Welcome back to the Alien Apocalypse! Falling Skies has returned with a two-hour season premiere! And I am embarrassed to admit that I have forgotten most of these people’s names!
We open on the set of Coal Miner’s Skitter, and by that I mean that harnessed kids are working in a coal mine under the supervision of skitters and Mega-Mechs. Wee Matt, who now has a haircut worthy of a “Saved by the Bell” episode, is there with now Colonel Dan, who remains as grizzled and earnest as ever, and Dan’s daughter Jeanne (ooo-ooh Jeeeeeeannnnne Weaver!) Jeanne is especially happy because she has found her long lost Diego. She must have used THE MAP! Sadly, his backpack is nowhere to be found. Anyway, this team of weirdness and the rest of our heroes are gonna free those kids and provide a full seven months worth of exposition in an opening that is actually pretty badass. The 2nd Mass has teamed up with the good “guy” aliens, and they are taking our planet back! Eventually.
Sadly, there must be a mole, ‘cause the baddies knew they were coming. The Mason expedition does rescue the kids, but they almost get their badasses handed to them. They manage to get out, but we learn through the battle and it’s aftermath that this ain’t Boston anymore.
WHERE WE STAND:
Our gang has stayed in Charleston, which still looks like a demolition site—seriously does no one own a bulldozer? A shovel? A dustpan? What are the civilians doing all day while Tom emotes passionately?
The 2nd Mass is working with the humanoid alien we met at the end of last season, who is named Cochise. He is the leader of the friendly aliens called “The Volm” which sounds like a snazzy new Volkswagon SUV. (Fahrvergnügen!)
The bad aliens are the “Espheni” which sounds like a new song by Enya. Remember her? Crap. Now I have “Orinoco Flow” stuck in my head.
Professor Tom is now President. But don’t call him that. He doesn’t like it. Also? He rides a horse now, in case you didn’t get the American Revolution comparisons the first 11,000 times.
Tom has a beautiful assistant named Marina Perrault (played by the spectacular Gloria Rueben from ER—I can’t wait to hear her call him “Carter’.) Tom leads the military, including both Generals and Professor Manchester. (Ahem. Terry O’Quinn. Righteous.)
Alien-worm-infected Hal is now a psychosomatic paraplegic in a wheelchair and living with NotKaren. I mean, Maggie. They are both still combat badasses, even as they struggle to maintain their lurve.
Ben is now “Benji” to the adorable rescued girl from last season whose name I cannot remember AT ALL and seems to be nowhere on the internet. He is also still the Ambassador to Skitterville and has gotten even cuter.
Pope is still there. And he’s still Pope. Which means that though he is cooperating as a soldier, he is still a raging ass. Thank God for that. He is a leader to a place in town called (Don’t Go Back to) PopeVille. And he still has Jesus hair.
Anthony seems to be over Pope and is focusing on his work, but we all know he’s dying inside. He probably tries to go down to PopeVille a lot. If you catch my drift.
Wee Matt is going through a teenaged rebellion, complete with a ruffian gang. I think having the worst hair on television is why he’s so angry.
Speaking of rebellions, the Skitter Rebellion is now being led by one who looks like a skitter version of Braveheart. Which means I will now be calling him Wallace McSkitter.
Tector is still alive! YAY! Dai is still dead. BOOOOOOOO! Tector is on the straight and narrow now. Pope is not. (Anthony is wagging his eyebrows somewhere.)
Also still dead? Pointy McOverlord, which saddens me immensely. He has been replaced by a human, whom Tom suspects is NotMaggie. I mean, Karen.
Anne is still RoboDoc, though apparently she is 17 months pregnant with the next wave of Mason soldiers. (The Mason Infant(ry.) See what I did there?) She has alien tech provided by Cochise that allows her to deharness kids, “painlessly and without side effects.” Though Diego was still gasping and shuddering during the procedure so I see Anne’s diagnostic techniques and bedside manner are as strong as ever.
Lourdes is a higher ranking medical official now. LBF is still dead, obviously, considering he was a skitter spider cocoon. Poor Lourdes.
WHERE WE’RE GOING
The Spy Who Shot Me: Someone is snitching to MegaMech and the Skitters what the 2nd Mass is planning. Tom puts Professor Manchester on it, and I am happy about this (because it puts Terry O’Quinn on my TV) and then pissed about it because as he and Anthony narrow down suspects, Manchester is shot and killed by the spy, whom he clearly knew. Now both of my favorite people on this show are dead. DAMN YOU SHOW! Though Tom and the Gang cleverly feed the spy false information, it’s going to take a little longer to ferret out who it is. Tom is, however, clear on what it wants: the weapon (?) Cochise is building, which Cochise insists will help turn the tide of the war. Also? Don’t tell anyone that. It’s top secret.
Hal Goes Walkin’ After Midnight: Hal keeps dreaming of NotMaggie, switching between his two interchangeable blondes like they were…interchangeable. In his dreams he can walk, and he does it with Karen. During his waking hours, he can’t and he does it with Maggie. It turns out? Hal isn’t just dreaming. He’s sleepwalking, and Karen is controlling him via a probe. Maggie is suspicious of it all, which is confirmed when she figures it out via his dirty boots (not a euphemism). She finds Hal in the woods, but not Karen, because then both actresses would be on screen and all of us would be totally confused. There is a micro-subplot about a very cute redshirt named Lars flirting with Maggie, but he bites it at the end, so no one cares. He was fairly hot, though. He made a nice corpse.
Photo credit: EW.com
The Creepiest Baby Since Breaking Dawn Part 2: Robo-Docalypse finally gives birth to a little girl, Alexis Denise Glass-Mason, whose last name sounds like a medieval profession. It’s…nice? For Tom and the boys. And maybe for Anne, because she seems to have learned how to project a human emotion or two. They must have upgraded her operating system. Anyway, within a week of birth creepy Lexie can crawl and talk and hide under beds from Anne, which, to be fair, is a pretty good survival plan. (It should also be said that this creepy baby has MUCH better CGI than the Twilight baby, despite a micro-fraction of a budget. Good on ya, TNT. Shame on you, Summit Entertainment.) Anne doesn’t tell anyone about Alexis, she just attempts to emote anguish and calls her “unique” and “advanced.” Also? She bonds with Wee Matt, but not enough to give him some hair product, sadly. Even when he calls her “Mom” and her programming responds by activating her lubrication receptacle sensors and she simulates human tears.
They’ve Got the Fire Down Below: The Espheni are using a nuclear plant to try to pump fuel into eleventy-billion (approximately) Mega-Mechs. Tom wants them to blow the place sky-high. Unfortunately, it is irradiated to the point that it will “be a homegrown Chernobyl.” Tom says the Volm can’t help. (Why? They can provide hands-free microsurgery implements that even stupid Anne can use but they can’t shut down a power plant?) Fortunately this show manages to score another awesome actor in Robert Sean Leonard, who plays an agoraphobic nuclear scientist named Dr. Roger Kadar. He is a mega-genius crackpot who sees the reactor as a fun problem to solve and does, and for his trouble they force him topside and almost kill him in the process. YOU’RE WELCOME! No wonder he didn’t vote for Tom. Also? They sacrifice men to blow it up, and the Volm really don’t help in the end, which makes people even more antsy and alien-mistrusting. Gross moment? The harnessed kids who fight for the Mech Gas Station are so irradiated they look like they’re melting. Fortunately, our heroes escape before they are, too (with the exception of poor, hot Lars, because this show hates dudes who work out a lot.) Cochise warns—most Espheni are coming. In force. Great.
OTHER STUFF:
Still So. Very. Many. Speeches. Oh, and it’s all about family or whatever. And patriotism. And learning higher level math at school. Or something.
And in the season preview? Lots of stuff happens, and who can we trust, and who will live or die, and so much drama but most important? DAI! A shot of a living and still totally hot DAI! So there’s that to look forward to at least. See you next week!
Barbara Sirois Doyle is a writer for Sweatpants & Coffee. She is a fan of Falling Skies and snarks because she loves.
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