around at lightning speed baby, but until you get toilet trained in a day, I continue to be unimpressed. Seriously, ditch the diapers baby girl Wyle. They ruin your creep cred.Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter for all news updates related to the world of geek. And Google+, if that’s your thing!